Earliest Memory of Seminal News

JFK. I was 8 at the time. I can even visualise the front room of our house as it looked at that time and it was early evening. Very vivid memory of this. I don’t remember my parents’ reactions, funnily enough, but I felt shocked enough to remember it.

Teacheranne

nadateturbe
Yuri Gagarin going into space 1961 I think.
Same for me, but made more momentous by watching him drive past my school in Manchester on his way to the University I think. We all lined up in the grounds of the school waving Russian flags as he drove past in an open top car.

DH also has this as his most exciting memory and being impressed that the car reg was YG 1

My first memory was my parents saying rationing was ending. That was 1954, I was 7 years.

GrandmaSeaDragon

Coming home from secondary school and hearing about Aberfan, October 1966.

My earliest memory too. I seem to be the same age as you!

Simple for me. I remember the announcement on the wireless that we were at war with Germany in 1939. Our lives changed irrevocably as my father joined up as soon as he could,leaving my mother who was not in good health to look after my sister who was not quite 10 and me aged 5. We lived in Liverpool which was heavily bombed although we weren’t.

fiorentina51

The Suez Crisis. I hadn't a clue what a Suez was or who was Nasser but can recall it being on the radio and TV.
I was 5 at the time.

I did know who Nasser was and were the Suez canal was, but this was definitely my earliest memory of the News too. I was coming up for 5 at the time. I remember the petrol rationing at it caused too, mainly because Daddy was a GP and his allowance of petrol was for a town practise, but a third of his patients were farmers around the neighbouring villages, so he never had enough petrol and frequently had to siphon some out of my uncle's car!

Don’t often post but when I saw this thread, Aberfan was my first thought jocork. I was 16 then and do remember other events earlier in the 60s. I remember I was cross with my Mum as she hadn’t heard the awful news about Aberfan and couldn’t tell me what had happened. Not many radios in those days, or 24 hour TV news, but I picked it up on my tiny transistor in my bedroom. A couple of weeks later, DM went into Royal Marsden Hospital and she died a few months later. So, lots of sad memories intertwined.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: it was all over the news and I was terrified that we would die in a nuclear war. I was 9 at the time.

The election of JFK to the presidency is 1960. The nuns at my school were all a-twitter about such a momentous event - the first Catholic president!

I remember my mother and her two sisters (my aunties) sitting in the large house where we lived five minutes walk from Notting Hill Gate, they were talking about something that sounded scary to me. This was in 1960 and I was nearly five.
They were discussing a horrible man called Christie who had also lived in Notting Hill Gate at a previous time. If I remember correctly he was hung in 1953 for the murders of several women and also an innocent man was hung as his wife was found dead although it was later found that she was one of the victims of Christie.

GrandmaSeaDragon

Coming home from secondary school and hearing about Aberfan, October 1966.

This is mine too.

My husband's is The Torrey Canyon disaster in 1967.

JFK assassination
All the Royal babies born in 1964, (same time as my sister)
Churchill’s funeral
Great Train Robbery
Aberfan
1966 World Cup
The first moon landing (my brother was born during the following week)

Ohh that's brought a memory of shopping with my grandma, I was 9, and she was always saying to me 'so what's that in proper money' I used to look at little charts, if I didn't no to tell her 😊

The Coronation of our late Queen. We went to a neighbours to watch on her little black TV. My parents bought me a replica of the gold coach. Don't know what happened to it!

Was living with my mum in Bournemouth where she had a job in a hotel. The owner sat me in a huge lounge to watch a Royal event on a big TV, much larger than ours. Don't remember if it was a Christening or wedding but it was in 1960 or 1961

The late Queen’s Coronation in 1953 . The first ( and I think last) Street Party I went to. I was 7.

King George VI death.

First man on the moon; I was 7 and my mum got me up early hours of the morning to watch it - she told me when I was older I would realise how important and significant it was to actually see on TV as it hapened - and she was right.
Our next door neighbour was round ours watching it as they didn't have a TV and she was really disappointed not to see little aliens running around - even at 7 and half asleep as I was I thought , "how stupid....."

@Bijou,
The general Strike was in 1926, not 1936.
My mum was born just a few days after it finished, May 1926!
Mum would have turned 97 this year, so you must have been a very advanced child to remember it!

Watching mother reading the news about the finding of the concentration camps by the allies. She told me what she was so shocked about. I can't remember what she said or how much I understood at the time but I know that's what it was. I must have been four.

Watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. We didn’t have a tv so we went to a friend!s house a few miles away.I remember my dad pushing me in a pushchair and my mum by his side with my baby brother in his pram. A very exciting day!

I can remember the coronation. I was three and remember the street party we had. Also the poor monkey that was sent into orbit. I was so upset about it. Can’t remember the date though.

the announcement of the death of king george V1. in 1952. maybe memorable because it was my fathers' birthday, february 6. i was eleven and staying with an aunt and uncle and can still picture coming downstairs and being told that the king had died.

The Smallpox epidemic, I used to have nightmares about catching it and having to go into isolation; I was convinced I would have to sleep in a hammock packed with ice and strung up several feet off the ground.

The bombing of Coventry (1940). I was about 3 and I remember my Dad carrying me up the air-raid shelter steps to see the glow in the sky from the burning buildings (we lived about 25 miles away). I didn't know what it was all about but my Aunt and Uncle lived in Coventry, fortunately not near the centre.