553views
21submissions
Finished
Hey Pandas, What Event In History Have You Witnessed Live, And Did It Affect You?
Watching history unfold around you can make a significant impact on your life. We often hear stories of “Where were you when…?” and how the event was etched into people's minds.
I have a number that dots my memory but the three that stand out the clearest for me was
Being woken up in the wee small hours of the morning as a seven-year-old to watch Australia II win the America’s Cup.
Watching in disbelief as the space shuttle Challenger blew up and hearing the “What does NASA stand for?” joke the very next day at school and more recently sitting up until about 5 am my local time watching the events of 9/11 unfold.
What do you remember?
This post may include affiliate links.
mmm, not sure.
History is being written every day.
As we speak in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Congo, Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran and many more countries in that region.
Even in Australia and US (Buffalo), today, history unfolds.
The question is more like, what are we doing about it?
Look away or change our ways? Give money and help or continue like we don't care ...?
The fall of the Twin Towers live (on Tv). At the time I was working as a credit counselor and knew a few people that worked in them. To be honest, I don't know if they made it or not...
As a result, I joined the Army to fight in the Global War on Terror. A decision that I will never regret...
I remember that day well. I was serving some time in the Swiss Army. We got informed of the incident in NYC. None of us believed it at first. The military always comes up with the craziest scenarios for a drill. We thought it's just that. How wrong we were. We spent the day watching the news. Watching the towers collapse. Last seen them in person back in 1996. It did hurt watching those images. Broke my heart. We didn't know what was going to happen next. We knew we were not in immediate danger. But what would happen next? When? Where? How would it change the world? How would the nations react? Even though far away in Switzerland it felt scary. The world had entered the time of terrorism.
When the news of Covid first hit. I remember asking a friend what the "Wuhan Corona Virus" was, and later in March turning to a friend in school and telling them it could be our last day. It was.
I went to the World Fair thing in New Orleans. I remember seeing Anne Murray in concert, and being afraid to ride the gondola over the water. Absolutely refused, and later learned people got stuck up there. First time I ever recall feeling justified in my anxiety. I was five.
I remember seeing the Challenger live on tv at school. Everybody cried.
I remember watching news reports of the Berlin wall coming down, Baby Jessica stuck in a well, and Tiananmen Square.
I remember thinking that the "Thriller" music video was the scariest movie I'd ever seen, and that just about every famous person I'd ever seen was in "We Are the World."
I felt horrible for everyone I saw mourning the death of Princess Diana. I didn't know much about her, but she was so loved.
I laughed my a*s off watching Clinton insist that he neither inhaled, nor had sex with that woman. Not a political person, but that guy came across as a complete doofus.
The Columbine massacre freaked me out really bad. New parent, and kids killing kids all over the news. Didn't leave the house for a bit.
We evacuated for Katrina and spent two weeks in the Carolinas until local government gave the green light to return home. Glued to the news stations the first few days, until I realized it was doing none of us any good. Then trying to get in touch with everyone who stayed behind once cell towers came back online. That was awful.
The Deepwater Horizon spill made me sick to my stomach. Every report of an offshore mishap does. All those safety regulations are rarely enforced.
And I remember all the horrible, heartless jokes after Columbia disintegrated on re-entry.
But the news that hit me hardest was 9/11. I'd walked toward the front door to drive my sister-in-law to school. She and my husband were staring at the TV. I saw the smoke and asked what movie they were watching. They had the emptiest look on their faces as they told me it was the news. I saw the second one hit. I thought it was debris falling. It was not just debris.
Sorry, y'all. That didn't seem so long when I made the list. We need a preview button.
Funny, the older you get, particularly in the TV age, the more history you witness... And you sort of don't grasp the significance, till sometimes years later...
I remember laughing, as a child, watching on TV, the north Vietnamese tank getting stuck in the palace gates at the end of the Vietnam war..... Didn't get my parents relief that that damn war was over..... Being from a pretty politically aware family, I've seen too many wars, too much injustice.... Good things,too.... Band aid, Australia 2( yes, I'm aussie.), Haley's comet ( while drunk in the desert), fall of the berlin wall, the apology to the stolen generation...... Shame the bad events outweigh the good!!!
(Though still remember watching sept 11 like it was yesterday, you don't forget s**t like that!! And the shitshow that followed....)
Hale-Bopp lit up the night sky in Missouri, it actually caused me to put down my fishin' pole and watch. Seemed to hang in the sky. How was Halley's at your point?
Not live in person, but live on TV. The fall of the Berlin Wall when I was 11 years old. Knew some historical background. But only when I got a little older I learned more and more about how it all started and what a really big deal it was when it came down.
Even though it was still probably David Hasselhoff who tore the wall down by himself (I really still like the guy - nowadays he is a lot more self-aware and doesn't mind to look at his past with a laugh).
Covid- I had it 2 times
I feel this one. Currently on round two. Hope it didn't complicate your life and health.
I had gone to a water park in Arkansas with a former coworker in 2003. Had a terrible time. I called my dad to cry to him when he asked where I was. He then told me to “get my a*s back to Tennessee because a hurricane was coming up from the gulf coast!” I literally drove home with Hurricane Katrina following us all the way home. (As an aside, I have not talked to the coworker since then)
That must have been a terrifying drive! Outrunning a monster storm... yikes.
Covid-19 was pretty damn terrifying. I didn’t even know what it was until a couple days before everything shut down!
Forgot to mention in the post; I actually caught it. But that was when I already had the two jabs so I ended up alright, thankfully.
I remember one day everyone in the halls at school was buzzing. So during 3rd period I asked my best friend if something had happened. He says, “Oh, you didn’t hear? Queen Elizabeth just died”. Really shook me.
It's hard to imagine a world without her. She was a stable fixture through 7 decades of ignorant presidents, weird prime ministers, and sketchy politicians.
I remember when Queen Elizabeth died, I was watching the news in the morning and they said she was really sick, and I thought that she was definitely going to die, and I told my mom to text me updates on her, and in one of my classes, I was browsing the web for news, and I stumbled upon an article that said she died, and at first I didn’t believe it, but then more news sites posted about it and I knew it was true, she was dead. I never met her but I still cried when I heard about her death, she was so cool and had a fantastic sense of humour.
She was quite a personality, wasn't she? I can understand your sorrow ...I cried when JFK and RFK were assassinated. Hope you're doing better, fellow Panda!
I've survived COVID for now. This pandemic is going to be talked about for hundreds of years. (If we don't kill the planet and ourselves with it, of course.)
Current in isolation for Covid, round 2. First one tried to end me, but this time a new anti-viral has made the healing process much easier. The anti-viral is actually free... and for some reason that worries me. The whole Covid thing has gifted a touch of paranoia, I guess.
George Floyd's murder. My family and I live only about a half-hour from where he died. That entire year seeing the video of his death over and over and over again, along with the worldwide protests, were so draining and traumatic that I still haven't processed all of it.
I thought coverage of the Vietnam War was horrifying, but the media tendency to put such horrors on infinite loop is fueling PTSD over the entire nation. I'm so sorry it's affected your generation so deeply. Perhaps if you plant some trees in his honor it would release a bit of the media-induced trauma?
Brexit - I remember talking to my friend about how it sounded like breakfast cereal (it does, and we were little)
My family went to Seaworld, and we were waiting for the orca show to start. Well, after about 15mins some workers came out and told us that the show was cancelled because "The whales don’t feel like performing today."
Naturally, as a kid, I was disappointed not to see the show, and a bunch of people were really angry that they had wasted their time. It was less than a week later that a trainer was killed by one of the orcas.
Probably not that important, but I just remember being shocked at how we were literally JUST there and the orcas were already acting strangely.
Those orcas were too big for their confined spaces. Did you know great whites fear them? A pod appeared near shark territory at California coast, and when a monster great white became lunch, a tagged shark immediately dove 500 meters and swam clear to Hawaii! Orcas are amazing, so I'm sorry you didn't get to see them.
I can speak for us all, Covid did some s**t to us. I was in the 4th grade when the lockdown happened, school sucked, parents sucked, both parents left, They came back, fought again, in the end we have 2 more baby's, one not my dads, And I ended up with bipolar, PTSD, and ADHD i guess.
You have some remarkable strengths to survive such chaos. To thrive when the adults are going feral? Amazing. Be proud of every single success.
Sit-ins, Love-Ins, anti-war protests, meeting 3 presidents, Rolling Stones first tour, virtually every rock and country band during 60s and 70s, Gracie Slick (and others) getting bums rush out of gig, shuttle Columbia disintegrating over Texas, Hale-Bopp comet, drive-in theaters, active segregation and arrests for people being Black. These were visual sightings and not to be confused with 'live on TV' events. How did all this change me? It made me a published poet, fueled a long episode of drinking and drugging, taught me to hone and trust intuition as a survival skill. It taught me people are weird, funny, creative, interesting, quirky, and smart. Everyone has something they can teach you. Most of all it taught me nature heals, hate requires nurture, and love endures.
Queen Elizabeth’s death. I was in class with friends talking about stuff, and then somehow the queen came up in the background. I said what a girl boss she is, and one of my friends said WAS a girl boss. I’m thinking “What do you mean?” and then I found out the queen was dead. It was quite a shock. She was so amazing and lived such a long life…. I thought she’d live forever!
I was an American living in England when they voted on brexit. I was feeling a little bit smug. Went back home 4 days before the 2016 presidential election….I was less smug after that
9-11, in a way. My house that I grew up in was a five minute drive away from where the one pilot lived. He learned to fly where I learned to drive. And, the morning of, I **heard** the one plane flying overhead, like I always did, as it passed over our home. I heard it. That's something that just... got me. I didn't think anything of it, but a little while later when my mother called & woke me up, I was in shock.
Sigma Incident.
I was 14, in 9th standard and at a farewell party (to 10th standard from 9th) in a basement arranged by Sigma Academy.
Power cuts off and generators are started to keep the even going. Generators are also in the basement, big mistake. Carbon monoxide leaks...
4 female students were going to the stage to perform and the next performance was mine when one of them suddenly fell on the ground and teachers gather around her to check on her. I was in the first row and started feeling severe thirst and hot (it was a cold winter night). I get up to grab some water and am instantly down to my knees..
"Umar!", "Umar?" I hear from around me, a friend and my cousin grab me and take me out of the basement. He slapped me twice to keep me conscious (I did not even feel) and kinda succeeded.
Long story short, around 50 students were affected, 30 ambulances were called out of which 18 were able to make it to the academy (it was a rainy day and a huge rush of parents outside the basement and academy).
Fortunately, everyone survived. It was a nightmare though.
