I was born in 1983. I actively campaigned for Bush in our Kindergarten Weekly Reader mock polling activity. My platform was that if Dukakis won, he'd come after us with his scary eyebrows. Bush won by a landslide!
This exactly, other than the eyebrow part. I remember my kindergarten teacher asking us if we knew who was running for president, and I was the only kid in my class who knew.
I don't remember the Berlin wall, which is weird. Probably the next big thing I remember after the '88 election is the '92 and '94 Olympics and the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding scandal. I vividly remember the OKC bombing.
Oh, I'm so glad you said this!! Yes, I totally remember this. She was exactly my sister's age, and my PawPaw was just sick with worry over Baby Jessica. I'm pretty sure he didn't sleep at all until they rescued her. (We're in Texas, so there was LOTS of news coverage on it.)
Post by dr.girlfriend on Mar 6, 2014 13:13:19 GMT -5
I don't know if you'd consider it a historical event, but I remember when Elvis died. My mom found out in the middle of a dinner party and was sobbing hysterically, it was like a death in the family. I had just turned five.
It must have been the 1988 summer olympics (I was almost 6 at the time) and all the hoopla surrounding Greg Louganis. I apparently would watch him for hours. I do remember having an imaginary friend named Greg. LOL.
"I've always followed my father's advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble." -John Wayne
Was in late elementary school when the Gulf War started, and that's probably my first historic memory in which I was very upset and scared. I thought being at war meant they'd be shooting bombs at us or something.
I think I started knowing things in relation to popular culture maybe a year before that.
I was born in 1982.
ETA: I definitely remember knowing that there was a USSR, and an East and West Germany, etc, when I was a kid, so I can remember the world before the USSR broke apart and the eastern bloc nations started holding free elections. I do not, specifically, remember the Berlin Wall coming down, even though my family always watched the CBS evening news.
Also, my grandparents had an awesome globe that must have been made in 1960, because it had the UAR on it, but it also had Yugoslavia, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, French Indochina, etc and it was really fun when I was a kid to be able to go through and look at the countries that were no longer what they once were.
Blizzard of '78. I was young and got in big trouble sledding out of the second story windows with my then teen-aged uncles. It was great fun; but Mom and Grandma were furious.
The blizzard of '78 is one of my first memories also. I was not quite 5. My mom pulled me on a sled to the grocery store.
I remember when John Lennon was shot- December 8, 1980.
Earlier still, does the release of the original Star Wars count as a historical event? It's the first movie I saw in the theater. My brother, who was about 11 or 12 at the time, made a HUGE deal out of it and I remember him coaching me about appropriate behavior in a movie theater. And I still remember that for no reason at all, I decided in the middle of the movie that I was done and started screaming my head off.
I was 9 when JFK was shot and remember the principal making an announcement about it and my teacher crying.
My mom was also 9 when JFK was shot and said it happened when she was in swimming class and they were all told by their teacher.
My dad has no memory of the Kennedy assassination. But his parents forced him to watch the moon landing.
The moon landing was a huge deal to us (no forcing here ) - we camped for the summer and my dad had set up an antenna and tv - I remember about 50 people from the campgrounds crowding around this small black & white tv watching the moon landing, it was amazing.
I know, right? I keep thinking there is something obvious that I am missing.
Out of curiosity I looked through a Wiki article on the 1990's. There really wasn't much happening from 1990 to 1995. I do remember the Quebec referendum that happened in 1995, but that was a few months after the OKC bombings.
Really? I was in HS for part of that time and then college. I feel like there was a lot: the Gulf War, the fall of the Soviet Union, the genocide in Rwanda, the collapse of apartheid in South Africa internationally and domestically, Hurricane Andrew and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Blizzard of '78. I was young and got in big trouble sledding out of the second story windows with my then teen-aged uncles. It was great fun; but Mom and Grandma were furious.
The blizzard of '78 is one of my first memories also. I was not quite 5. My mom pulled me on a sled to the grocery store.
Out of curiosity I looked through a Wiki article on the 1990's. There really wasn't much happening from 1990 to 1995. I do remember the Quebec referendum that happened in 1995, but that was a few months after the OKC bombings.
Really? I was in HS for part of that time and then college. I feel like there was a lot: the Gulf War, the fall of the Soviet Union, the genocide in Rwanda, the collapse of apartheid in South Africa internationally and domestically, Hurricane Andrew and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Sorry, I worded that wrong. Not that nothing happened, but there was nothing that I was aware of, as a 5-8 year old in Canada. I was looking at the article to trigger reminders (as it did with the Quebec referendum), but the article didn't bring anything from those years to memory.
I was born in 82 and after reading what PP's remember I feel like I must have been really sheltered from news/world events growing up. I don't remember sitting down as a family to watch the news or my parents being glued to the tv for major things or them talking a lot about the news to us kids. I recall knowing about Ryan White, the Gulf War and the Kerrigan/Harding drama but my awareness was from a distance. The first that I suppose I really remember is the Columbine Shooting since I was in high school. And then I'd say that the first event that left a real impression on me (ie I can tell you where I was and what I was doing when it happened) was 9/11.