re: What is the first major news event you recall watching?

The Vietnam War and one of the Apollo missions.

Oklahoma City

Just checked dates. OJ Simpson was about 10 months before OKC

quote:

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Oklahoma City

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Im old


I was working at the state capital in Austin when Oklahoma City occurred and at some point in that day I ran down to the parking garage which is below the capital extension offices to get something out of my truck and there were bomb dogs all around the garage only then did I realize that there could be a bomb underneath me while I was in the office



the real heros

First:

Jack Ruby walking through line of police at Dallas PD and sticking his pistol into Lee Harvey Oswald’s gut and firing, thereby killing John F Kennedy’s assassin. Saw it live on TV.

Second:

Sitting in Econ class a few months prior to the above, when the school wide Public Announcement system came on the classroom loudspeaker and announced that President Kennedy had been shot and was being taken to a Dallas hospital.

My first thought was that Lyndon Johnson would not be capable of running the country, so who could take over for the vice-president to run the country. My immediate second thought was a reaction to the fact that
all of the other people in the class except the professor stood up and cheered, very glad that JFK had been killed. Remember that was in 1963 when the ongoing struggles to integrate the schools and universities were being met with extreme hostility throughout LA, ARK, MISS and the rest of the south. LSU was one the first southern uiversities to accept even a few token Black students.

What counts as major?

In August 1991 I was 4. I was in a daycare in the basement where they had a TV on wheels that was usually turned off. On this day it was turned on and for some reason it was tuned to the news with breaking coverage about the Warsaw radio mast collapse. That's always stuck with me.

Kurt Cobain killed himself in '94. I have a very vague memory of Kurt Loder on MTV News announcing Cobain's death but that might have been archival footage from something else I watched a few years after.

I definitely remember the OKC bombing coverage live.

Princess Diana

Cuban missile crisis

Bicentennial then the Iran hostage situation. Born in 1970

The Berlin Wall falling

Operation Just Cause