Events Memories

[RicoGregg]

Inspired by the JFK thread, I have a list of events where I can clearly remember where I was at and what I was doing. I won't bog down with all the details, I'll just list the events:

The divorce of Lucy & Desi
The death of Clark Gable
The JFK Assassination
The Beatles first TV appearance
The Watts riots
The seizing of the USS Pueblo
The MLK Assassination
The RFK Assassination
Super Bowl III
The Munich Olympic Massacre
The Munich Olympic Basketball screw job
Nixon's resignation speech
The Jonestown massacre
The Murder of John Lennon
The Shooting of Ronald Reagan
The Challenger Disaster
The San Francisco Quake
The Rodney King L.A. Riots
The Northridge Quake
The Columbine Massacre
September 11, 2001

Just ask me where I was when any of those things happened, and I can tell you. They all made me run to the TV and/or radio.

Got a list of your own?

 

[trusty]

I seem to vaugely remember an obscure court trial in LA that filled 1995! :

'Twas one event - that went on and on and on and on and .........

 

[mleach]

Besides the OJ trial, 9/11 and the obvious, I can remember where I was when I had heard the following...

*The 1975 deaths of Larry Fine and Moe Howard of the 3 Stooges ( News 4 Washington-WRC )
*The 1977 death of Elvis Presley ( at Montgomery Ward )
*The 1982 death of John Belushi ( actually at the very same store where I had first heard that Elvis had died )
*The 1989 death of Lucille Ball ( KWGN in Denver )
*That 1994 USair flight that had crashed in Pittsburgh ( I was actually in Pittsburgh when it happened )

The death of country legend Tammy Wynette. I was working at a country music station in Maryland when it was announced. Thing was the very first news reports had said that it was actually Barbara Mandrell who had died BUT before I had went on the air with that the AP had corrected their story to had said it was actually Tammy Wynette who had passed on.

 

[soundsandsports]

I remember waking up on a Saturday morning about four years ago to see what was on my local stations before flipping to SportsCenter, and I watched replays of Space Shuttle Columbia exploding on its way back to Earth...I think ABC was the only one of the "Big Three" that broke the story, or the first to do so.

As far as the the oldest big time "breaking news" I remember, probably "Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!", followed a few months later by the "Baby Jessica" rescue.

 

[landtuna]

The 1959 deaths of Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson and Richie Valens
The 1983 death of Karen Carpenter.
The 1985 death of Rick Nelson

 

[RicoGregg]

I seem to vaugely remember an obscure court trial in LA that filled 1995! :

'Twas one event - that went on and on and on and on and .........

I knew I forgot something!

Let's also not forget the slow speed chase of OJ and Al Cowlings a year earlier.

 

[gregg75]

death of Princess Diana
missing/death of JFK Jr.
(these two just 6 weeks apart)

 

[Tim L]

Sept.11, 2001:
My wife Linda and I were getting ready to go to our Tuesday Morning Bowling League when the World Trade Center News broke..We saw a bit on TV before leaving. Needless to say while we had our league that morning, our minds werent exactly on bowling...

March 1993:
Cleveland Indians Spring Training Boating accident in Little Lake Nellie near Winter Haven, Fla. in which Pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews were killed and Pitcher Bobby Ojeda was seriously injured..I was at home and following the news on WEWS-Channel 5..

 

[jwk1979]

The Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics-July 27, 1996. That was the morning of my wedding to my first wife.

 

[onairb]

death of Princess Diana
missing/death of JFK Jr.
(these two just 6 weeks apart)

Two years apart-JFK Jr. died in '99.

 

[gregg75]

The Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics-July 27, 1996. That was the morning of my wedding to my first wife.

I was in the park the night before.......saw Richard Jewell.....couldn't miss him......in security garb and
the size of a barrel.

 

[1st of 5]

I was living in Baltimore in 1984, when the Colts left, in the middle of the night, like a bunch sneaky con men, to Indianapolis. I was watching Barney Miller syndicated rerun around midnight when the local sports guy broke in with the "special report" which included live video of Mayflower moving vans and buses leaving the Colts former training HQ. For that entire month, prior to the Colts running away, the Mayor and State legistature were trying to declare the Colts as some sort of public property in order to keep their NFL team there. Since I was a foreigner there, I didn't much care, but the whole state went nuts the next day.

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

May some positive events be listed here, too?

Remember the TV coverage of the early manned U.S. space flights? Astronauts like: Alan Sheppard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn became household names in 1961 & 1962 as did the others in the following months and years.

Of course, there was Apollo 11 in July, 1969. Landing on the moon on July 20 and then the short wait (it was actually moved up several hours from first planned) when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Millions watched and memories of that day still remain.

 

[firepoint525]

My list:

death of Elvis Presley
death of John Lennon
shooting of President Reagan
shooting of Pope John Paul II
Challenger explosion
death of Princess Diana
9/11
death of George Harrison (although not unexpected)
death of Michael Jackson

I'm sure that I will think of more.

 

[FreddyE1977]

For various reasons, for most of the events in my lifetime I learned about them via radio and not television.
I tuned into a news conference about the Challenger tragedy while driving home from a college class. The
spokesman was very somber, and I knew something very bad had happened, though I did not learn exactly
what until I reached home. It was almost an identical situation for the Chernobyl accident.

In the case of the Rodney King riots, I had come home from work late in the afternoon and was taking a shower.
I had the all news station on the shower radio, and they announced that the verdicts had come in from Simi Valley.
My immediate response was "They're gonna burn the (expletive) town down!" And sadly I was right.

On 9-11 I was sitting at my desk at work, when a co-worker who had stayed home to watch TV coverage
called in to tell us what was happening. We all ran to the employee lounge and spent the rest of the
day watching the tragedy unfold on TV.

 

[FreddyE1977]

*That 1994 USair flight that had crashed in Pittsburgh ( I was actually in Pittsburgh when it happened )

I was actually driving back to Pittsburgh from Michigan and if I'd been 10 minutes earlier
I would have driven right under the crash. As it was they shut down the road and I had to
backtrack and take another route home.

 

[anotherguyTN]

The assasination of JFK
The Beatles' first appearance on Ed Sullivan
The assasination of Martin Luther King
The assasination of RFK
The moon landing
Nixon's resignation

Elvis's Death - Since I live in the Memphis area, that went on for several days longer than it was in the national news.

Groucho Marx's death - I really didn't find out about it until several days later because of it happening so close to the same time as Elvis's death with that taking up more news time.

John Lennon's death - I thought I remember it being announced during a Monday Night Football game.

The assasination attempt on President Reagan
The Challenger explosion
The OJ trial, although I'd rather forget that.
The Columbia explosion
9-11-01

President Reagan's funeral - I don't remember what was happening when it was announced that he died, but I watched part of the funeral in a hotel room in Pigeon Forge, TN while on vacation.

Ray Charles's death - It happened in the same period as Reagan's death, and I remember seeing a video on a news report of clips from Reagan's funeral with the music of Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful.

The deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, since they both died on the same day, and Paul Harvey later, all of which I found out about on the Internet rather than TV.

 

[soundsandsports]

For various reasons, for most of the events in my lifetime I learned about them via radio and not television.
I tuned into a news conference about the Challenger tragedy while driving home from a college class. The
spokesman was very somber, and I knew something very bad had happened, though I did not learn exactly
what until I reached home. It was almost an identical situation for the Chernobyl accident.

In the case of the Rodney King riots, I had come home from work late in the afternoon and was taking a shower.
I had the all news station on the shower radio, and they announced that the verdicts had come in from Simi Valley.
My immediate response was "They're gonna burn the (expletive) town down!" And sadly I was right.

On 9-11 I was sitting at my desk at work, when a co-worker who had stayed home to watch TV coverage
called in to tell us what was happening. We all ran to the employee lounge and spent the rest of the
day watching the tragedy unfold on TV.

I forgot all about Rodney King, but now I do remember people going nuts and then there was the "very special episode" of "A Different World". I also remember flipping channels before the NBA Finals the year of OJ's white Bronco chase and trial and saw that. I also saw the damage from the Northridge Quake live too (If it happened during one summer in the morning that was the one). As you can tell, I'm probably not as old as most people on these boards, late 20s...that's my only hint.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

One thing I don't remember, though I was old enough to, was the Stonewall Riot of 1969. I've heard a lot about it since, though; the Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in Greenwich Village, and in those days, vice cops would regularly come in to such places, cite them for obscenity, morals, or whatever, and arrest a few people. On this occasion, though, the patrons/employees were tipped off, and decided to fight back. The riot lasted a couple days, and is now seen as the birth of the gay rights movement. While I remember most of the other big news events of 1968-69, I don't remember the Stonewall Riot. Did it get a lot of coverage on TV?

 

[LKellerIII]

One thing I don't remember, though I was old enough to, was the Stonewall Riot of 1969. I've heard a lot about it since, though; the Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in Greenwich Village, and in those days, vice cops would regularly come in to such places, cite them for obscenity, morals, or whatever, and arrest a few people. On this occasion, though, the patrons/employees were tipped off, and decided to fight back. The riot lasted a couple days, and is now seen as the birth of the gay rights movement. While I remember most of the other big news events of 1968-69, I don't remember the Stonewall Riot. Did it get a lot of coverage on TV?

My memory is that the Stonewall Riots did not get much coverage in the national media. San Francisco ( where I live) was a gay rights mecca starting about 1972, but the Stonewall situation in NYC was not considered a big deal in SF until the early or mid 70s. After at least one failed attempt, gay County supervisor Harvey Milk -was elected to office. Harvey Milk was a very compelling and natural politician - once he was elected, his agenda was not only about gay rights. Had he not not been assassinated by fellow supervisor Dan White on 1979, he probably would have been Mayor of SF by the mid or late 1980s.