Anyone got any good "Where were you when" stories about history? (years, USA)
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I was a sophomore in high school when John Glenn orbited the earth. I remember we were in art class when he re-entered the earth's orbit and then splashed down. It was a Catholic school and we were all on on our knees next to our desks, praying for his safe return.
I was a senior in high school the day Kennedy was shot. We were in the middle of Career Day, and they did not tell us what had happened until all those sessions were over. I remember being in the session about news reporting, and the reporter said sometimes you learn things that you can't immediately talk about. And he seemed shaken, but he didn't tell us. It was a Friday, and that whole weekend we were glued to the TV and cried a lot.
I was a senior in college, having dinner in a Washington, DC, restaurant, the day MLK was shot. I drove home to Delaware that night, right through a lot of areas that ultimately were destroyed by the riots. I was too young to know it might be dangerous, and just lucky that I got through those areas before anything bad started happening.
I have the usual tragedy memories...JFK, RFK, Challenger, John Lennon, even George Wallace getting shot. But, my wife and I had an unusual string of odd things happening while on vacation. It started in 1975 with Jimmy Hoffa disappearing while on vacation. Later it was Anwar Sadat's assassination. Then the Black Monday stock market crash. Later Princess Diana dying in a car crash. Next it was John F. Kennedy Jr. and his plane crash. There were several others...Grenada invasion, a tsunami, riots, plane crashes, etc. It got to where we would joke about the FBI wanting us to let them know if we were going on vacation.
My parent just finished beating me for taking the last place in a school exam. And the successor CJK, of the Republic of China, died. CJK was the successor of CKS. And CKS was who led the Chinese fighting the WWII.
I was in a seminar about terrorism and the subject at hand was a certain Osama Bin Laden on the very day of the attack on the twin towers, up until that point I had never even heard of him!
MLK assassination--I was almost 8, & we were driving from East Memphis to my Daddy's business around the block from the Lorraine Motel. A couple of blocks from home, we heard about it on the car radio. Needless to say, Mama insisted we go back home. Daddy took us home, then went on to his shop. Took him quite a while to get back home that night.
9/11...inside One World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., carrying my just-purchased breakfast out of the cafeteria when the building suddenly slammed sideways. Threw food. Ran. Ran. Ran some more.
JFK - age 5, in the waiting room of the dentist. My mother and the nurse suddenly dashed over to a radio that had been playing. I wasn't sure what was happening, but it seemed bad enough that I hoped it meant I wouldn't have to see the dentist. No such luck.
MLK - my pet hamster had died that afternoon. I was heartbroken. My older brother came home and said Martin Luther King had been shot. She denies it now, but I clearly recall my mother saying, "I didn't really care for him anyway." I didn't know who he was. Sparky was dead, and that was all that mattered. At least I will always know what day my hamster died!
That's so true about your hampster. When you are young, the only thing you can think of is what directly affects you. I remember when John Lennon was killed because it was on the same day as my grandfather's funeral. I remember being a little upset that he was getting so much attention when my own grandfather should be getting some too. But in the end I always remember the date my grandfather died because of John Lennon.
I was standing on the Brandenburg Gate the night they took down the Berlin wall and hauled it away.
Really?? Because the Berlin Wall came down not in one night, but in bits and pieces, many pocketed by ordinary people using hammers or whatever they had to have a piece of history. Eventually the remains were removed, but it took considerably more than one night.
Do you mean you were there when the Wall was first opened so that people from East and West Berlin could pass freely from one side to the other? That happened well before the Wall itself came down.
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