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Biggest news stories of your lifetime

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Dec 19, 2012.

  1. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Seriously, the fall of Vietnam should be ranked pretty highly as well. That was a long-building story with fingerprints cutting across a whole swath of late-20th Century U.S. history.
     
  2. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    With the Civil Rights struggle, Vietnam war protests, Kent State, the Chicago convention, the emergance of feminism, the generation gap, the emergence of recreational drugs to a wide-spread segment of society, etc., it's amazing this country survived the 1960s and early 1970s. It was at war with itself.
     
  3. Amy

    Amy Well-Known Member

    In no particular order:

    9/11
    AIDS epidemic
    Viet Nam war
    JFK assassination
    Watergate / Nixon resignation
    Clarence Thomas hearings
    Berlin Wall
    Munich Olympics
    Obama elected first time
    MLK/RFK assassinations
     
  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Others have noted the difficulty in determining the difference between historical significance and big-time news value. Speaking from the perspective of a former tabloid employee (Murdoch one at that), I will try to err on the side of the latter. I mean, the fall of the Soviet Union was probably the most important story of my lifetime, but it wasn't the biggest when it happened due to my and other Americans' insularity.

    1. Space program in the '60s, ending with Armstrong on the moon. If you weren't around then, I can't explain to you just how the country went batshit for John Glenn.
    2. Watergate. A new headline every day!! For months!!!
    3. 9/11. Ugh. Helped cover it that day. Double ugh to the twelfth power.
    4. JFK assassination. Extremely traumatic for a society which saw him as symbol of its status at the top of the heap.
    5. Vietnam. End of illusion cited in number four.
    6. Obama's election. When I was a kid, African Americans in my home town couldn't go into most places of business. Now one is President? Change for the better is always news.
    7. Fall of Soviet Union, starting with Wall, ending with the failed coup against Gorbachev.
    8. Global Financial Crisis. Watching the market drop 400 points in an hour was a real thrill.
    9. First six months of 1968. MLK and RFK assassinations. General sense of things falling apart.
    10. Monica Lewinsky!!! A pure tabloid event for the tabloid decade of the '90s. Made it clear to the dimmest citizen all their leaders were either demented or just plain assholes.
     
  5. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    How did either of the first two things have more news value than 9/11?
     
  6. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    In the first case, Versatile, it was because it was such an outlet for the trauma of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation.
    In the second case, it was because a President of the United States was a criminal leading a criminal conspiracy.
    9/11 was a horrible atrocity. But it's not up there with the Cold War and the idea of our country led by criminals.
     
  7. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    If the space race represents the Cold War, then 9/11 represents the War on Terror.
     
  8. Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell

    Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell Active Member

    1. 9/11
    2. The Fall of the Berlin Wall
    3. Bush vs. Gore, 2000
    4. Tiananmen Square massacre
    5. Challenger
     
  9. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    1. 9/11.

    2. JFK assassinated.

    3. Apollo 11 moon landing.

    4. Vietnam debacle and the residual fallout.

    5. AIDS epidemic (and the sad demise of the Sexual Revolution).

    6. Watergate.
     
  10. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Cold War, IMO, was way bigger than War on Terror. Nobody, no matter how afraid they were, realistically believed that it would end civilization, which World War III sure would have. Again, I believe these judgments are influenced by age to an enormous degree. I'm over 60. My daughter, who is 24, asked me back when she was in elementary-middle school (sixth grade), "what was the Cold War?"
     
  11. Knighthawk

    Knighthawk Member

    Katrina would be lower on my list than most, just because it happened while my dad was in the process of an agonizing three-month illness that took him from perfectly healthy to dying just before we had to make a decision about removing life support. I knew that it happened, but I was so numb to anything outside the ICU that it didn't make as much of an impact on me as it would have at any other time.

    In my lifetime, landing on the moon is #1, 9/11 is a close second, Challenger is a distant third and nothing else is on the radar.
     
  12. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    I kind of feel bad for people who weren't around for the '60s and '70s. Crazy ride.
     
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