What is the first big news story you remember?

I remember coming home from school for lunch in 1952. My mother and her neighbour were both in tears as it had just been announced on the radio that the king had died. I was eight.

So many of us remember the assassination of JFK.
I remember sitting on the carpet watching the tv footage. I was 10.
We lived in HK and I had a lot of American friends so it was talked about quite a lot.

Pope John's death and Kennedy's assassination were pretty big events in the same year.

When the pope died I was a first year in an RC school and the whole school got to watch the funeral on TV which very much predisposed us to like the pope who got us, effectively, the day off.

I well remember my father coming into the room with a look of shock on his face saying, 'Kennedy's dead.' Funnily enough, depite being very young I knew who this was and why it was a big event. I always took an interest in things beyond the family.

The Queen's Coronation.

I remember when JFK was assassinated but heard in the street.
I have stronger recollections about a Subday newspaper headline to with the Pope and THE PILL. I didn't get it at all but it seemed very dramatic and mysterious.
I grew up in Dublin.

JFK assassinated when I was 5 but also recall the Berlin wall being built very vaguely ( so seen both ends of it )
I remember a lot of fear and tension around the Cuban missile crisis time but did not really know what it was .
Aberfan affected me most deeply as I was at primary school in a pit village in Co Durham and it had a pit heap .

Death of king George VI . I was primary school and the headmaster wondered why flags were at half mast .

The moors murders.

I was definitely quite young, as I remember asking my mum what a 'body' was.
Possibly as an attempt to avoid the horror of the actual crimes, she described it as what I now know as the torso.
I asked no more questions, but it's fair to say that her fudging of the issue didn't have the desired effect - for many years, if I heard that a body had been found, I pictured just a torso!

The next big event was the Moon landing. I was in primary school and we were all taken into the hall the day after it happened, to watch it on TV.

The first big news event that really meant a lot to me was the Yorkshire Ripper. I was in my mid teens, living in Yorkshire, and can remember feeling uncharacteristically anxious as I walked alone along quiet, dark, poorly lit or unlit lanes in the evening.

The Suez crisis: I was at Infant School and I thought at first they were talking about sewers!

Suez and the Hungarian uprising, both in Autumn 1956 when I was nearly 5. I remember being told to be quiet while the news was on the wireless at breakfast time, and I thought it was appropriate that they were talking about 'hungry' at a mealtime.

I also remember being terrified at the time of the Cuban missile crisis and having serious discussions with my school friends about what was going to happen. Also Kennedy's assassination and Aberfan of course.

Another Coronation one - we had the first TV in our village and our living room was full of local residents. And we got a pretty commemorative tin box of toffees which were used for years as pencil cases by all the local kids.

My father bought our first TV the day AFTER the coronation because he thought they would be cheaper then. That tells you all you need to know about my Dad!!!

Luckygirl ?
My Dad got ours off the back of a lorry a few days before the coronation ?

We didn't have a TV until I was in junior school and then only one channel would work. DM wasn't keen on the radio either so the first big story I read about in the newspaper was the Moors murders which was the first time I realised that some people in the world were evil. Other than that, probably the coverage of the big freeze of 1963 in the newspapers, but it probably stuck in my mind because our school shut for a couple of days. Joy!

I remember the end of the second world war, I was amazed, I didn't know wars ended. I thought they were a fact of life, like having to go to school and avoiding the neighbour's dog.

I remember pretty well all the events mentioned in the 1960's but I think my first was the Coronation. We were in the middle of the Irish Sea going on holiday to Northern Ireland, my mother's (and my) birth place, as it was broadcast on the radio in the lounge area. I had just turned 6.
I remember my dad taking me out of bed to see Sputnik passing over when I was 10 and hearing the news on the radio. I also remember the newspaper headlines on the Munich air disaster when I was nearly 11. My dad as a football supporter was really upset which of course upset me too.
Around the same time (1957, 1958) I also remember news reports about the testing of atomic bombs near Christmas Island. These would protect our country apparently.

Having just watched 'Christmas Island: In search of Britain's nuclear legacy' I wept when I fully understood what those soldiers (and presumably the islanders) suffered as a result. My heart breaks for them and the following generations who are suffering and will suffer genetic deformities and rare diseases for decades to come. Why have I never heard about this till now?

Grandma2213 I watched that program too and it was awful to see how things were done back in the day and the concequences of those actions.

The yorkshire ripper murders was big in news when i was old enough to start really taking notice of serious news items.

The Coronation. I was 4. We had the only television in the village, and dozens of people came to stand and watch it happening on our little fuzzy screen.

The coronation, conquest of Everest and sub-5 minute mile - all three events happened at the same time in my memory!

Rethinking this probably Winston Churchills funeral in 1965.

grandMattie do you mean the sub-4 minute mile? Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3 mins 59.4 seconds in 1954. My father took me to watch him run at Belle Vue, Manchester.

Many memories, some good, some bad. However, late 1950's I was working as a junior in the office of a large retailer and each morning every national newspaper was placed on my desk and I had to record in a book how many pages each one had (no idea why or how that information was used).
Have such a strong memory of the morning following the dreadful crash of the airplane carrying the young, award winning, Manchester United football team and also many press sports reporters. So many died, and every newspaper carried a black border on its front page.