What is the biggest media event you can remember from your childhood??

[K1092902]

Mine is the death of the Princess of Wales. I was 12 at the time- Mum came and woke me and my sister up (much to her annoyance as she had been on a night out the night before) and told us it was important we watched as it was a huge deal. I can still remember sitting there that morning watching the news coverage. The next day mum took us to London for the day and we went to put flowers outside Kensington palace.

I didn't get it at the time but I was the same age as harry and honestly can't imagine having to live through my teens, getting married and having DD without my mum by my side never mind dealing with the pressure of royal life..

Dunblane
Columbia disaster
Diana's death
9/11
Jamie Bulger
Holly & Jessica
The concorde crash
Maggie leaving downing street
Tony Blair winning
Take That breaking up - it made the BBC news and was in all the papers

Gruuumbleweec my mum read Truby King when she had my sister (poor sister) but had slackened off a bit by the time she had me. 😀

Probably Princess Diana's death and 9/11 are the biggest two, but I remember very clearly watching British troops cross into Kosovo on the evening news when I was 10 and being very scared about war for the first time.

Lockerbie. I was really little, but I remember it vividly.

I've just caught up on this thread which is making me feel old. It's interesting how many of us (depending on our age) have memories in common and I can't help wondering whether this will be the same for future generations - or whether 'media events' will be much more diffuse with so many competing social media and so on. Most of us will have grown up in eras when (as children) our experience of news largely came from the TV and radio. As we advance into an age of streaming, multiple channels and so on, will children have similar experiences of major media events which will define them by generation?

9/11

You have made some interesting points mornington. I think we are in a similar age bracket. I was a bit surprised to see some events from the 21st century make it on to this thread, but MN has no age barriers, and nor should it.

That's a really good point mornington
There also been a lot of poster reflecting on men they knew who later went on to be child sex offenders saying what a good, charismatic, kind guy they were. Makes me think it's probably not so strange in a way.
Look at Jimmy Saville, all the charity work he did - it's a way of pulling the wool over peoples eyes and often they have really good interpersonal skills, that's why they can manipulate children so well.

I guess what I'm saying is any PP who's said they feel guilty for not 'seeing it's shouldn't feel guilty!

Do we not experience it partly through the reactions of our parents though? Queen Mary's funeral and the Coronation were hugely important to my royalist mother, my father grumbled lots about Suez and in terms of major events in our house I could include the death of Grace Archer. 😀

On that note about things sticking in your head- DD is 7 and caught some of the news reports about the Grenfell Tower fire last month, she asked lots of questions, watched some of the news and wanted to help so I showed her the Justgiving sites and we gave money.

I wonder if she will remember that when she is older given that I was only vaguely aware of media stories/tragedies at around age 9/10, Hillsborough being the main one.

Zeebrugge ferry disaster for me. I was 6 at the time and was very cross that Wacaday wasn't on the TV. I remember DM trying to explain to me that people had been hurt but nothing was going to make up for the loss of my Timmy mallet hit!!

Outbreak of gulf war. I was 9 and on holiday with gP's who were not great at reassuring me! I was terrified!

morningtoncrescent62

I feel like you. Millions have the collective memories of seeing Michael Buerk's reports from Ethiopia, which led to Band Aid and Live Aid. Will there be anything like that in the future?

Am I the only person who remembers Paul Daniels getting stuck in an iron maiden on his magic show when it 'went wrong'? And then being disappointed when he turned up alive the next week.

I remember Thatcher being elected. It was inspiring at the time, a woman being PM. Little did I know...

Princess Margaret's wedding ( and possibly Princess Alexandra's)
Kennedy's assassination (JFK)
Churchill's funeral
Aberfan
Decimalisation
The 1966 NUS strike - my late df had been in the MN for 28 years and worked on the docks in the general strike (the owner of the shipping line told all the accounts staff to unload a boat leaving on the high tide).
IRA bombings
M62 bomb trial at Manchester - I was a student at UMIST and each building only had 1 entrance open.
The Woolworth's fire in Manchester, so many died as they didn't have a sprinkler system.
The moon landing - and our maths textbooks said in the chapter on probability that the USSR would get there first.

Princes Diana's a death and 9/11.

I'm really old, I remember the Coronation.

Hillsborough disaster.

Dunblane

There are two. The Cuba missile crisis which absolutely terrified me and the assassination of JFK.

All early 1980s stuff.

John Lennon's murder - my older cousin was a big fan and was miserable.

Charles and Di's engagement was a huge story. My friends and I loved her hair. That blue suit was awful in retrospect.

McEnroe tantrumming at Wimbledon and people harrumphing about his unsportingness. I remember my dad and uncle discussing it at length.

Who Shot JR - it was all over the papers, and I remember footage of the "reveal" episode arriving at Heathrow airport on the BBC news, and hearing how the Queen Mother had asked Larry Hagman to spill the beans when he'd been introduced to her at an event a couple of weeks earlier. He'd declined!

Nelson Mandela being released from prison. No one knew what he looked like because he'd been in prison for so long and the only photos of him still in existence at that point were old black and white ones of him as a young man.

The first Gulf War.

Dunblane shooting

Death of Diana. Was 15 then and it was a very odd time. People behaved in a creepy and strange way.

President Kennedy assassination
Christine Keeler (I had no idea what was going on but it was very unusual to see a woman on the news)
Beatles playing Shea Stadium
Moors murders
England winning the World Cup
Moon landings