Do you remember where you were when John F Kennedy was assassinated?

I'd just turned two...I don't think I was very observant about that kind of thing growing up. I've been trying to think of major news events where I do remember exactly where I was when they happened, or when I first heard, and the first one I'm 100% sure about is Lennon's assassination when I was 19. I always thought I retained a vague memory of my mom telling me about RFK's death when I came home for lunch one day, but the timing doesn't really make sense (he would have been already dead when I left for school in the morning).

I was upstate in a bar, the team from the university was playing football on TV.... no hold on, that wasn't me that was Lou Reed.

I get my memories mixed up with Lou Reed's all the time. I even once needlessly entered a methadone program.

Somewhere in my dad's ballsack, presumably.

i wasn't born, which mean

s this poll is going to have a very low strike rate of rememberers since i am older than most.

zinging in limbo

I was two weeks old, so no.

i do remember the moon landing and also being petrified of hippies because i thought they would gruesomely murder me which must have been manson family related.

no, but I was in Dallas last night and a friend was driving me back to where I'm staying and at one point he indicates a movie theater that's showing a cool horror bill and says "that's the theater they dragged Oswald out of"

I believe I shall go home and make some etouffée.

in the park, I've been told

I was fascinated to learn yesterday (coincidentally enough) that all of the CBS news footage from that day is on the web.

I was fascinated to learn yesterday (coincidentally enough) that all of the CBS news footage from that day is on the web was filmed on a sound stage in New Mexico.

Seems like the fella doing all the asking around here might need to pony up some answers his own damn self.

Where were you, Mark G.? Any reason why you haven't provided your complete name here?

Anyway, I was at the office when I heard about it on the radio. First thing I did that chilly February morning was post to ILX and see what anyone else had heard.

President Kennedy Injured in Dallas?

I might have been in South Shields.

too young to be aware of JFK, RFK, MLK but old enough to remember the moon landing

I remember the George Wallace assassination attempt because my parents had to explain to me why his being shot was not a good thing

First assassination I remember is John Lennon. Big spurt of shootings around that time: Reagan, Sadat -- I remember a strange phone call with my grandmother where we imagined the Ayatollah having a good laugh at the Pope getting shot.

Queen Elizabeth also shot at in '81

Oooh, I forgot about that.

I had this babysitter with a sister who traveled to the UK. She brought back all these photos of the Queen, taken from like six feet away. They were amazed she got so close.

Watched the end of the Falklands War on Nightline at that babysitter's house.

I was at school, since it was a school day. I had just turned 9. During recess me and some other kids sat around trying to figure out what the hell it meant, but we could see the teachers sure were shook.

Moreover, I was watching the television on Saturday morning when Jack Ruby shot Lee Oswald. Not a replay. Live.

A friend of mine, maybe six or seven years older than me, recalls how he and his grade-school classmates were whooping it up because they got sent home early that day.

pretty sure i got sent home from school early when reagan was shot

Aimless, that was a Sunday morning but you're OK for your age

What can I say? It was a long time ago.

My dad does like to tell the story of where he was at the time -- he was an Army private, having joined in July of 1962 at age 17 after dropping out of high school, and was stationed at the Nike missile station in Painesville, OH, where he would meet my mother the next year. That particular day, he was in Columbus, OH along with others from his unit who were prepping for their GEDs.

When the news came across, they were quickly all mustered back to the base, about a 3 hour drive. Upon their arrival, he said he saw the most terrifying thing he had ever seen up to that day: For the first and only time during his assignment, the underground doors were opened and the missile elevator had been moved up into place.

My mother (older than you, Aimless) says she was reading a book in her bedroom that Sunday when she heard gunshots from the living room TV. It was too early for Gunsmoke, so she knew something was up.

Her grandfather looked up from his chair and said, "They just shot Oswald on television."

Just like how 20 years later, I saw John David Stutts shot on live television.

excellent use of "they" xp

I was reading a newspaper while waiting in line to see the Blair Witch Project (on opening day) when I learned that JFK Jr's plane had crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.

I often muse on the fact that (political) assassinations are so rare these days, I suppose security services are much professional. Other than Berlusconi being brained with a miniature model of Milan Cathedral I can't think of any recent near misses even.

Apart from Bin Laden, ...

Benazir Bhutto

Gabby Giffords

adebayor

litvinenko

An arms-length list of politicians in Mexico.

Swedish politician Anna Lindh was murdered in 2003, and now I'm shocked at how long ago that was, and feeling very old. But I don't really remember where I was that day.

I vaguely remember when Olof Palme was shot in 1986 (I was 7), that was big news here over the gulf too. The last assassination of a Finnish politician was in 1920s or 1930s, I think.

In 1922, it seems.

I was born exactly nine months after Palme was murdered. My parents say it's a coincidence, but I'm not sure I believe them.

You think Pettersson was involved in that too?

(Sorry, bad joke.)

I remember where I was when the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

where were you?

In mrs fergusons class in 5th grade!

some people think that kurt cobain was actually assassinated by his drummer and the KKK. that's come to be known as the nazi grohl theory

Attempted murder of Stephen Timms MP in 2010 another recent near miss. Was Ian Gow that last UK pol to actually be killed?

I feel like I should remember where I was when I heard about Elvis's death--I was 15--but no recollection whatsoever. Cobain's death, yes, George Harrison's yes. I remember the O.J. verdict very clearly, but actually watching the event's different.

i remember when elvis played houdini and in the movie he died and i went into school and wrote it in up on the board as the news for that day 'houdini died yesterday after a man punched him in the tummy' and the teacher said that was an invalid entry and that not everything on the television was news and my brother covered his head with his arms on the desk as i was sent in disgrace back towards the mocking laughter of my classmates ps i have literally just this second discovered that it was tony curtis anyway

I think the first celebrity death I remember is Rabin. I def remember watching news and feeling upset that he had just been dancing the peace dance. I don't remember Cobain the year before. My parents and I figured out I remember the day the berlin wall came down. It was a month before my third birthday, final day in daycare, I made a snowman. It was a good day!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

first celebrity death i can remember is tough. maybe princess diana? i can't remember the specifics of anything earlier. i remember my mom was upset about diana dying but also told me that she felt it was silly to be upset about the death of a stranger. my mom was nearly the exact same age as diana and i think this was part of it.

Yes, although I was only 3. My grandfather had been killed in the massive explosion at the Indianapolis Coliseum that Halloween, and my grandmother was still in the hospital recovering. We were visiting her.

My God, I have never heard about that until now.

On October 31, 1963, during a Holiday on Ice show, a propane leak at a concession stand caused an explosion which killed 74 people.[4] A memorial plaque was dedicated 40 years later in the building, but it has since been removed. Another plaque honoring the explosion victims currently hangs inside the building's lobby.

how can 74 people die in an explosion in an american city 50 years ago and only get two lines

There's more if you click around, but I wanted to be sensitive to Jaq.

I mean, good lord, way to ruin our president-shot-in-the-neck thread.

I kid.

I'm an Arkansan by birth solely because of Greers Ferry Lake, a manmade reservoir created by the U.S. Corps of Engineers for power generation and tourism. Pretty much the central parts of two counties were flooded for the lake, resulting in whole towns that had to be moved up the hillside, property and infrastructure lost forever and graveyards that had to have their tenants relocated (my grandmother is buried in one of these "new" cemeteries.) Dad got a job selling real estate.

Anyway, the cherry on top of it all was JFK coming to Heber Springs and dedicating the dam. It was October 3, 1963. Six weeks later, he was dead.

http://www.dailyjfk.com/wp-content/uploads/1963/10/JFKarkansas.jpg

That's Wilbur Mills, J. WIlliam Fulbright, John McClellan and Orval Faubus playing Reservoir Dogs with the president. Strangely enough, even with Clinton come and gone, JFK remains the only sitting president to have visited that county.

ich bin ein heberspringser

I was 6, and in the gym at my school where a water safety film was being shown. The stopped the film, told us, and we went back to class. I don't remember any discussion of it in class.

Don't remember RFK or MLK. I was at work when Michael Jackson died and a co-worker told me.

I was in Milan, Italy for work when Diana died, and when I turned on Sky TV at the hotel that morning it was non-stop coverage. Went to see the Last Supper fresco that day.

My paternal grandparents lived in Baltimore at the end of WWII because my grandfather's wartime job had him in charge of a Goodyear factory there; they'd travel up to DC some weekends with their party heads on. On one of these weekends just after the war ended, they found themselves drinking with young JFK and apparently my grandmother was the last woman standing. During JFK's candidacy, being lifelong Dems, they were at a DFL fundraiser either in St Paul or out on Lake Minnetonka, and in some kind of receiving line JFK spotted my gran and was like 'hahahahaha, Lucy could drink ALL OF YOU under the table'.

My parents were 18 and dating when the assassination happened; my mom was working in the cosmetics department at Powers, one of the nicer Minneapolis department stores. Not sure if they sent everyone home that day or not. My dad told me he was watching TV and saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald, but half of America was watching that live, right?

The first assassination-y thing I remember being conscious of was that of Aldo Moro, watched on the news at the above grandparents' apartment.

I turned 3 in '68 so I had no idea who RFK was, but I have a vivid memory of the front page of the LA Times and those photographs.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kalw/files/201406/2556778352_fd89103ee3.jpg

Because I grew up in O.C. there's a very good chance that "Nixon" and "Manson" were among the first 20 words I learned how to speak.

Still a little freaked out at that LA Times front page.

It was lots freakier living in those times.

i have literally just this second discovered that it was tony curtis anyway

i was gonna say

I was JFK.

lmao

I remember when Reagan was shot. My mom picked me up after school, I got in the car, and she said, "Reagan was shot!" I blurted out, "GOOD!" I was nine.

I remember that day's news reports when Bobby Kennedy was shot (in particular a woman's loud sobbing off-camera), but too young (although alive at the time) to remember JFK. My mother remembers hearing the JFK news very clearly; I was in the house with her.

I don't remember the assassination itself, but remember the days and days of mourning afterwards, or so it seemed. I think I was in kindergarten.
I remember my mother had some sort of Time-Life coffee table book that was very sad to look at.

I wasn't born yet but my birthday is November 22.

Before sitting down to the dinner table on my 16th birthday, I heard over NPR that Jeffrey Dahmer had been beaten to death in a prison bathroom.

I was working in a liquor store when that happened. One of the register ladies saying she only wished he had died in the same fashion as his victims. And me going, "Who the hell are you going to find to do that?"

I'm too young, but of course I grew up with the stories. One of my earliest memories was seeing the Warren Commission report sitting on the kitchen table.

I don't remember the moon landing either - I'm a Manson baby.

Oh and my dad met JFK too - when waiting tables at posh restaurant. He was very impressed with him! Unlike Harry Truman...

My earliest world news memory is off my mother reading the paper at the breakfast table and saying "we're going to war." This was over some early 80s incident in either Libya or Lebanon. I can't remember which. I replied "yay!" Or something. I was excited by the idea. Mom solemnly explained to me why war was nothing to be happy about.

We had a very similar conversation a year or so down the line when Reagan beat Mondale.

my grandma's oldest friend is from missouri so she's got a lot of harry truman stories -- they used to just see him walking around town, going to the barber, no bodyguards or anything.

my earliest "i remember that" memory is the challenger exploding, prob mainly because it was the moment my 5-year-old self decided he didn't want to be an astronaut anymore.

I didn't see it on TV. I was in second grade and for some reason only third graders and above got to watch it. Everybody was talking about it as we got out of school though. I don't know if I already knew about Christa McAuliffe carrying her son's toy frog with her or if I found out about it later, but that really drove the tragedy home for me and made me understand how this news event connected to actual people.

I remember the Reagan assassination attempt mostly because the news coverage prevented me from seeing Captain Kangaroo the next day.

My earliest memory of a news event was when my cousin and I built a snow cave and tried to collapse it in each while playing a game we called "the shah escapes from Iran".

Collapse it on each other, that is

That reminds me of a former coworker who said she would play good guys/bad guys with her brother when they were kids and the bad guy was always Idi Amin.

i ticked no in case Plato was right

Dad had an Ayatollah dartboard.

i still have my osama bin laden toilet paper

http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mMYuG3Gma6bXtWCChGZXYvQ.jpg

A co-worker had a "Buy Iraqi War Bonds" bumper sticker then (Iraq was fighting with Iran), and I remember wanted to zing him on it when the Kuwait thing happened, but I think it was already long gone.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Sixteen old people. One present and accounted for.

Two.

3

my earliest "i remember that" memory is the challenger exploding,

I was in school, a friend was not (this was exam time, I had some, he didn't), he saw the live TV coverage. Apparently, the coverage showed the big explosion, and a bystander close to the TV camera/mic said "ooh.... Is it *supposed* to do that?"

Schoolfriend comes over one spring afternoon.
Him: Kurt Cobain died yesterday
Me: Who?
Him: (puts on Territorial Pissings)
Me: Oh right!

My 7th grade science teacher was a teacher in space finalist and we were in his class, watching the launch when the Challenger exploded so I definitely, definitely remember that.

O_O

The earliest big, big news story I remember for sure is the Jonestown mass suicide. Someone in my father's unit had a relative there and had to be given emergency leave to go home from Germany.