What's the First Big News Story You Were Aware Of As a Kid?

Vague remembrance of the hostages being released from Iran, because our teacher explained to us what happened and to listen carefully at noon for church bells to chime.

After that, if I'm remembering correctly, was Reagan's assassination attempt, because there was supposed to be a Peanuts special airing that night, but got pre-empted.

 

Two from 1972:

News: the hostage taking at the Munich Olympics

Sports: the Canada-Russia Summit Series

 

Goddamn, all you people are old!

 

Detroit riots, summer of 1967. Park about a mile or so from our house in the hood was a staging area for National Guard troops and their heavy equipment. Remember the tanks and other armored vehicles.

 

We're wily veterans, kid.

 

My earliest memory of a news event is Martin Luther King's assassination. I was in the dental college at the University of Kentucky getting some temporary false teeth because I broke off four front ones when I fell running up the front stairs of our house. Updates were coming over the radio in the waiting room.

 

My parents took me to a parade/campaign rally for JFK in the early fall of 1960, when I had just turned 2. I sat on my dad's shoulders as the parade passed by.

My parents took pictures so I know what happened, but I don't really remember anything about it, other than JFK (tall, young, red haired) and Jackie (black haired in a fancy coat and dress) kind of resembled my parents, so it made sense to me they should be in charge of the whole country.

Our family was Irish Catholic so needless to say JFK was considered a god in our house.

Also, Ike resembled one of my grandfathers, who had died 5 years before I was born, so it kind of made sense to me that old bald guys would fade into the background and would just live on in BW photos from then on.

 

On a related note, the first time I noticed a newspaper was the day after John Wayne died. Huge headline in the smalltown paper.

 

The 1989 San Francisco quake. I wasn't in the Bay Area at the time, but I remember watching it on TV and my mom's friend claiming she saw brains in the Bay Bridge footage. There was also Bush getting elected in 1988, but I remember that only because I didn't understand why everyone was getting excited that he won champagne.