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.

Iranian siege
Susan Maxwell going missing and being found murdered.
Falklands War
Prince Andrew coming home from war a hero!
Chernobyl
Challanger explosion
Hearld of Free Enterprise Sinking
Berlin Wall coming down

If you’re a reader, there’s a lovely book called List of Suspicious Things, written from the perspective of a young girl during the time of the Yorkshire Ripper’s crimes.

Suzy Lamplugh.
James Bulger.
Dunblane.

all of the above plus the birth of Louise the first “ test tube” baby

re Dunblane, I was teaching infants at that time and in our county all of the outside door handles were removed from every school almost immediately

Hungerford
Lockerbie
Fred West

They were all too close to home in various ways. Friends of friends lived there, distant relatives investigating etc., they were the first news stories that involved people I sort of knew, rather than just happening to other people.

Dunblane. I was at sixth form and it affected me for many years.

9/11, Dunblane, Sarah and Jessica

Holly

The Bradford Fire and Heysel Stadium disasters have always stuck with me. My dad and brother were both weekly football goers and I worried so much about them. I've always been cautious in large crowds and have avoided going to the front at gigs, big NYE events etc as a result of that.
The Kings Cross fire too, the Herald of Free Enterprise and Piper Alpha are still very clear in my memory too.

The abduction/murder of Suzy Lamplugh and the fact that the killer called himself "Mr Kipper", very creepy.

Martje tamboezer. I don't know think it's spelt like that. She was 15 and lived twenty minutes away from me and she was murdered and I remember it like it was yesterday. Madonna "live to tell" song out at the same time. Hideous. The song still makes me sad now 40 years later.

Aberfan
The 6 day war Israel

The picture of Elvis in his coffin on the front of the Daily Mail.

I can picture it even now. I would have been 5 I think

Reading about John Wayne having his stomach removed as he had cancer. I thought it meant his chest would be attached to his hips/legs in my young mind 😂

Aberfan.

The plane crash somewhere in mountains in Latin America where they weren't discovered for weeks and the survivors had to eat the dead bodies to survive. I think they were mainly Catholic and pardoned. I remember my parents talking about it and how it sounded dreadful but would have been the right decision at the time.

Elvis Presley dying
famine in Ethiopia and Sudan
Zebrugge ferry disaster

Genette Tate going missing in 1978 is the first big news story I remember. It’s felt too close to home.

I was a young teenager when the Yorkshire Ripper came to prominence, and they realised there was a serial killer operating.
I wasnt in Yorkshire but it was still very frightening every time another young woman's face came on the news. I remember very clearly watching telly in 1981 and the programme was interrupted by a newsflash, with pictures of all his victims. I knew as soon as I saw that, that they have got him

The Omagh bomb

Hillsborough.
Rape being made illegal in marriage.

One that happened near my school- Melanie Road, who was killed in 1987. Weirdly the case popped into my mind yesterday so I looked it up, and apparently the killer was caught 32 years later due to his daughter's DNA.

The Hungerford Massacre.

And the Herald of Free Enterprise.

A lot of my memories of the 80s were about the IRA and their bombs and bomb threats. Mum thought London was too dangerous to visit for a long time.

Leslie Whittle. The awful awful waiting while they searched for her.

Same. Had a convo about this with friends recently. It scared us senseless and none of us tried drugs as a result. 30 years on and we still remember her name and her legacy.

Kimberley.

She was a small child who'd been abused by her family horrifically, and died just hours after being rescued by the police, when I was about year 5 or 6.

We were having a spectacularly boring art lesson with everything ready and the teacher was talking, and I started reading the newspapers we covered the tables with. And that was the news story covering my table. 40 years later I think of her any time I hear the name Kimberley.

the moon landing, I was 8, and was watching it on a tiny portal TV on a house boat, and looking up at the moon.