People are talking about the first big news story that they remember - I think for me it’s possibly the capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987. I remember because they cancelled Saturday morning kids TV to cover it (and because I’d been on a ferry to Zeebrugge in the past.) - ThreadSky

mattgreencomedy.com • 157 days ago

People are talking about the first big news story that they remember - I think for me it’s possibly the capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987. I remember because they cancelled Saturday morning kids TV to cover it (and because I’d been on a ferry to Zeebrugge in the past.)

Comments

bandwagonkit.bsky.social•157 days ago

Either the winter of discontent (Cold, everyone moaning about the bins) or Charles and Diana’s wedding a couple of years later (we all got cake). Somehow I still ended up as a pro union, anti monarchy type.

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

I vaguely remember the wedding but I think I might be confusing it with Andrew and Fergie’s wedding later. Or even reading about it in Adrian Mole.

bandwagonkit.bsky.social•157 days ago

😂 wow! I’d completely forgotten about Adrian Mole!

aitchemcee283.bsky.social•157 days ago

The wedding is one for me as well, if only because we were away as a family and Mum and Dad watched the entire shebang on TV whereas I wanted to go to the beach. My memory is being bored stiff.

bandwagonkit.bsky.social•157 days ago

Fair. The cake wasn’t all that, either tbh.

dafydd.wales•157 days ago

Berlin Wall. Timmy Mallet.

dafydd.wales•157 days ago

Christ, it wasn't a figment of my imagination

micklad.bsky.social•157 days ago

For me it was the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

arthurga.bsky.social•157 days ago

A Soviet rocket crashing into the moon in 1959. I was 5 and I can remember looking out of my bedroom at the moon trying to see where it had crashed.

godsowncountry.bsky.social•157 days ago

The failed assassination of Thatcher in Brighton.
My Dad was on strike at that the time.

carolinehering.bsky.social•157 days ago

The raising of the Mary Rose. I remember watching it in class at primary school.

andywheatley.bsky.social•157 days ago

I have a very distinct memory of watching an English news programme in Indonesia. Footage of a sweaty man wearing what looked like a flashy king-fu suit. The newsreader said that the King of Rock and Roll was dead. My mum and dad were aghast. I remember feeling sad for the people of Rock and Roll.

andywheatley.bsky.social•157 days ago

Kung-fu suit, goddamit.

vatskills.bsky.social•157 days ago

Mine is Aberfan, because I found my Dad crying in front of the teatime TV news and I'd never seen him cry before. I was the same age as the children in the school.

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

I vividly remember Maradona’s Hand of God in 1986 too - but not sure if that counts…

tonypdickinson.bsky.social•157 days ago

I feel like Band Aid is the first for me.

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

That’s interesting- I feel like I was slightly aware of that but perhaps it was something I heard about in hindsight…

tonypdickinson.bsky.social•157 days ago

So I'd have been 5 but I'm pretty sure especially the musicians gathering for the Christmas song was major news.

brighterbeat.bsky.social•157 days ago

Charles and Diana’s wedding for me. I was 5, and school made a massive thing of it.

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

I bet they did. I think I was a bit too young for that but I remember all the fuss about it

brighterbeat.bsky.social•157 days ago

Probably the next was the end of the Falklands War in summer 1982, but mainly because one of my classmates had an older brother in the army who’d served there & he came into school to give us a talk. All I remember is us 6yr olds chanting “we won, we won” without any realisation of what had happened

joehislop.bsky.social•157 days ago

The Cambodian boat people in the 70s.

angelfishdan.bsky.social•156 days ago

Apollo-Soyuz docking in space. Seemed like we'd all be going to visit the moon soon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz

robinpeters.bsky.social•157 days ago

Aberfan.

philbanting.bsky.social•157 days ago

I can just remember this. My grandmother was terribly upset because the children who died were of my age.

hh95.bsky.social•157 days ago

Churchill’s funeral

susannefreeman.bsky.social•157 days ago

Mine’s probably the 1979 general election, I was confused Rupert the Bear wasn’t on, & my mam was in a bad mood, realised why when I got a bit older!

gillmetcalf.bsky.social•157 days ago

Assassination RFK

handle.invalid•157 days ago

Battle of the Somme for me

deekypod.bsky.social•157 days ago

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind…

carlwalters.bsky.social•157 days ago

Me too

crispindry.bsky.social•157 days ago

If was called the biggest business turnover in history.

gweiadur.bsky.social•157 days ago

For me, it was Winston Churchill's death. We wrote a diary every day in school and for a few days I wrote that he was ill and getting worse, then had to write that he had died. I was 7 and it was a big thing for me.

datb62.bsky.social•157 days ago

Apollo 13

ianrauk.bsky.social•157 days ago

Elvis Presley's death.

leepylee65.bsky.social•157 days ago

Americans evacuating from the rooftop of the US Embassy in the last helicopters during the fall of Saigon in 1975.

calvinandhobbes69.bsky.social•157 days ago

That or the Bradford Stadium Fire in 1985.

fpljoe.bsky.social•157 days ago

That 1981 ish embassy siege . Another cancelled kids Tv moment. Little did I know I was watching the real life plot and action of almost every TV drama the adult me has since watched.

phlebas.bsky.social•157 days ago

Possibly the 3 day week although I think I might be conflating it with later frequent power cuts (doing homework by candlelight). If not that then the Yorkshire Ripper - although again, not sure when it really became a national story. Failing that, I have a clear memory of when Wilson resigned.

aitchemcee283.bsky.social•157 days ago

Other ones are The Falklands War (sorry, conflict) and the Iranian embassy seige. My brother was involved in both. (And just to clarify, the UK side in the first, and not a terrorist in the second!!)

clrthrn.bsky.social•157 days ago

Bradford fire at Valley Parade. Just sat and watched it go up live on telly aged8. No removing kids from the room or telly censoring it. Just folk on fire live on telly.

twofatfeet.bsky.social•157 days ago

I watched it all on YouTube some years back, probably for the first time since it happened. I had seen it live on the telly. It wasn’t as graphic as you might expect, even John Helm’s commentary wasn’t talking about the potential for people dying because most of what you were actually seeing ( … )

clrthrn.bsky.social•156 days ago

I rewatched it last night on Youtube and you are right, now it's not so bad seeing it as an adult. But seeing that as a kid, with no context or knowing most people escaped, it was really scary to see.

twofatfeet.bsky.social•156 days ago

I think the initial assumption was that everybody had escaped because so many had got onto the pitch so quickly. Even in the stadium you see people smiling at the camera and obviously thinking this is all quite exciting because they’re safe. Nobody realised what was going on at the back of the stand

twofatfeet.bsky.social•157 days ago

( … ) was people who had got out safely. There was that one shot of the bloke running across the pitch with his head on fire, they put it out quickly but he did die in hospital. Most of the casualties were those who had tried to escape below decks but the fire exits were all locked.

katielikescake.bsky.social•157 days ago

9/11, it was my 6th birthday. 😬

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

Well that makes me feel old

katielikescake.bsky.social•157 days ago

Sorry. 😳

tjgroove.bsky.social•157 days ago

Being from Zeebrugge I also remember that one…

climatedaily1.bsky.social•157 days ago

I have to say it was Watergate. But actually not. I'd linked Watergate and images of some UK flooding on the news. I even thought Nixon was the UK prime minister. I remember, but everything I remember was wrong!

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

Yes I find childhood memories fascinating. So much jumbled up and based on very incomplete information/understanding!

lindachandler.bsky.social•156 days ago

I remember getting very cross with Harold Wilson for resigning in 1976, as it caused disruption to the (3 channel) TV schedule. I also remember school making us do a scrapbook for Princess Anne's wedding in 1973, but it is the scrapbook I remember rather than coverage of the event itself.

twofatfeet.bsky.social•157 days ago

The Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov who was stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella at a bus stop in London in 1978. I have seen what is claimed to be the actual umbrella in a war museum in Maldon. I suppose I could have said the silver jubilee but that was an event rather than a news story

twofatfeet.bsky.social•157 days ago

Oh I’ve just seen someone mention Elvis dying, I do remember that, he died on the day I went into hospital for an eye operation

garethcolwell.org•157 days ago

I remember this too, think it's probably my first big news story I remember, that along with THE GREAT STORM of 1987

christiaan.bsky.social•156 days ago

The Cave Creek disaster for me, when a scenic viewing platform in New Zealand collapsed, resulting in the deaths of 14 people.

christiaan.bsky.social•156 days ago

That's the first one that popped into my head, but the fall of the Berlin Wall is probably the first one I remember.

davec66.bsky.social•155 days ago

Fun fact, I worked with Eleanor the wife of Andrew Parker who saved 20 people on the Herald of Free Enterprise, including his wife Eleanor. Andrew created a human bridge for the passengers to crawl across. Eleanor was a tiny, lovely lady originally from the Philippines and Andrew was a 6’ 4” giant

vivs63.bsky.social•157 days ago

Moon landings in 1969 for me.

carlwalters.bsky.social•157 days ago

Me too

markmcgloin.bsky.social•157 days ago

I remember the sandanista/contras guerilla war when I was about 5. Mainly because I was disappointed to find out gorillas weren't allowed machine guns and it was just camouflaged men fighting over something or other.

scrounge.bsky.social•157 days ago

That one is vivid for me too, but it is just pipped for me by the news of the Challenger disaster, so 1986. I was 7.

banouby.bsky.social•157 days ago

Definitely remember a similar thing getting annoyed with Falklands stuff being on TV when I got home from school

acceptingmyfate.bsky.social•157 days ago

Maybe iranian revolution. Lots of people on TV talking about the "ayatollah Khomeini" whatever that was.

pipez.bsky.social•156 days ago

The Berlin Wall coming down for me. And my dad actually said something along the lines of "Remember this, this is history in the making".

coleridgeandbeyond.com•157 days ago

Depends whether you just mean remember or remember and understand? I recall seeing what I think was the Ronan Point gas explosion on the front page of my dad's newspaper when I was under 3, but probably the first one I actually appreciated was Apollo 16 when I was six.

gregdelaney.bsky.social•157 days ago

My son Tom was 4 a the time. He ran upstairs in the morning to tell us that people were in the water and there were sharks!
A funny tail for a not very funny event

foreignhornet.bsky.social•157 days ago

Lord Lucan's disappearance, though not sure how aware I was (I was 3½). A couple of months later there was a train crash in Watford, remember walking into town with Dad & cousins & seeing the carriages down the embankment - it was big news for us!

tinfinch.bsky.social•157 days ago

The moon landings.

wjflywheel.bsky.social•157 days ago

Capsizing the herald of free enterprise sounds like a kind of portent for what was to follow the 80’s.

wsagcort.bsky.social•157 days ago

The Olympic hostage crisis in 1972. I remember coming home from primary school, aged 7, being a bit miffed that kids' TV would be dislodged that afternoon because of the Olympics, and then found that the Olympics themselves had been dislodged. This was my first introduction to karma, of sorts.

archtesta.bsky.social•157 days ago

I can vaguely remember live aid (if that can be classed as news). But big news stories that I can really remember and have stuck with me are Hillsborough and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

mickn.bsky.social•157 days ago

Moon landings and investiture of prince charles…hadn’t realised they were so close until i looked it up…we were gathered together at school to watch the royal thing on a very small tv a long way away

charlottehill.bsky.social•157 days ago

I think for me it was the Ethiopian famine. Probably more ingrained because of Band/Live Aid coming after. But definitely remember the news reports.
I also remember Chernobyl well. Possibly because my dad announced (unironically) that we were having Chernobyl chicken for dinner. 😩

simland.bsky.social•157 days ago

Used to go on those ferries quite a bit as a kid. 🙁

simland.bsky.social•157 days ago

But the earliest big story I remember was John Lennon being killed.

audenshawcherry.bsky.social•157 days ago

When Diana died they cancelled the omnibus edition of The Archers on Radio 4!!!

antv.bsky.social•157 days ago

I'd have said exactly the same event and for the same reason. Took me quite a while as a 6 year old before eventually accepting The Family Ness wasn't just delayed

mattgreencomedy.com•157 days ago

The Family Ness! That’s a blast from the past.

katedes.bsky.social•157 days ago

Lord I remember that one - not because I was a kid, but because I was watching the telly *sitting in the lounge of a car ferry* at the time!! 😯

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