What is the first major news story that you can remember

Death of the King then the Coronation.

Definitely the end of World War II. All the adults were so jubilant and the mood transmitted itself to us children. I was four and a half - proud to see my Dad marching at the head of his Home Guard squad in the VE day parade.

The Coronation. I’d never seen TV before and we must have watched it on someone else’s. We spent the day in Gourock watching the ships and submarines sailing past with bunting on them. I had a broach which was 3D and it flicked between Princess Elizabeth and then her as Queen Elizabeth,

I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen.

Death of JFK

The King’s funeral. It was the first time I saw television. We went to the house of friends so that my mother could watch her brother pulling the gun carriage holding his coffin. All I could see was a very long and boring procession in black and white.

Moon landings for me

Thank you all for responding (I'm always a little bit iffy about starting a new thread!)

Some wonderful responses and memories. I was only dimly aware of a lot of them, so I have spent a lot of time googling and reading up on the events mentioned.

It is also interesting that I appear (at the grand old age of 57) to be a bit of a kid on this forum . I am usually the granny of the forum!

Anno - VE Day for me too. 8 May 1945. Didn't hear any announcement or see any celebrations though, just jubilant parents. I wasn't five until July.

The first thing I heard for myself was in 1950 when I was off school ill and listened to the wireless all day in bed - it was the results of the election, so Friday 24th February.
It was exciting, as I was old enough to understand it.

The assassination of JFK. I was sitting with my Irish nan who fell to her knees. She then pulled me down to the floor to say a few Hail Mary's! No wonder I didn't forget it. I've always had a fascination with JFK ever since.

What has come home to me, reading through the posts is that I am probably old enough to be the mother of some posters!

Aberfan for me, too, though I think that has made more of an impression on me long term than, say, the Munich air disaster, which I also remember well. The floods of 1952 (3?) also made an impression on me as I can remember getting off a bus and seeing shopkeepers sandbagging their front steps to prevent the water getting in! And the Coronation, of course.

UDI in Rhodesia. We were allowed to listen to the radio at school and also the Cuba crisis, which was the first time I actually felt frightened.

Yes willsmadnan my Dad was a commercial traveller too. It meant we had a car long before anyone else in the street. I think the birth of Prince Charles is my first news memory. My mother was very pleased, I don’t know why, because my brother was born in the same year!!!

The Coronation ..... Then the Suez crisis though all so long ago it's difficult to remember!!!

Aberfan. Also vaguely remember Churchill's funeral on the television. But Aberfan is clear in my mind to this day.

Aberfan..it still haunts me, although I have no connections with Wales at all. I'm sure there were other major headlines, but I was relatively old enough to understand what happened with this one.

1955 in the Daily Mirror (back when it was a proper newspaper!) The Rock'n'Roll train. It was a cartoon of a train rocking and rolling right across the middle pages.

The space flights, Little Lemon and Yuri Gagarin.
JFK
Aberfan.

I am confused about Little Lemon. I have googled the dates and can’t find reference to Little Lemon, but have found Laika, (Lemon) but at 1957 that would have been too early as I remember learning about it in a house that we didn’t move into until the early sixties.

I lived in India as a small child and my first news story memory is of the border clashes that preceded the Sino-Indian War of 1962. I can remember being quite scared, although we lived in Bombay and so were thousands of miles away from where the conflict was occurring.

Winston Churchill dying. Aberfan. Not sure which was first.

The Cuban crisis. We had to write an essay at school on the Bay if Pigs and why it was so named while my father had been called away to sea, he was a long term sailor from 1938-1965, and I was much more worried about him than the fact that the world was about to blow itself up.

I vaguely knew about Suez and indirectly about the Korean War because he was sent Ifg fir both those, but I was too young to be directly involved in those at the time, only in retrospect (when he came home - firtubatekyvajways in one bit - physically although he was always a mental wreck after Narvik)

I was born in Plymouth in 1937 so all my earliest memories are of the war and sleeping in a shelter and bombs and fires.
The first big news item I remember was the end of the war and the street parties and huge celebrations.

JFK, Mum and Nan were crying in the kitchen, TV was on all the time.
Churchill's funeral.
Aberfan, I still weep when I think of it, I knew it involved children about the same age as me.
The moon landing!

I have a vague recollection of sitting on my mum's knee watching a TV with a tiny screen and huge cabinet - the queen's coronation. And there was Suez stuff burbling on in the background while I played. But I wasn't old enough to understand anything special was going on. The first time something I was old enough to comprehend happened it was the assassination of President Kennedy. Or maybe Yuri Gagarin's space trip.

The Coronation for me. We lived in Arundal and there was a big fancy dress party at the castle. I went as a penguin (for some unknown reason.)At the end they gave us a mug and threw lots of sixpences up in the air for us to get. I was enthralled!