What were you doing when.....

[cheerypeabrain]

The random memory thread got me thinking...I don't know if this has been done before (if so, apologies)...Over the past 50 years or so there have been several moments where the world stood still...

I have selected only a few that had a very deep impression on me...I think that if we were alive at the time, these events had to have some sort of impact on most individuals. So (if you remember them) what were you doing when these events occurred?...




1963: The assassination of President John Kennedy.

1969: The moon landing.

1984 : Union Carbide India disaster in Bhopal.

1985: Live Aid (I only include this event because it made me feel that we could actually make a difference to the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves)

1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall

1989: Pro-Democracy protest in Tianenmen Square

1990: Release of Nelson Mandella

2001: The destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11th.

2004: Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26th.

I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands of events that have shaken us to the core over the years. Unfortunately an awful lot of them are overwhelming tragedies that are difficult, if not impossible to make any sense of at all. How have these events changed us? how we see the world and our fellow man? I'm struggling to find many events that were uplifting, lots of horrific ones....

My selection is purely random...I can think of dozens more...

[Deleted]

1963: one of the teachers came over and whispered to me what had happened during recess in 4th grade, because she thought I was more mature than the other students. She was horribly mistaken, because my first reaction (unspoken, thank god) was one of joy: "I bet school will be closed tomorrow!" And I was right, so I watched Lee Oswald being assassinated on television by Jack Ruby live the following afternoon. Since this is the one and only time I have ever seen a murder live, it marked me much more than Kennedy's death, in spite of the endless horror loop of the Zapruder film.

1969: I watched it live on TV and was very impressed. I can't believe that it was more than 40 years ago and even more that a $2 pocket calculator is more powerful than the computers they had back then. I also regret that 2001 came and went with no hint of a moon base or orbiting hotels.

1984: Just followed the Bhopal disaster in the news with that horrible attitude of "well, it's in India, what do you expect?"

1985: I took my mother to Ethiopia on holiday in the middle of the drought (which did not hit Addis Ababa). I can't believe that I would do such a thing. I met a poor student dressed in rags who asked if I had any extra clothes I could give him. I told him that I needed my travel clothes (we were continuing to Bombay, Hong Kong and Singapore among other places), but that I would send him so clothes when I got home. And I did -- a big cardboard box of all of my old clothes. It took at least 2 months to reach him by ship, and I had forgotten ever doing it, until I received a letter from him months later -- two pages of heartfelt thanks that made me cry.

1989: An unforgettable night for me but not because of the Berlin Wall. I was mugged the very same night in Paris and stupidly resisted, resulting in being badly beaten and having my face smashed to pieces. I spent 2 weeks in hospital and then another 2 weeks with a cast on my face (nobody would sit near me on the metro). Nevertheless, I knew the Berlin Wall was one of the most important things in my life, so exactly one month later, on December 9th, I drove to Berlin with my best friend to see the wall as people chipped away at it. There is a photo thread about that trip at Anyport.

1989: The Tiananmen Square event took place just a week or two before the bicentennial of the French revolution. There was a big night parade on the Champs Elysées designed by Jean-Paul Goude, with all sorts of amazing and playful floats, but they added something new at the last minute: a thousand Chinese students living in France, who walked beside their bicycles in the dark, carrying unlit Chinese lanterns. It was an incredibly moving sight.

1990: The release of Nelson Mandela was a wonderful but distant event. It just made me remember how we boycotted Outspan oranges when I was in university and how other people thought we were supporting a terrorist.

2001: Since I work for a Saudi company, this was a very strange day, since almost all of the terrorists were Saudis. Of course we didn't know that the first day, but we had two Saudi bosses listening to the radio like the rest of us. One of them said, "it's obvious that the Israelis did it," and the other one blamed the Chinese. Everybody was paralyzed at work, but nobody moved, so I finally announced that I was going home since obviously nobody was working, and that's what I did. Of course, I don't think anybody did much work for at least a week, but I'm sure it was quite the same in other offices. We were on the 27th floor of a rare Paris high rise, so I had to attend a security meeting about "what to do, just in case."

2004: I spent several happy holidays on the coast of Thailand and took my parents there, too, to one of the hotels that was devastated that day. I also knew a woman who died that day in Phuket, so happy to have finally snagged the bungalow that she had been coveting on the beach for the holiday season. So I had intimate knowledge of the Thai areas of destruction, which hurt me personally. I have not been back to the coast since the tsunami. I haven't been avoiding it, but life has prevented me from doing what I want.

Apparently, that can sometimes be a good thing.

[palesa]

1990 - release of Nelson Mandela, I was at my brother's house for his birthday get together. I am ashamed to admit that I thought it was the start of the end of South Africa. I was young and had not really formulate my own political opinion yet. Now he is my hero.

[hwinpp]

1963: Not born
1969: cannot remember but probably didn't see it live, we were in Saudi Arabia and there was no TV
1984: studying for my high school diploma
1985: my then girl friend loved it, I didn't have time to follow it, had just joined the army
1989: had just left the army and started studying...immediately whizzed over to Leipzig with some friends
1989: too busy with the wall coming down and what would happen to the old head honchos
1990: I must have been on holiday, completely missed that when it happened and only picked it up a couple of days later
2001: The first thing I actually remember, switching on the TV I thought at first it was mount Pinatubo exploding near Manila or something
2004: also saw this on TV, didn't go to Thailand that year but called my girlfriend in Bangkok...

[cheerypeabrain]

1963: The assassination of President John Kennedy.
It was November, and I was 7 years old. I was sprawled on the rug in front of the open fire in the sitting room colouring in a picture of ducks with some crayons. The tv was in the dining room and I remember feeling that something was wrong. My parents and older siblings (aged 19 - 9) were all silently watching the tv ('We interrupt your viewing to bring you a Newsflash')...everybody looked shocked. It felt like something changed that day

1969: The moon landing.
At the time my Dad had a small company designing and selling telescopes, and astronomy was a big deal in our house. I was allowed to stay up to watch the landing on tv, we were all excited and talked into the small hours. I was allowed a sip of my Dad's celebratory whisky.

1984 : Union Carbide India disaster in Bhopal.
I remember the images on tv and the pictures in The Guardian newspaper...it was shocking, and seemed to be pushed out of the headlines really quickly, I wondered why we didn't hear more and wanted to know how we were helping...

1985: Live Aid
My OH was working in Saudi at the time. I was a housewife looking after our two sons (aged 6 and 3). We had bought the single (Do They Know It's Christmas) earlier, and I had watched the images on tv about the famine. Leading up to the concert we'd all been galvanised to do more, and we watched the concert itself from the start. At one point my 6 year old demanded that we take every penny in the house to the Post Office to donate to the cause...which we duly did. I rember Freddy Mercury and Queen being stupendous. The boys went to bed at 7pm tired but sure that we'd single handedly saved all the poorly people (if only) It led to a lot of discussions over the following weeks and months about wars, famine, human rights etc (at a VERY simple level). I watched the rest of the concert on my own and cried a lot.

1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall
Another event that we watched on tv with both children, talking about the history around it. It was a very positive time...Power to the People!

1989: Pro-Democracy protest in Tianenmen Square
The gathering protest seemed to be going well...and for a time I thought that it really would make a difference, the image of the young man standing in front of the tanks is one that I'll never forget.


1990: Release of Nelson Mandella
Whilst this was important, it didn't make as big an impression on me as the long queues of people patiently waiting to vote in the subsequent election.

2001: The destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11th.
I had a half day that day, when I got home my OH was sitting in front of the tv...he'd decided to take a half day too. I thought he was watching a disaster movie, but he told me that an aeroplane had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York...it looked like a terrible, tragic accident...and then the 2nd plane crashed into the other Tower.

The phone rang and it was a work colleague...he said that the whole lab were huddled round the PC in the Boss' office..he wanted to make sure I knew what had happened. When the first Tower went down I grabbed the dog's lead and went for a walk over the park. There was nobody about, hardly any cars on the road, and no planes in the sky...it was as if the whole world stopped. It was surreal. Horrible. At some point that day I spoke to all my family members...it was as if we all needed to make sure that our loved ones were all OK.

2004: Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26th.

I was working that day, just me and a colleague. He was desperately trying to get through to relatives in India all morning.

[auntieannie]

1963: The assassination of President John Kennedy.
I wasn't born yet. My mom knows where she was as she'd recently come back from the states to marry my father. They were newly weds and she was already pregnant with my sister.

1969: The moon landing.
Again, I wasn't born yet. I know all my family stayed up late into the night to watch it on TV. even my then toddler brother.

1984 : Union Carbide India disaster in Bhopal.
I don't think I realised fully this catastrophe until I visited India 10 years later. It still had repercussions. Justice is still feebly thinking about doing something about it...

1985: Live Aid (I only include this event because it made me feel that we could actually make a difference to the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves)
I was in front of the TV for the whole day, I knew almost all the artists. I even managed to stop my dad from watching his usual crap for a while before the news. Like CPB, I really believed it would solve the problems. I really thought all these music stars became friends with each other and they were a force for good.

1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall
My sister was still just about home and she forced me to watch the TV for the whole afternoon. I had a vague understanding of the importance of the event, but she was absolutely galvanised.

1989: Pro-Democracy protest in Tianenmen Square
My dad was in China at the time. When we got the news, thankfully, they were in Hong Kong. Upon his return he told us of how two weeks before we got to hear about the events, there were already protesters camping on tienanmen. That they'd been there a while and how he and his travel companions sensed something was wrong/tense.

1990: Release of Nelson Mandela
I remember watching the news that night (as every night spent at my parents) and knowing it was really important but again not really grasping the momentum. I remember thinking they might try and kill him. I had watched "Cry Freedom" at the cinema a couple of summers before and images of the film came back to me.

2001: The destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11th.
I was working for an american company at the time. My boss was in New York... somewhere in manhattan and it was not usual for him to go to those offices. It was the afternoon. the TV link in the videoconference room had been disabled, so we sent the engineers to do their magic on the cabling. We were getting phonecalls from so many people. I remember one colleague, who was in total panic (she was trying to become the side dish to my boss at the time or maybe she was his side dish already... ) her brother worked in finance and he'd been on the phone with someone in the "second tower" when the impact on the first one happened. I assume the guy was killed that day. My boss flew back home as soon as he could and said he'd been in a taxi when he saw the planes crash into the WTC.

2004: Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26th.
I probably was carted between families with my ex and his son. in separated families, 26th December becomes another Christmas. I remember we did 24th at my parents, 25th at his dad, 26th at his mom one year. The impact of that one took months to really reach me. I remember thinking a lot about the places i'd been to in India that were impacted (the coast from Chennai down to Kanniya Kumari and the places I wanted to go like the Andaman islands. Later, there was an anecdote from a friend who works in a CSI type police unit (before CSI made it cool) many months later they were still working to try and identify some bodies. How they had to use ruse to obtain the mother's DNA and if at all possible not the dad, since apparently there is a very high percentage of dads who aren't .. well the physical parent of who they think as their children.

[rikita]

1963: not born yet

1969: not born yet

1984 : i was four years old. i did the things four year olds do - did not know anything of bhopal, i don't think.

1985: was five years old. and i rarely watched tv at the time. don't know if this was something spoken about a lot in the gdr, anyway.

1989: i do not remember the exact night of the fall of the berlin wall. and i don't remember how conscious i was of what was going on before the wall fell, though i did notice my parents watching the news more often than usual and there was talk about all the people leaving through hungary and the czech republic. later heard various stories from my parents about the stasi watching our house and about how they made sure that always only one of them went to any protest things in case things went wrong (both of them being arrested would have meant that the kids get placed in state care). i do of course remember more of the time after it, as there were a lot of changes... though i suppose the things that mattered more to me, was that we suddenly could buy all types of cool ice creams and sweets. oh, and "my little pony" figures - see, that was what mattered to me about the fall of the wall...

1989 (2) - no memory of it whatsoever. well, it was quite a while before the fall of the wall, so i don't suppose it was covered in our news or talked about at school. i suppose my parents knew about it as we received some western tv stations and had a lot of friends and family in west germany. don't remember them talking to me about it though (well, i was 9...)

1990 - don't remember that either. i got several pen pals in south africa a few years later through an ad i put up into a kids magazine there (the address for that had been given in a kids magazine i was reading) - but before that i don't think i knew much about south africa. i would suppose it was covered in the news, but i was usually sent to bed before the news, anyway...

2001 - i had arrived in the states three days prior, to visit my bf (well ex by now). he was at work, i was still sleeping, but the phone rang. i picked up and it was someone for his mom, so i went upstairs to bring her the phone. while she was speaking i waited, i think i wanted to ask her something. she had the tv on in her bed room and i saw some pictures - i think this was just after the first plane hit. after she was done on the phone we watched some more together and i remember us wondering what strange type of accident that is, to run a plane into a tower - then the second one hit, so then it was clear it wasn't an accident. so i went to the living room and went on watching the news there. my ex came home shortly after - he was working for the state government in albany, and they sent everyone home... my mom was quite angry at me a few days later because i hadn't called her to say i was alright. i told her i am three hours away from nyc, but she said that i had planned to do a weekend trip there after all... my dad, on the other hand, said he was never worried because he assumed, that even if i had been in nyc at the time, he knew i'd never be up that early in the morning anyway...

2004 - i had spent christmas day at my dad's, and on the 26th we were having lunch there too. one girl my dad knew through work was there too, she was half polish and half indonesian and as her family wasn't in berlin, my dad had invited her. not really sure where i was going, but i know i checked my mail before going back to my dad's on the morning of the 26th, and i saw the headlines online. at the time i think the estimates were only in the 100s, but each time i checked they went up. my dad's friend hadn't heard about the tsunami yet, so of course when i got to my dad's place and told them, we checked the news again on my dad's computer. her family fortunately was from an area that wasn't that affected...

[lagatta]

1963: The assassination of President John Kennedy. Like Jack and cheery, I was a schoolchild. The news was shocking, I think I heard it at school, remember walking home that it was a beautiful sunny day - In Eastern Canada and Northeastern US, it can be very cold by then, even snow. I knew about presidents being assassinated because of Lincoln (this was during the centenary of the US civil war and I was a nerdy kid and a history buff) but it seemed shocking as a modern event, when there was not a civil war, though there was the civil rights movement and I was deeply impressed by that and remember fearing this would harm that movement and Black people.

1969: Just a few years later, secondary school pupil, rather cynical about this, though not about science. Was watching it with friends and all of us were talking about scientific feats we would prefer the money spent on, such as eradicating polio and other diseases.

1984 : Union Carbide India disaster in Bhopal.

I was working in the communications department of a trade union confederation here, including on matters relating to industrial health and safety, so this horror story touched me more than most Westerners not of South Asian descent. I remember the contradictory corporate spin - on the one hand "this couldn't happen here in the West" and at the same time "our company has the same safety standards wherever it operates".

1985: Live Aid (I only include this event because it made me feel that we could actually make a difference to the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves)

I certainly remember the song and the concert, though I was a bit sceptical about how much such events really help starving people. Still, I contributed. I contributed more to Haiti the winter before last, because Haiti is so close to Montréal - not only geographically but because there is a huge Haitian community and everyone knows at least a few Haitian people.

1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall

Well, there were many precursor events leading up to this, so it was more a culmination than anything else. I love rikita's comments - so you lived on the Eastern side of the Wall? I think we had a celebratory beer or two. We didn't like the gloating by some Western politicians we hated, but were cheering on the people of Berlin against authoritarian rule and the last remnants of Stalinism.

1989: Pro-Democracy protest in Tianenmen Square

I was in Paris then so I remember the bicentennial parade with the stark reminder of defeat of a movement for democracy. Dazibao entered the languages I speak and many others.

1990: Release of Nelson Mandella

Lovely but no specific memories. Not long after he was in Montréal and a friend (who was a Black lady, originally from the US South) played the piano as a choir sang to greet him. Sadly, she died several years ago, and she was no older than I am now, or perhaps a bit younger.

2001: The destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11th.

I was working on my computer at home when the first plane hit in the morning. Like millions of other people I said bummer, what a horrible accident. When the second plane hit, we realised it was something else, most likely a terror attack.

One of my closest NYC friends was a freelancer with Bloomberg News, located in the WTC. He was a UN correspondent. He mostly worked either at home, like me, or from the UN, but went in to the head office at least a couple of times a week, so I was really panicked. We e-mailed each other back and forth and it was the first traumatic story I followed that way (I had e-mail during the fall of the Berlin Wall, but didn't have it at home, just at university, where I was a grad student, and it wasn't as widespread as a decade later).

2004: Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26th.

Obviously, as it was Boxing Day, time off and heard the news. Like many disasters, at first it seemed very minor with a very light death toll, and I'm not familar enough with that part of the world to immediately suspect worse, unlike the Haiti disaster, when I broke out in tears although the first report was of what, 50 dead? I knew that it was right in Port-au-Prince and the state of most construction there - not just the shantytowns but a lot of the more substantial buildings.

[rikita]

lagatta - yes, i grew up in a village near berlin...