News stories from your youth that have stayed with you

[JabbaDaButt]

Researching Meryl Streep films for a work quiz reminded me of the infamous Dingo took my baby case.
I was nearly 9 years old that summer but I remember it being all over the news and on the newspapers headlines.
So glad the parents were exonerated of their baby’s death eventually.

The miners' strike of 1984 - I had never seen anything like the footage of the picket lines. I didn't grow up anywhere near a mining area , it was a whole other world.

Aberfan

The James Bulger case.

Yorkshire Ripper.
Genette Tate going missing.
Kings Cross Fire

Lockerbie bombing. We were driving home to Scotland from London for Christmas a few days after it happened. I remember the prayers for Lockerbie at the Christmas Eve service.

The miners strikes is another one and also the printers strikes. I remember going up to the Times offices in London for professional exam results. Normally they were printed in the night time edition of the paper and everyone would go and get them. Someone from the Times stood and read out the results. Unimaginable now with emails and social media.

Yorkshire Ripper. I was 6 when Wilma McCann was murdered, then with the following murders in Leeds, it was like the whole city had an awful sinister blanket over it. My mum and my friends mum used to each stand at the end of the drive to make sure we both got home safe (from whichever one of our houses we'd been at). We didn't know who he'd target next after Jayne McDonald (16). Even as a kid (who was quite mature for my age), it was terrifying.

Leah Betts - I remember seeing her photo on the newspapers and it has always stuck with me. I never took drugs because I was terrified of leaving my family behind. I hope her family know the massive positive impact they had by sharing her photo.

The Challenger shuttle explosion which I saw live on tv as a small child was very upsetting.

James Bulger.
I was in my early teens and had younger siblings. What stayed with me was news footage of people saying they had seen them, James was crying, and they assumed they were brothers and they were devastated.
I was often in that position, a 3 year old would want to walk to the corner shop with me and would have a melt down because I wouldn’t buy them sweeties. Then I’m coaxing/ carrying a small child home. So heartbreaking.

Johanna’s young - it was local to me, really sad

Alfredo Rumpi, this Italian boy who fell down a well and was stuck down on a ledge. There were rescue efforts but they couldn’t reach him. It was featured on Newsround for several days, and he ended up dying.

James Burger as above.

Stuart Gough - was local to me a boy who got kidnapped on a paper round.

Ethiopia.

Princess Diana's death.

President Kennedy's assassination.
First moon landing and moon walk.
Cuban missile crisis.
Harold Holt (Aussie PM) going missing when swimming and never being found.

Concorde crash.

Waco
Windsor Castle fire
James Bulger - I was exactly the same age as the killers and I just couldn’t understand how they could do something so terrible.

I also vividly remember those missing posters on lampposts (yes, they really did exist in the 80s) of Susan Maxwell and Caroline Hogg, specifically as two of my school friends had those names.

1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy. Flashed up across the screen on our black and white TV. I remember shouting upstairs to my mum that the president had been shot. I was 9.

James Bulger
Fred and Rose West
Louise Woodward's trial
Oklahoma bombings
Dunblane

Holly and Jessica. I was the same age as them and lived about 20 miles away from Soham, so I was absolutely terrified. It was the first time I'd really understood that there were some evil people in this world.

Exactly this one - never done drugs to this day, likely because of this

Suzy Lamplugh (my mum worked for an estate agent and Suzy's disappearance changed the way they worked).

Kings Cross Fire

Challenger Disaster

Lockerbie

I don't know why, maybe it was because there were only 4 TV channels, so no escaping the news when as a child, but this things felt deeply affecting. Or maybe that's just how we perceive things as children. (Or maybe I've just become jaded and less affected).

John Lennon being killed
Lockerbie
Leah Betts
Dunblane

Dunblane - I was working in England and a colleague said - ‘isn’t your mum a primary teacher in Scotland?’. Not near my mum as it happens, but still a primary school in small Scottish town similar to the school I went to and the one my mum taught at. The thought of a shooting in this safe community was so unimaginable- it was so shocking - the whole of Scotland was in total disbelief. Thank goodness for the snowdrop campaign so it can’t happen again.

the death of Elvis Presley
the presenter that went missing Gill someone O think
The Dunblane shootings truly horrific
the death of Princess Diana

James Bulger seems to have stayed with many of us. The Sleep of Reason is a brilliant book about this.

I also remember Dunblane and Fred West, although that was more because my dad commented disparagingly on them having a daughter called May when their surname was West; not really the shocking detail in that case