My first news memory was when President Kennedy was assassinated. I was pretty young, but my parents were glued to the television, and my mom cried. I would venture to guess my children would say it was 9/11 for them. How about you? This comic is from Randall Munroe at xkcd.
11 comments:
My first news memory is reading a newspaper article on the Cuban missile crisis. The article's map showed that I lived slightly inside the estimated range of the missiles.
-WDitot
I guess that kind of information would stay with you!
I don't know why this cartoon says that Challenger blew up in 1995. Maybe it is a joke that I am missing. I was watching it because I was up in the middle of the night feeding my son who was a baby at the time. It was 1986.
I was protected from news as a child because we didn't have TV, and the radio news was boring. However I do remember Francis Chichester sailing around the world (1966/7) because one of my teachers made a big deal of it, and would mark on a map where he was up to.
However I just checked Wikipedia are realised that the disappearance of the Beaumont children was in January 66. That was a huge story, and as a child about the same age as the ones who disappeared, it had a big impact. All over Australia kids probably found their freedom to roam without their parents being restricted.
The end of hostilities in Korea. Hmm, I should rephrase that considering the hostility is ongoing.
Oh, Ike's election would be a contender too.
The Challenger explosion wasn't 95 or 86 it was Jan 28, 1987. I was usually at work for space shuttle launches but I was home for my birthday it was the only shuttle launch I ever saw live.
A sad day.
My mistake I should have looked it up first 86 is correct.
I was a pretty young kid but for some reason I remember Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-banging speech in 1960. I was amazed that a grown-up was hitting his shoe on the table.
Challenger was 1986. During the '80s, I changed jobs every year, and I link events to which radio station I was working at when the news broke.
Probably the Kennedy assassination. Think I was in grade 1 or 2. There may have been earlier ones but this one has swamped them all out.
As an aside, did you know there are accepted "names" for the recurring xkcd characters?
There's another website out there called "Explain xkcd". If you go to the entry for this particular comic (https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2174:_First_News_Memory) they break down the comic frame-by-frame. Here are the remarks for 'Frame Two':
(quote)The view pans right to show Megan, Hairy, White Hat, and Black Hat standing around.
Hairy recalls the Challenger explosion, which occurred in 1986. Many schools allowed teachers to bring a television to the classroom to show their students the launch, sadly unaware of the impending disaster the children would witness. However, Hairy remembers watching the footage in 1995, so Hairy's teacher was knowingly showing the students recorded footage of a disaster. Presumably, knowingly showing a number of young schoolchildren a traumatizing event led to the teacher's dismissal.(endquote)
And as long as we're talking earliest news memories, mine would probably have to be Alan Shepherd's sub-orbital flight as America's first man in space in 'Freedom 7', the first manned Project Mercury spaceflight in May 1961. I also have vague memories of the Cuban missile crisis, as well as very vivid memories of the Kennedy assassination and the following four days in Dallas and DC, winding up with the funeral cortege and interment of JFK in Arlington National Cemetery.
-"BB"-
My first news memory was that moon landing in 1969. We were watching it on TV when we had a thunderstorm and all the power went out on our street. My parents grabbed us as we ran down the street and around the corner to a neighbors house that still had power. I remember 30 people gathered in this tiny living room watching a small B&W tv set.
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