Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Major News Events during Your Life

This week's theme for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver is certainly appropriate given what's going on in the world right now.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

(1) What are the major news events that happened during your life that you remember where you were when you heard about them?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments on Facebook.  As always, please leave a link to your work in Comments.

Okay, here are mine.

• The first major news event that I remember where I was when it happened was the Moon landing on July 20, 1969.  As I wrote last year for the 50th anniversary of that, I remember my mother having us three kids sit and watch the Moon landing on TV, but I don't actually remember seeing the landing itself.

• The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986 happened during the day while I was at work in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California.  I don't recall now how we heard that it had happened, but when we got the news we found a TV set somewhere and set it up so everyone could watch the reports.  I remember that the office supervisor was extremely annoyed that people wanted to learn what had happened, and we had to turn off the TV after a short while.

• I had been living in Berkeley, California for only a few weeks when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck on October 17, 1989.  This became a major news event because it occurred just as a World Series game between the Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants was beginning, and a lot of people call it the World Series earthquake.  The film footage that was seen the most in other parts of the country was the liquefaction in the Marina District in San Francisco, the collapse of the double-decker Cyrpress freeway structure, and the part of the Bay Bridge that fell, although the most damage and devastation were actually in downtown Santa Cruz.  I was in the house in Berkeley when the shaking started, and I could tell it was significant.  In the living room, three of the four tall bookcases collapsed into the center of the room and all the books spilled out.  We lost power and I couldn't make outgoing phone calls.

• On September 11, 2001, I was working at the Seismological Society of America.  Someone called to let us know about the collapse of the Twin Towers, and then we followed the news online.  I don't recall that we were allowed to leave work early.  I remember when I got home and turned on the TV, all the channels but two were showing the same CNN footage over and over.  The Food Network had a static slide expressing sympathy, and Comedy Central was running its regular schedule.  I watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the guests were They Might Be Giants.  Then I gave up on TV for the evening.

50 Years Ago: The Apollo Moon Landing

Buzz Aldrin walks near the lunar module (NASA file photo)

All week long there have been stories in the news about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing.  Well known genealogy blogger Judy Russell went into great detail about her memories of the day.  One of the recurring themes during the week has been, "Everyone remembers exactly where they were when it happened."

Except, apparently, me.

Well, I kind of remember.

What I remember is my mother gathering the three of us children together and having us sit in front of the television set, telling us, "This is important.  This is history.  You need to watch this."

But I don't remember anything else.  Not Armstrong's famous words (with or without the "a").  Not film of him or Aldrin walking on the Mooon's surface.  Not the U.S. flag on the Moon.  Not the shot of the Earth from the Moon.

ZIp.  Zilch.  Zero.  The big bagel.

All I remember is my mother telling me it was important.

You'd think that at 7 years old I would have committed more to memory.  I even remember some things that happened when I was much younger, about 2 1/2 years old.

But nope, not the Moon landing.  In one eye and out the other.

I guess that means that to me my mother was more important than the Moon landing.

Well, maybe that isn't so bad after all.