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.

Omg yeah your right I'm getting it mixed up with that other case with that little girl sarah

Leah Betts - same age as me at the time. Was a real wake up call to the dangers of drugs.
Zebrugge ferry distaster, I had been on a ferry the weekend before as a child it terrified me that the doors were open on ferries.

Edited as got my scum of the earth killers mixed up

Michael Jackson dying

9/11 and 7/7

I’d have only been 2 when the Bradford City fire happened so can’t have been aware of it at the time but I remember it being spoken about in hushed tones for years afterwards, probably around anniversaries (we weren’t far from Bradford). I watched a documentary about it just recently.

Then Hillsborough, James Bulger, Dunblane. I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall but probably understandably at 7 didn’t really understand it.

I distinctly remember Leanne Tiernan being murdered in Leeds, we were the same age and again it was local.

The kidnapping and murder of Lesley Whittle

I wad 9 and it was on the news for months.

A boy fell down a well and they drilled to get to him and missed him

Cromwell street

Leah Betts

James Bulger

Ian Huntley murdered Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman. Some other fucking abhorrent monster killed a little girl called Sarah Payne two years earlier.

I was in a pub when Michael Jackson died and they put TMZ on all the big screens. Everyone just staring at the news agog.

Ah it was a girl who fell down a well. It stuck in my mind.

The AIDS iceberg campaign
Chernobyl
Miners strike
Famine in Ethiopia

My brother was born on the day of the Kings Cross fire so that one passed me buy somewhat.

I was older but I remember the Brighton bombing and the day Margaret Thatcher resigned.

Thank you x

I think i was at home, watching family guy on bbc three and it came up in the news bulletin!

First news story I remember is Lady Di’s death
Second was the hand foot and mouth outbreak but we lived rurally and had to disinfect our wheels etc
Third was 9/11. I remember seeing Huw Edwards reporting from the BBC, but at 9 didn’t really understand the gravity of it of course. I thought it was some kind of accident.

The King dying , Queens Coronation, Aberfan disaster , Kennedy assassination,

Roy Whiting

Aberfan
Genette Tate
Both Kennedy assassinations
Moon landings
England winning the world cup

The death of Winston Churchill
Aberfan
The investiture of Prince Charles
The moon landings
Princess Anne's first marriage
The queen's silver jubilee

I grew up in a tiny African country with hardly any access to outside news but my father always had foreign magazines and secretly tuned in to foreign networks which was "illegal".

*The Bopal disaster. I was 7 and to this day, I remember the smell of that magazine (likely a combo of the actual smell and and imaginary smelly from the news)
*The earthquake in LA 1984. I remember a woman's leg trapped in debris
*Famine in Ethiopia in 1984
*The start of the hiv pandemic. I remember exactly where I was sitting and what I was eating. A village in a west African country had been sealed off. Also 1984

Wow, looking back, what a year that was

Charles and Diana’s wedding, and lots of the 1980s ones already mentioned, especially the Hungerford Massacre as it was fairly near where I lived and (thankfully) highly unusual. The 1980s felt like one disaster after another with IRA bombing campaigns in between.

I vividly remember Ceausescu’s execution - I remember it happening on Boxing Day when it actually happened on Christmas Day. I’m also not sure they showed the execution itself on tv but they did in my memory!

Dunblane - they kept saying ‘a school in central Scotland’ - my sister was at school
in central Scotland at the time - and it was so shocking and tragic.

Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary denying James Bulger’s murderers anonymity after conviction - I remember seeing it on the front of the paper.

The murder of Jill Dando and Princess Diana’s death. Holly and Jessica were not far from me so that really affected me.
I remember looking at the front page of a newspaper and seeing Sadam Hussein and being told ‘he was a really bad man’. It was before the Iraq war and I’m not sure how hat the headline was but it really frightened me.

Millie Dowler

Leah Betts

Josie Russell

Dunblane

9/11

My heart still races thinking about those awful stories.

That was the overwhelming fear of my youth. I don't think anyone who didn't live through it can understand how a whole huge area of the north lived in fear for years. It was terrifying to be out after dark. There were so many rumours- it's a woman, he dresses as a policeman, etc., and rumours about where he'd strike next and what his M.O. was. I was at Liverpool University from 1978 and we all travelled everywhere in pairs. I remember the relief when he was caught.

Challenger shuttle disaster when I was 8. I had nightmares about it for months.

Kegworth planet crash on the M1 when I was 11. Lived very locally, so it was all anyone talked about and it was awful.

Just to say 100% the same thing. It terrifies me to this day

My brother was the same age as James. It's the one thing I remember from the news. Broke my heart.

The Black Panther

James Bulger
Princess Diana's death