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

That was the day of the NCAA championship game. They played it. I remember watching at a restaurant/watering hole just off campus. Indiana, led by Isiah Thomas, won.

 

It isn't widely known now, but there was no live teevee from space missions until Apollo 7 in October '68.

Before then, the launches were carried live, but after that the "live coverage" of space missions consisted almost completely of animations from the teevee networks.

Apollo 7 had some live shots from the command module but basically it looked like three guys in pajamas sitting in the back of a cramped van.

There was a near-mutiny by the Apollo 7 crew who felt the teevee broadcasts were big distractions and wastes of time, and coverage was cut down quite a bit.

Apollo 8 was the first flight with extended teevee broadcasts, plus shots of scenery outside the windows. The first shots of the earth, and needless to say the first closeups of the moon, took the world by storm.

 

I remember the Bay of Pigs vaguely, as a Florida first grader. The first big story firm in my memory was JFK. I was in second grade, and a first grade teacher ran down the hall crying when she got the news. We went home and the TV was pretty solid coverage through the burial. I saw most of it live, lines of mourners, JFK Jr.'s salute, the procession with the caisson preceded by the riderless horse with the boots reversed in the stirrups, the whole deal.

As far as early news stories, pre 11/22, I grew up in Tampa, and if the winds and weather were right could see the contrails of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral. My godfather was an Air Force pilot. In the early days before the cameras improved he used to fly as a chase plane on NASA missions. This involved a camera mounted in his fighter, and when the rocket was going up he pointed the plane straight up and hit the afterburner and kept it in frame. I always thought that was one helluva job to have. He was killed later in 'Nam. RIP John Musgrave.

 

There are a lot of old guys responding on this thread. Guess the younger ones will chime in after the geezers go to bed.

I probably shit my pants when Kennedy was shot, but I was six months old.

Don't really remember a lot of political/current events from my early years--moon landing, Vietnam don't resonate beyond what I read in history books. I do recall vividly the Mets 69 World Series win, because I was a huge sports fan, and a Tom Seaver and New York fan.

When I first read the thread, my first instinct was the gasoline crisis and the Whip Inflation Now (WIN) campaign that Ford? ran with. Vague recollection of Watergate and Nixon, but didn't understand what it really meant.

And this may be a topic for an entirely different thread, but my earliest recollection of anything in my life was the Ed Sullivan show. Probably 3 or 4 years old. I was sick and slept all through the day on Sunday and finally woke up and got to stay up a bit with my folks and catch some Sunday night TV after my normal bed time. No idea who was on that show, but I can put myself back in that living room 50 years ago like it was yesterday.

 

Yep. It turned into an episode of "It's a Bobby Knight championship, Charlie Brown."

 

I remember the Challenger explosion happening, but not really getting the scope of the tragedy for a while. Unfortunately, at 5 1/2, I wasn't well versed enough in rocket science to have prevented it. I probably wasn't smarter than the president at that time either.

 

It might have been close.

 

So do any of you elder statesmen remember the Oswald assassination? Live TV I believe, and had to be quite the moment.

 

I did not see it live, but the replays were endless through the coverage afterward.

 

I remember all of the animations and such. You could listen in on the astronauts talking with the Capcom in Houston, or with the tracking station at Canarvon (in Australia, as I recall). And you'd see footage, but not as it happened. I do remember seeing live shots of the splashdowns.

 

I remember the Bicentennial, but the news story that first stuck was the Iranian hostage crisis and the Pope Assassination. I also remember President Carter looking like a beaten man (and Reagan not), which likely explains my center-right leanings.

 

The Phillies winning the World Series in '80.

Then, Lennon getting shot a few weeks later.