What is the first big news story you remember?

Cuba crisis when I was 13.

Assassination of John.F.Kennedy 22nd November 1963. We were watching Doctor Finlay’s Casebook and it was interrupted with the news flash. I was 8 years old.

The coronation of Elizabeth 11

Yes the coronation for me too oldandverygrey

The moon landings. I was 7 and I can still remember looking at the moon and being certain I could see tiny men walking about on it !

Kennedy's assassination. I was at Girls Brigade and an older girl came in and told us.

Cuban missile crisis. I must have been 21.

Aberfan, I was 5. I was petrified that my school was going to be swallowed up. At that age you can't totally understand what's happened.

The Coronation. School children received a commemorative book, in our area anyway, lost long ago presumably in one of my many moves. I remember being given a sheet of cardboard on which were printed the coronation coach and horses, to cut out and make up into a 3D model.

Everest conquered.

Not sure whether it counts as a big news story, but I remember the birth of Prince Charles in 1948, and thenPrincess Anne a couple of years later. I was 8 in 1948. I was fascinated by their numerous names, and can still recite them. - Charles Philip Arthur George and Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. Then the death of George VI and the Coronation,

Nasser nationalizing the Suez canal. I was five.

I was born in 1946, so I remember the coronation and having a mug and a tiny metal model of the coach and horses given by my school.
The next occasion I recall is Kennedy's assassination.

The Queen's (then Princess Elizabeth) wedding. I must have been about 2, and remember DM listening to it on the radio.

I spent the first 5 years of my life in South London and in the early years this was in the flight path for V1 and V2 rockets coming in from Germany.

When I was about 4, there was a large earthquake in Persia (now Iran), why I remember the name I have no idea, but I have since verified it, and I remember it because as it was just after the war and when the radio reported it, the language they used, I think they talked of evacuation of getting people out of danger made me immediately imagine that an earthquake was something like an oxygen cylinder at the bottom of a shell crater and lots of man in grey boiler suits and helmets having to get down to it and do something to it before it exploded, which must have been my 4 year old self's memory of the procedures followed for unexploded bombs, of which there were quite a few in our neighbourhood.

As an adult I discussed this with my mother and she said that I would have seen a lot of rocket and bomb craters around where we lived and as quite a number of the V1s and V2s didn't explode, also a lot of Civil Defence men in uniforms like the ones I described, whose task after these events was to evacuate houses and cordon off the area where the unexploded bomb was.

The moors murders.

Aberfan probably but I can remember TV from early 60s

The Queens coronation. The most wonderful day. The whole street was shut off for a huge party. All the children were in fancy dress. We were hula hula girls after the Guy Michell song, She wears red feathers and a hula hula skirt

A huge new playground ( built by the LCC) was opened opposite our house, complete with roller skating rink and a brick built 'hut' where 2 ladies were employed to watch over the children playing. Happy days ?

The funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. Black and white TV. My grandmother thought the world of him and cried all the way through.

I can remember the old king dying. Not so much about the coronation though, probably because we didn't have a telly.

And then there was the four minute mile with Roger Bannister.

Same as Gonegirl, the death of King George V1 in 1952, I was 8, nearly 9.

Yuri Gagarin going into space. I was ten.

Petra, re the Guy Mitchell song "She wears red feathers etc.," was the next line "she lives on just coconuts and fish from the sea, with a rose in her hair etc" you have got me wondering now!

The death of King George VI. I was six and living in Uganda and can remember a lot of Africans making the wailing sound they make for mourning. At that moment I didn't know why they were doing it and found it frightening. As dusk came the drums were particularly in evidence as the news was passed around.