Major events - where were you?

[Raffles1981]

After watching The Crown and seeing Aberfan and now The Irishman and the shooting of Kennedy. Just curious as to which major event you remember that stopped you in your tracks. Made you take stock. For me, it was Diana. I was 16 and it was quite a shock and I remember the day being still and her funeral - no one seemed to be getting on with life. What was a major day for you?

Moon landings. Watched part of that mission in school, though cant remember if it was the take off, landing, first walk...
John Lennon getting shot - I was in my dorm room at university listening to the radio late at night which coincidentally was playing Abby Road in its entirety. The DJ announced his death and at first I thought it was a sick joke (McCartney death rumours were always around with clues supposedly on the album covers).
Princess Diana - my sister was doing an overnight shift in hospital and called me.
9/11 I was at work and again someone saw it on the news and I just couldn't believe it was real.

I was ten when Diana died. I remember going downstairs with my six year old brother, and the usual cartoons weren't on. Didn't clock why. We put a Disney video on instead. My mum got up a short while later and told us that she had died, as she'd beeb listening to the radio upstairs.

9/11 - I was at school, year 10. We had finished lessons for the day, but my friends and I had stayed behind for a GCSE history revision session. My history teacher arrived ashen faced and informed us that a plane had hit the pentagon. I didn't have a clue what the pentagon was .

I remember the day Michael Jackson died. I was on holiday on one of the Greek islands and was flying home that day. We boarded the transfer coach from the hotel and were told by the rep that our flight was delayed indefinitely as the Greek air traffic controllers had gone on strike. I remember being in the airport trying to find out about my flight and all the staff were interested in telling me was that Michael Jackson was dead.

The first major story I remember is Hillsborough. Most of my family are Liverpool fans and it sticks in my head, I also remember the very emotional FA cup final literally a few weeks later in which they played Everton. I watched that in my Aunties front room.

After that Diana. I was 15. Its hard to explain to people not old enough to remember how famous she was.

9/11. I was at work in my first proper job when that happened.

More recently the Manchester Arena bombing. I remember when the reports first came through of the explosion and it was played down. Then that horrible photo of the immediate aftermath appeared on Twitter and it became obvious what had happened.

Elvis - summer holiday in Wales 1977, cousin and sister crying, me going

Space Shuttle - watching live on TV

Mandela released - went to a club in Sheffield and we all watched it live on screen

Diana - pregnant with my DD

911 - just finished watching a DVD (Maelstrom, Canadian movie) with DH - TV showed the second plane crash into the tower

3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake - lived through it

I vaguely remember JFK being shot and the terrible scenes in Dallas - Jackie with blood on her pink suit.

Diana - living with my parents and my father just shouted up the stairs 'Princess Diana is dead' - just like that. Remember everybody being in complete shock for the week.

9/11 - was in France with my mother. We were having a drink in the hotel room when the news came on and showed the first tower collapsing. We could not believe it was happening.

Stangely, the murder of Jill Dando strikes a chord with me. I was at work when the news spread - I had never taken a great deal of interest in her before, but the manner of her death was so shocking.

Diana - I woke late and heard my Grandparents downstairs talking to a neighbor who had popped round. I'd been out drinking the night before and had strange recollection of a random person telling me this news in the early hours!?!.
9/11. I was at work ( hosp) watching on the small TV in the corner. The ward was silent. Remember rushing home when my shift finished at 4.
Derick Bird shootings Cumbria- My ds was a baby and I used to walk him in his pram every evening to get him to sleep. Derick Bird was on the run and I remember feeling utterly terrified one evening as a car approached along long stretch of road as I was walking.
Was totally fine but I feared it was him.

Lockerbie
Hillsborough
Dunblane
Berlin Wall
Zeebrugge Ferry
James Bulger Murder/Kidnap
Kings Cross Fire

I remember all of these being on the news but not where I was/details as I was quite young

Freddie Mercury - I remember my mum crying for days!

Diana - came home from a job I had in a bar to my mum crying watching tv

9/11 - watched it happen live with DH in our living room

2004 Boxing Day Tsunami - I was supposed to be there on my honeymoon but we changed our minds and decided to go to Europe in summer instead

7/7 - I actually was on my honeymoon in Europe and we watched it pn the tv trying to decipher what was happening as there were no English channels

9/11 I was at my first day of law school (postgrad course) and at the break a bloke came running in to the big lecture theatre saying that a plane had flown into one of the WTC towers. It was only that evening in the pub I realised the full significance of it all - and got a bit worried as my brother was working in New York at the time (although not in the WTC)

7/7 I remember turning on my computer at work and reading bbc news website - it was giving out that there had been power surges - I commented to a colleague that that was likely bollocks and would instead turn out to be bombs. Turns out her Fiancé was due to be travelling through kings x at that time. She spent a very worried three hours trying to track him down. He’d actually overslept in the hotel and was asleep when it all happened but had only realised the issue after he’s checked out, and then noticed his phone wouldn’t connect!

Very first big news event was the herald of free enterprise as we’d got off it on the I coming voyage, I still get chills thinking of that!

Kings Cross, I loved a mile away, boy what a lot of sirens that night, my dad called me the next morning worried, i had been oblivious.

When Diana died I had been qualified as a nurse for about a,year and was on a,late shift I had recently moved back to my parents so I was having a,lie in my mum came into my room to tell me we went to France the following week for my cousins wedding he got married on the day of her funeral , with 911 I was on nights , and had slept through it all and I only hear about it when I was having a bath getting ready for work and listening to the radio and the presenter started talking about the atrocities in America

@MAFIL when the Manchester ( 1996)bomb went off I was a,student Nurse at Hope Hospital in Salford we lived in Eccles so we were a few miles from Manchester city centre, I qualified a few months later and got a,job at MRI, a guy I worked used travel to and from work on his motorbike he swore blind he drove past the car the bomb was in and thought it was very badly parked !

@FrenchFancie re 7/7 we too were sat in our office reading “power surges” story on BBC news and we were all saying that’s clearly bollocks, they are trying not to panic people. It was so bizarrely written!

I remember with the Diana thing I spent all week thinking the country had gone mad. People seemed hysterical about someone they didn’t know and had never met. I was a student working in a cafe and I have always remembered an older woman who worked in there who acted utterly distraught at Diana’s death. She had to book time off to travel to London with flowers etc. At the time I was very but I became even more shocked when just a few months later, a local lad was killed when his mini hit a wall (hope I’m not outing myself or triggering anyone who knew him) She was so devoid of sympathy and in fact she was outright sneery saying it was his own fault driving too fast and paying no attention etc etc. The complete contrast in her attitude has always stayed with me.

Dunblane. I was only in Primary School, but upper end. Seemed like overnight security of schools changed, we used to have open doors and gates before then. Afterwards, I was a door monitor who had to check all the doors were locked after lunch and break.

Ladbroke Grove.... I just remember the news report of the commuter car park with cars that people never returned for, and the initial worry that the deaths may have been over a hundred

9/11.

The New York plane crash a month later- thinking it was all happening again

Anti Iraq protests

7/7- I was stuck on a mountain in the Caribbean during a hurricane. All we could get was Spanish CNN. The mostly American students I was with all working together to get me a way to phone home, to London where my parents and brother worked and commuted by tube/bus.

London Riots 2011, with a newborn wondering what world I brought my daughter into

For those that remember the Challenger explosion, it is possible I saw it 'live' on the BBC?
In my memory I was watching in the afternoon on a ' news round' programme and was horrified by it. As time has gone on I wonder if I was watching a report of the tragedy or watching it in real time.

I remember the explosion being on Newsround. I am pretty certain it wasn't live, but the clip I particularly remember on Newsround was one of the astronauts was a teacher and her pupils had been watching it live. The Newsround clip showed the room and their reactions as it exploded. That's stayed with me far more than the disaster.

Hillsborough, I remember my mum coming into my bedroom and saying "there's been a terrible tragedy". Only remember her doing that one other time, which was when there had been an passenger aircraft on fire and the passengers were told to stay put while they put them out and then it exploded. The ones who had "disobeyed orders" were the ones who survived, which as a child seemed rather unfair.
Princess Diana: Were away with a kids camp. It was their last day and we had to decide quickly what we were going to tell them/if we were going to tell them, then one of the campers (who had brought a smuggled in radio) came running down to tell everyone.
Dunblane: I saw the headlines from a coach. Can't remember where I was going. Didn't find out the full facts until later.
9/11: Listening to what sounding like a rubbish play on R4 (no TV). Gradually began to wonder if something had happened, so went to get the BBC on the internet and couldn't connect to any news sites. Knew something was wrong then.
7/7: Phoned by a relative wanting to check we were okay. We are actually a fair distance outside the M25 and I don't think have ever been in London that time of the morning, certainly for weekday term time. Appreciate the thought, but it was slightly bizarre.
Iraq invading Kuwait. We were on holiday, and saw the fighter planes going up on manoeuvres from RAF Valley and df (knowing the raf) knew immediately they were serious.
I seem to remember we were on holiday at the same place when there was the coup against Gorbachev.

9/11
Elvis
Lockerbie
Kings Cross fire
Challenger
Rainbow Warrior bombing
Harrods bombing
Diana

Bobby Sands - IRA hunger striker. No sympathy.

It's interesting we all remember Challenger more than Columbia isn't it? Why is that?

I think I saw Challenger on Newsround, too.

Challenger was the first space disaster since the death of Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom. Also, it was the first teacher in space launch.

Challenger was 34 years ago on Tuesday.

Diana - i was 11. Neighbour popped round to tell my Mum and I innocently asked if she had stepped on a landmine because I’d seen footage of her in areas with landlines a few days before. I was told off. For her funeral I was abroad in an Eastern European country and her funeral was in the radio.

9/11 - watched it all unfold on TV after school.

7/7 - I was on one of the trains that was bombed.

Diana - we had just moved into a new place and the wardrobe rail cams crashing down at about 4am our time so it must have been about the time they announced the death. I put the radio on (as my heart was racing after being woken up with the flat falling down around my ears) and there was talk of Diana in the last tense. It took a little while to realise that something had happened and that she had died.

Also Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson.

MEN bombing, I watched it all unfold on the news knowing my friends were there. Then via text we all realised everyone was safe but one. He had gone to the toilet and then to the bar as the concert was finishing. He was waiting for the others in the foyer right as the bomb went off.

We had so much faith that he was fine, thinking he'd just got caught up in the chaos and couldn't get home or had lost his phone etc. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and he was one of the 22 who sadly passed away. Pure evil.

Diana. Obviously the passing of any mother with young children is awful, but I still, 20 odd years later, I still feel desperately sad about her death. Tragic.

Sorry about your friend - an absolute tragic event. Targeting children and young people out for fun night out.

I'm not sure it's a major event as such but remember this as the first time I realised the world is scary and first big storyline I recall.

Murder of Jamie Bulger.

Remember where I was for Diana and 9/11 too