What is the first major news story that you can remember

I can vaguely remember the moon landing, I think.

My father telling me the war was over. We had a street victory party soon afterwards.
Sugar coming off ration
Prince Charles being born and being given quite a few names
Aberfan, of course
Canvey Island flooding, when 60 people died
Most of the other events already mentioned

Aren`t some of you young? I was 26 and married for 6 years at the time of the moon landing!

I do remember putting money in envelopes for the babies in Africa. Without cheating and looking at google I couldn't say any more.

Either I was acutely unaware or ... just born a lot later but the first real major news story I can remember was the death of Elvis Presley in 1977 . I was 15 years old .

The violence directed at black American students at the start of the de-segregation of schools in the US.

The Profumo affair

Aberfan.

The assassination of Kennedy

Biafran war

(probably all in the wrong date order)

I can remember VE night and VJ night as being news stories but I remember a lot about WW2 as I was 2 when it started.
I was married and pregnant when JFK was assassinated and had a small child when Aberfan happened and sitting watching her and wondering how parents coped with that.

Apart from George VI dying and the coronation I think the Munich air disaster was the next news story I really took in.

We were in Aden, I was 11 and we'd stopped at a garage for petrol. I went into the kiosk with Dad to pay where at least half a dozen men were crowded around the radio listening to the local Arabic news station. Their English and our Arabic was just about good enough to give us the gist so when we got back to the car we fished out our small transistor radio that went everywhere with us and tuned into British Forces News which was usually way behind what was happening worldwide.

It was the main topic of conversation for many weeks but I didn't really grasp the scale of the tragedy until years later when I watched a documentary on TV.

We didn't have a TV - hardly anybody did in those days where we lived - and although we listened to the radio a lot, I can't remember listening to the news on the radio - so my first memory is from the newspapers & everyone talking about it - and I guess I remember because it is memorable - Brady & Hindley -The Moors Murderers - grim in the extreme. Even today I get a lump in my throat when I think of Lesley Ann Down's mother having to hear the tape of her daughter pleading with those monsters.

I think Aberfan for me too, as it resonated with me, being a child, other children dying at school.

Hearing about the Manchester footballers dying on the plane crash as well, and of course the moon landings later on.
Also, Gilbert Harding dying, the adults talked about him a lot.

It is not the first I remember, but the first news story to have a profound effect on me was the Aberfan disaster. The scale of the loss of life was almost unimaginable in those days, but it was the fact that it was eventually disclosed it had been preventable that stuck with me. I was thirteen years old and in hindsight some of the seeds of my later activism were born that day. I remember the news reporter (possibly Cliff Michelmore?) was visibly distressed as he reported the news.

Glorious Glosters at the battle of the Imjin River, 1951.

A Google tells me that A Pound in Your Pocket was 1967 so JFK is my first major news memory.

Did anyone else go to the Festival of Britain on the South Bank (1951)? I remember going and when you came out through the ticket barrier from the train at Waterloo you were more or less at the entrance to the exhibition.
Saw a 3D film there wearing the red and green specs - it was in what was later the Festival Hall.

I have vague memories of the Cuban missile crisis. What I remember most is the all prevailing feeling of doom. I think the adults were truly scared. My next was the assignation of JFK.

I was going to say the end of the Vietnam war. We had just moved to Spain and we only had a radio, and my father kept listening to news about Vietnam. I suppose it must have been the end of the war, because we moved in 1972, I was around six
. Then I remembered the moon landing, I was four at the time, and remember thinking it was very boring watching these funny men, walking so slowly on the moon!

My first thought on seeing the question was "You've never had it so good.", as part of an election campaign. Googling it shows that it must have been in 1959, when I was 7.

I also remember Aberfan, JFK and my brother staying up in the middle of the night arguing with my mother that the moon landing was history being made, while she tried to make him go to bed.

callgirl1, I still have my little golden coach and horses from the Coronation!

Earthquakes in Persia in 1947 when I was just 4. I know that sounds barking, but the news readers talked about people being evacuated from the area and I immediately had this mental picture that an earthquake was an oxygen cylinder shaped object in a deep pit with men in grey all-in-ones and tin hats having to get to it and do something to it to make sure it didn't explode.

I was born and lived in south London towards the end of the war when the V1 and V2s were being fired and landing around us and, if one landed without exploding, the civil defence in grey overalls and tin hats immediately took charge and evacuated people from surrounding properties. I had no idea what evacuated meant at that young age, I just associated it with unexploded bombs and when the word was used in a different context assumed an earthquake was some type of explosive device.

The death of King George V1. We were told at school, I was nearly 9. The next event I remember is the coronation in 1953, the day after my 10th birthday. Did anyone else have a little golden coach and horses to play with?
Whenever we have a thread like this, I keep expecting Printmiss to post. I miss her a lot.

I remember seeing photos of Mussolini on the front page and also Monty and Churchill but not the stories which went with the photos.
I remember the pictures of the flags, happy people dancing and the end of the war. We had a party in the work mens' club round the corner where my dad went for the Home Guard.
I remember the photo of the King standing in the cold wind at the Airport when Elizabeth and Philip went to Africa and the change a few days later when she walked down aircraft steps wearing black.
When Kennedy was shot I had that morning taken DD home from Queen Charlotte's hospital - she was 10 days old.

Interesting question. I think it was probably the birth of Prince Charles in 1948 when I was 8. Before that I knew about the war in a vague way, and knew Winston Churchill was important, because when I was 7 we looked round the Houses of Parliament and I kept asking where Winston Churchill sat.

My first news memories are images of the war in Vietnam. I saw them on a colour TV which means it must have been after 1967 because we didn't get a colour TV until that year.

Jfk Iwas 7 and visiting my grandma withmy dad. I was playing in the back gardennin the shed which was an old railway compartment ( in Swindon) and trying to avoid having to use the outside toilet!

Aberfan. I can still picture the newspaper report in my head.
Also JFK and Dunblane.
I was sitting in my classroom marking with the radio on, when the news came on about Dunblane. I'll never forget it.