The Earliest Events in Your Life

Arakhor

Dremora Courtier
Super Moderator
Supporter
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
Messages
39,711
Location
UK
I am a child of the 80s - the Challenger disaster and Halley's Comet were the two biggest things I remember from my early years.
 
I am a child of the 80s - the Challenger disaster and Halley's Comet were the two biggest things I remember from my early years.

Hmmm, i wasn't aware of either, at the time. Only indirectly aware of the comet, due to films (and computer games) made with that as inspiration :)
The biggest event was surely the Chernobil meltdown, no? I recall my mother stocking up on cans of milk and other food.
And the decade ended (or rather the 90s started) with the Iraq war.
 
I don't remember Chernobyl at all, but then you are a lot closer to Ukraine then I am.

For me, the '90s began with the fall of Margaret Thatcher.
 
9/11 is the first political event I remember being aware of. Which is interesting, given that it basically didn't mean anything for my family, but that's when the USA became more than just that country that everybody talks about for me.

The first "event" in my personal life I remember is from when my mother told me that I'd no longer be the only child soon. I was 3 at that time.
 
I remember being totally confused and afraid in my first day at Kindergarten, I was probably three or four at the time and didn't yet speak a word of German.
The first global/political events I'm aware of happened much later. The second Gulf War and the breakup of Yugoslavia. I remember the last time we were in Yugoslavia before the civil war started, it must have been 1989: Jokes about currency reform and worthless money, tanks at the border between Croatia and Bosnia and a general sese of dread that I hardly picked up on at the time but seems more obvious in hindsight. That was a year or two before the shooting started and nobody was quite sure where this was coming.
 
I remember Challenger, Chernobyl and also Admiral Nakhimov disaster (all happened in 1986). A hell of a year.
We weren't stocking up food though - considered it was far away enough.
 
I can remember the first two episodes of The Simpsons that I've watched, "Life on the Fast Lane" and "The Telltale Head", both were on the same video cassette.
 
I have very vague memories of Swissair Flight 111. I also seem to remember some politician crashing an airplane into the ocean the next year but I'm having trouble finding it and am likely misremembering.
 
Earliest things I have some memory of were the Moon landings and Nixon's resignation.
 
My earliest personal memory is me sitting at the head of our dining room table and a bunch of kids singing Happy Birthday to me.

My first historical event is my mother explaining that Nasser, by blocking the Suez Canal with sunken ships, had "won the war."
 
I was nine when Nixon resigned. My parents were pretty apolitical, or just trying to let me be a kid and shield me from the ugliness, but a one-year-older friend left play to go watch it happen (presumably because his parents were more politically engaged) and that was enough to leave an impression on me that something momentous must be occurring.
 
When I was 6
The Cuba crisis of '62
The kind of powerless depressed mood of my parents and the parents of my friends
 
Also a child of the 80s but the one that sticks out for me was watching the Berlin Wall come down on live TV.
 
I've forgotten a great deal of my childhood at this point and, even if I remembered it vividly, I probably wouldn't have a good answer since I spent the majority of it in a room alone.

My earliest "global" memory was 9/11. It happened while I was at school and my dad got me out early. I'm not sure why. I ended up listening to it on the car radio as he went to get my mother.
 
I was nine when Nixon resigned. My parents were pretty apolitical, or just trying to let me be a kid and shield me from the ugliness, but a one-year-older friend left play to go watch it happen (presumably because his parents were more politically engaged) and that was enough to leave an impression on me that something momentous must be occurring.


I recall that my father insisted that we watch Nixon resign, even though we were too young to appreciate it, because it had never happened before, and it might never happen again. Hope he's wrong about that.
 
I recall that my father insisted that we watch Nixon resign, even though we were too young to appreciate it, because it had never happened before, and it might never happen again. Hope he's wrong about that.

That hope has some increasing likelyhood
I saw an article today stating that whereas 36% of the US voters would vote on Trump again in 2020....
41% would support an impeachment procedure
 
That hope has some increasing likelyhood
I saw an article today stating that whereas 36% of the US voters would vote on Trump again in 2020....
41% would support an impeachment procedure

Doesn't matter what the public wants, so long as Republicans control Congress.
 
Most of the things I remember from my childhood are the events surrounding me personally, and I'd assume this was the case for anyone, yet it seems like people here are talking mostly about the world at large.

The first things of that kind I believe I remember is the outcome of the 2005 elections
 
Moon landing...somewhat vague. Munich Olympics terrorism is the first historical event I remember really clearly. I turned on the TV to watch the Olympics and was greeted by a zoomed camera shot of a blocky residential building that just sat there on the screen for the entire day.
 
Most of the things I remember from my childhood are the events surrounding me personally, and I'd assume this was the case for anyone, yet it seems like people here are talking mostly about the world at large.

The first things of that kind I believe I remember is the outcome of the 2005 elections

That is cause Arakhor didn't start a thread on the premise, but cut posts from another thread, which were about political events at one's early days :)
Otherwise... obviously Chernobyl wasn't my first memory, nor the strongest one. I was 6,5 at the time.
My first actual memory is hazy, but one of the first i do recall is pretty important for me. It was acting as a translator between a fellow classmate and our teacher, when we were 5 or thereabouts. The other kid mumbled something which the teacher couldn't understand, while i could, and also could translate it to human speak :o The female teacher probably caressed my hair for my services.
 
Top Bottom