Where were you when...

[woolfe9999]

OK this is intended as a fun and perhaps apolitical thread. The topic is which historical events had enough impact on you that you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it happened. Most people who were alive seem to remember where they were when they heard that Kennedy was assassinated. 9/11 strikes me as our generation's Kennedy assassination. But it isn't the only event that left a sufficient imprint on me to cause me to remember my circumstance at the time.

These are the events I remember. Your own may be different.

1. When Reagan was shot by Hinkley. I was in Cairo, Egypt, on a trip to the Middle East with my parents. We were in a cafe at the Sheraton Hotel and we heard the news on a BBC broadcast over a radio on at a nearby table. The gentlemen with the radio, who seemed to realize we were American, turned to us and said in a thick, German accent, "you Americans are such a violent people." My dad, who BTW is Jewish, then said "look whose talking" in reply.

2. The Challenger disaster. I was in college, crossing over the quad and heading to my bio-psych class where we were doing a lab dissecting a human brain. I heard the news over my walkman radio. I was upset by the incident in part because I was a big supporter of the space program. I skipped class.

3. 9/11. I was asleep when my wife's aunt in Cleveland called, woke us up, and told my wife that planes had hit the World Trade Center and we should turn on the TV. We turned on the TV and the towers had been hit but were still standing. We watched them drop on live TV. We went in to work late. We didn't discuss the event until that evening because there wasn't anything to say at the time. It was just too horrible for words.

Any takers?

- wolf

 

[Tristicus]

9/11 I was in my 3rd grade classroom and didn't understand what was going on. When I got home I was told my mom wasn't coming home until the next day because she was scheduled to fly and they stopped all air traffic.

 

[EagleKeeper]

1) On the Mass Pike heading eastward - passing Springfield

2) At work at a Naval Air Station. First thought was that it was to cold to launch and the launch was done for political reasons overriding safety concerns of the weather. Hindsight proved me correct

3) Sleeping in my bed - was on Pacific time - Phone call from my son in Fla telling us to turn on the TV. They were just showing the second plane's impact.
Screwed up my work schedule that day and for the 4-5 years by having the government drop/lose critical paperwork to chase ghosts.

 

[woolfe9999]

Actually I wasn't asking if you remember where you were in the same exact incidents that I do, but for all the ones where you remember. However, I'm impressed that you remember where you were in all three of the ones I mentioned. I am particularly surprised that anyone else remembers the Challenger disaster well enough.

- wolf

 

[CPA]

1) Don't remember

2) was in highschool class watching it live on TV. Was the first to comment "I think the space shuttle just blew up". Even the teacher wasn't sure what was going on.

3) Was at work and starting hearing things about it. Turned on TV to see the second one hit.

 

[woolfe9999]

As clarification, if anyone can think of any news story of national importance that was significant enough for them to remember where they were when it happened, I'm interested to hear it. This isn't just about the three events I mentioned for myself.

- wolf

 

[ElFenix]

challenger - was at outdoor learning center in katy, texas. i'd brought cupcakes for class as it was my birthday

first gulf war - when we actually started shooting i was at basketball practice. mom picked me up and had the radio on

9/11 - in bed. when i woke up i went to the computer. saw i had an ICQ message from someone i'd never heard of. it was something about unspeakable events and what not. i closed it, thinking it was spam. fired up the browser. home page was excite news or something. saw the headline, ran out in the living room yelling 'holy shit, holy shit.' that woke my roommate up.

 

[Linflas]

Reagan - Somewhere on I66 east of Front Royal, Virginia.

Challenger - Working at NRL, heard about it from a collegue I passed walking from one building back to my building.

9/11 - Heard it live on the Howard Stern show working on site at a subcontractor's facility. If I would have been working on the contract site that day I would have been right across I-395 from the Pentagon on the 11th floor of the DEA building.

Some others
JFK - Patrick Henry Elementary school, 2nd grade. They were playing the radio coverage over the loudspeaker, no "grief counselors" needed.

MLK - At home watching it on TV, later that night we could go outside in Alexandria and see the glow in the sky from the buildings burning in DC. Later that night a 7-11 about 1/2 mile from my elementary school was firebombed.

Moon landing - At a friends house in Chantilly, Virginia, at home at my parents house for the first step watching it on TV and recording it from the radio on cassette (no clue where that tape is now).

 

[cganesh75]

9/11. I came back from India after a visit on 9/10/2001.. i was jet lagged, couldnt sleep and flipping through tv channel at westcoast time 6AM, what I saw stopped me from sleeping for 2 more days.

 

[Saint Nick]

I wasn't alive for Reagan or Challenger.

However, 9/11 I was the new kid at a very small K-12 school in rural Nebraska. I had about 10 kids in my class. We were in "science" class and making cookies (lolwut). Pretty much the next two days were spent watching TV at school and doing nothing.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

1. On a Navy Destroyer in the Persian Gulf

2. Instructing sailors at an advanced electrical training school

3. Preparing to head out to another job, of course got to sit at home for a week waiting for the airports to open again.

 

[Pens1566]

1) at my aunt and uncle's house ... aunt watched me when I was little before I was old enough for grade school.
2) Snow day ... at home watching tv with my dad
3) Rolling into cafeteria at work for morning mtn dew

 

[DaveJ]

Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995) - I was a senior in HS, and as part of the graduation requirements I had to do a month-long internship. Mine was at KRLD 1080 News, and they had me doing all sorts of stuff - traffic (ads), promotions, etc. That day was a Wednesday and it was my day to hang out in the newsroom. There's nothing like coming into a room full of organized chaos and having the news director hand you a list of Air Force bases to call, to see if anyone was providing aid to OKC. I was so nervous that I could barely work the phones and hung up on one AFB three times before I got my wits together. That was an amazing experience, but it made me realize I didn't want to work in news.

Columbia accident (2003) - A series of loud bangs tracking west to east woke me up just before 8am, and I didn't think anything of it until I was driving to Fry's later that morning and the highway signs had numbers to call if you found any debris.

 

[JeepinEd]

1: Don't remember

2: Was in High School English class, when a girl ran into our classroom sobbing and said the space shuttle just blew up. I have always followed the space program very closely, so it hit me pretty hard.

3: I was getting ready for work, when I turned on the TV and saw the first tower on fire. I told my wife "something happened in NY". As we were watching, the second plane hit, at which point we both had the "OH Shit!" moment. We spent a few hours glued to the TV, listening to all the speculation about planes getting shot down & bombs going off in other locations.

I'll add another one. My wife and I had to run an errand in Long Beach, CA. We decided to take the 110 back to Los Feliz, but needed gas so we exited the fwy and got on Florence Ave. Once we got off the freeway we started looking for a Chevron station. As soon as we were on Florence, we got this eerie feeling that things just didn't seem right. We had just passed Vermont, when my wife insisted that we get out of there, so we jumped back on the freeway. When we got home, we turned on the news and saw them showing the area where we had just been - We were literally at the flash point of the L.A. riot, just as it was starting to break out, and only a couple of blocks from where Reginald Denny was being attacked. That freaked the hell out of us.

 

[woolfe9999]

The last post just caused me to remember two others.

4. The LA riots. I was up in San Francisco at a friend's apartment and he had turned on the TV to watch a movie. We cycled through the news and stopped to watch it unfold.

5. When the OJ "not guilty" verdict came down. I was in law school at the time, in my bedroom, sitting on the floor next to my bed, watching it on TV. I remember thinking "WTF this is an embarrassment. No one will believe our court system works after this."

Funny how I remember the Challenger disaster but not Columbia.

- wolf

 

[kranky]

Reagan shot - don't remember
First Iraq war - teaching a night class
Challenger - at work
9/11 - at a management conference in a hotel. We were on a break when the news first came on. The gripping moment for me was seeing dozens of tough-guy executives weeping quietly while watching what was happening on the TVs in the bar. They tried to reconvene the group but nobody was mentally into it, so they sent us home.

 

[Thump553]

1) JFK shot (anyone in the USA that was over age 5 then can probably tell you exactly where they were then): I was in grammer school & mostly remember being very PO'd because they canceled an afer-school field trip to the Y. What a self-centered brat I was.

2) 1969 Man on the moon: With family in Portugal, staying in a small old style hotel-no AC, no TV except for one in the lobby. Just about everyone in the hotel was crowded into the tiny lobby to watch Armstrong step out onto the moon, all the Europeans were clapping us on the backs and congratulating us on America's acheivement.

3) Nixon's resignation speech: don't remember too much about that night as his speech triggered off a wild party-which was recapped the next day when he boarded the helicopter into exile.

4) Reagan's shooting: don't remember it specifically. I also don't recall either of two assignation attempts on Ford was shot a few years earlier either, and I respected Ford a whole lot more.

 

[woolfe9999]

Thump, I'm jealous of you seeing the moon landing. I was only 2 at the time. My parents both remember it vividly. I often think if I could go back in time to witness any historical event, that would be the one. And it's one of the few that people remember vividly that wasn't some sort of disaster.

- wolf

 

[IndyColtsFan]

1. When Reagan was shot by Hinkley.

I was in fourth grade and IIRC, when my mom picked me up from school, she told me.

2. The Challenger disaster.

I was a freshman in high school and I remember the coverage and seeing a teacher crying. We were in English class but for some reason, we were in the Home EC room. Don't remember why.

3. 9/11.

I worked for Compaq at the time. I was in my office and I remember hearing a girl in a cube outside mention that a small plane hit the WTC. I thought "What kind of an idiot would hit that on a clear day?" Soon, news reports flooded in and they turned on the projector in our huge conference room so we could go watch. Shortly thereafter, they closed the office. To this day, when the anniversary of 9/11 occurs, I just can't watch shows about it or the footage from that day.

 

[EagleKeeper]

On the '69 moon landing - 3 families were trying to get a decent picture on the tube. Gave up and used the radio.

At the time, the bigger concern was could they get off the surface and rendevous safely

 

[IndyColtsFan]

As clarification, if anyone can think of any news story of national importance that was significant enough for them to remember where they were when it happened, I'm interested to hear it. This isn't just about the three events I mentioned for myself.

- wolf

I answered those three, but a couple more I remember:

I remember when Sadat was assassinated. Again, I was in grade school (4th grade I believe) and my mom told me about it when she picked me up from school.

Gulf War I: I was watching TV when the news broke in about Baghdad being bombed. They flashed to Baghdad and you saw all sorts of explosions and tracer fire, but the White House was keeping silent. They finally released a statement: "The liberation of Kuwait has begun. Operation Desert Shield is now Operation Desert Storm."

Elvis dying -- I was 7 or 8 and I remember being at home when the news broke and my mom being very upset.

I could go on and on, I think.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Thump, I'm jealous of you seeing the moon landing. I was only 2 at the time. My parents both remember it vividly. I often think if I could go back in time to witness any historical event, that would be the one. And it's one of the few that people remember vividly that wasn't some sort of disaster.

- wolf

I wish I could have seen it too. I was born in 1970 so I was alive when later missions took place, but don't remember any of them. The earliest historical event I can remember is some of the Vietnam coverage, but nothing detailed -- just images from the TV, mainly.

 

[Fern]

1. Moon landing. Although I was pretty young my grandmother allowed me to stay up and watch it (it was televised late IIRC). I was in my grandparent's house in the mountains of Western NC.

2. Kennedy assination. I was really young then too. But I remember it because my mom was crying. I also remember his burial on the following Saturday; I was crying because cartoons (Mighty Mouse) were pre-empted. Back in those days we only got about 2 channels and cartoons were only on during saturday morning for a couple of hours; I was now gonna have to wait a whole 'nother week which seemed like forever back then.

3. Challenger explosion/crash. I was at work in Miami. I came around the corner and saw 2 secretaries crying, they told me what happened.

4. First Iraq war and bombing. I was at home in Paris.

5. 9-11. I was at home (NC) and got a call about it. I turned on the TV and shortly afterward the 2nd plane hit.

6. OJ on the run - I was home in CT and saw it TV.

Fern

 

[woolfe9999]

I answered those three, but a couple more I remember:

I remember when Sadat was assassinated. Again, I was in grade school (4th grade I believe) and my mom told me about it when she picked me up from school.

Gulf War I: I was watching TV when the news broke in about Baghdad being bombed. They flashed to Baghdad and you saw all sorts of explosions and tracer fire, but the White House was keeping silent. They finally released a statement: "The liberation of Kuwait has begun. Operation Desert Shield is now Operation Desert Storm."

Elvis dying -- I was 7 or 8 and I remember being at home when the news broke and my mom being very upset.

I could go on and on, I think.

Ding, you just triggered another one for me. Not Elvis but John Lenon. I was watching TV, cartoons if memory serves. My sister, who was years older and a fan of Lenon, came out of her room crying, saying Lenon was killed. I remember being pissed because she made me turn the channel to the news.

- wolf

 

[Linflas]

I answered those three, but a couple more I remember:

I remember when Sadat was assassinated. Again, I was in grade school (4th grade I believe) and my mom told me about it when she picked me up from school.

Gulf War I: I was watching TV when the news broke in about Baghdad being bombed. They flashed to Baghdad and you saw all sorts of explosions and tracer fire, but the White House was keeping silent. They finally released a statement: "The liberation of Kuwait has begun. Operation Desert Shield is now Operation Desert Storm."

Elvis dying -- I was 7 or 8 and I remember being at home when the news broke and my mom being very upset.

I could go on and on, I think.

Heh your username reminded me of another important one, March 29, 1984 when I heard on the radio on the way into work that Irsay had backed up a bunch of Mayflower Moving Vans to the Baltimore Colts practice facility at 2AM and loaded up all the team property for a trip to Indianapolis.