Do you have memories of real 'history'?

I remember being in my school hall on the day that Tower Hamlets was formed.

I was born in 1958 so I can remember from the mid 60s onwards . I remember Bobby Kennedys assassination. We were in London at my dads office and I remember the notices on the newspaper sellers .
I vaguely remember Winston Churchill’s Funeral as it was on TV , similarly I remember the Vietnam war from the news . As kids we had to eat everything on our plates as my mum would talk about the starving children in Biafra .
My aunt lived off Sloan Square and would take us shopping in the kings road in the 60s and 70s and also took us to Bibas in High st Ken .
I also remember the 3 day week and going to bed with a candle as no electricity.
I was working in London in the 70s and 80s when the IRA had a bombing campaign and I remember the Nat West bomb. The Harrods one and the one in Regent’s Park when several horses were killed as well as soldiers.
I was training as a Hygienist in the Navy when Lord Mountbatten was killed by a bomb on his boat . It was Navy Days and the base went silent as the news came in.
One of my more recent historical memories was of Live Aid in 85 . My DH was also there but we didn’t meet for another 3 years .
I’m loving this post

Oops, that should have been 1974.

I was born in 1953 and remember many of the things mentioned from the late 50's and 60's. However one of my most vivid memories is of being in my student hall of residence in central Birmingham when the bombs went off in 1973. They were left in two of the pubs we used to go to as students. I spent a frightening night with my flat mates, listening to all the sirens roaring past, especially when we eventually heard what had happened and the speculation that other bombs had been planted in the city.

Government orange juice and cod liver oil; liberty bodices; sanitary belts with sanitary pads that hooked onto them; being measured for the length of my school skirt, while kneeling; riding in the boot of our small estate car, behind the back seat on which my other two siblings were sitting, and my younger brother and I were sat on stools facing each other; playing "hare and hounds" with the other village kids through the farmer's fields, using scraps of paper to mark the course; the other children and I pushing the double-decker bus up an icy, snow-covered hill on the way to school; fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. My kids (next generation) would say they remember being allowed to stay out to play in the street until the street lights came on. How times have changed!

Not my personal memory, but my mother used to say she saw the Jarrow marchers, and what struck her was the silence. They had no boots.

My son (25) came to enlighten me he about a history report he had read about the sinking of zeebruge ferry& the lives lost etc- i said yes i lived in that time son! I told him other facts about it that was on our news & in papers at the time & he went away & came back later agreeing that yes i had been more accurate than that first news snippet he'd seen online.Young ones these days forget that to us things were'nt our history- it was in our real time.

Yes all the Ireland troubles also was always on the news- and again involved seeing bombings and riots and not just with police trying to control things but army as well.- a lot of our neighbours were big Irish families as they had fled here to be safe- and then the Free Derry and the end of their troubles.It was all history being viewed on our black & white rented tv.But told to us by the neighbours as well.

I was born in 1944 and also remember the big occasions like the Coronation, Festival of Britain and the like. However, some of the things that made the biggest impression on me as a child were things that affected relatively ordinary people.
Does anyone else remember the Flying Enterprise and her brave captain, who syayed on board his sinking freighter for days? On checking with Google, I see it was 13 days in January 1952, when I would have been eight years old! It was on the radio and we got the News Chronicle and it was front page news for days. .The ship eventually sank less than 60 kilometres from safe harbour at Falmouth,. minutes after the Captain, a true hero, was forced to abandon ship.
Another news story in 1952 that made a big impression on me, was the Lynmouth Flood Disaster, when 34 people died in unprecedented floods in North Devon.
There was also a very sad case where a young man had got stuck in a pothole, and everyone was following the rescue operation. Sadly, he died before he could be got out.

Born mid-1960's i remember all the stuff we had in 70's & 80's- Riots in the streets then as well, but mostly as protests for their job losses, and all the misery that brought, steel factories closed down, coal mines closed-union strikes, & resulting 3 day weeks, power cuts, oil &petrol shortages and prices, stand pipes in street due to drought, Electricity power cuts- but also seeing the last of the back to back houses with outside toilets & no baths- making forward moves with tv, telephones etc, computing and medicine- breakthroughs in modern ways & inventions like no other years.I think us 60's &70's born babies have probably seen the biggest advancements.

I was also thinking about how vividly I remember the threat of nuclear war - films like When The Wind Blows and Threads. It all seemed so very very real. We went to visit The Secret Bunker in Fife a few years ago and they show some of those films and it brought it all back so clearly.

I was always impressed that grandad’s sister was born the year of the Jack the Ripper murders and Inspector Adeline died after my mother was born

I remember all the family crowding around a great uncle’s (he was rich) tiny tv for the Queen’s coronation. My sister was given a bible.
I remember the Suez crisis, and my mum crying that we were going to have a world war. JFK assassination’ mum crying again when I got home from school, the Berlin Wall coming down. Apartheid, Nelson Mandela being freed. Queuing up with my dad to see Winston Churchill lying in state. The rise of the Beatles, Rolling Stones! Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon hair cut! So much has happened

My DD gave me a book in which to write about my life and family. I filled it with all the memories I recalled and added photographs too. I gave it back to her last year so that she could read it at her leisure.

I remember so many things since George VI died, The Coronation, JFK and so on. But I can't seem to remember what I've gone to the bedroom for or where I put my glasses when I took them off.

Dandylion

My uncle was in Bomber Command in the RAF and promised my Mother (his sister) that he would fly over the house to say Goodbye when they were going back to their base in Scotland. On the day, she heard the plane, and lifted me and rushed outside - then an ENORMOUS plane came really low over the garden, everything went dark, it waggled its wings and rose into the air again and left. The noise was so awful, I was terrified and burst into tears. So did she.

That made me laugh, Dandylion and reminded me of when I was at school in Aden and Father Christmas would usually arrive in a spectacular fashion - or so we believed. He was usually somebody’s Dad leaving getting dressed up till the very last minute because it was so hot!

One Christmas we were told he’d be flying over the playground and the pilot would tip the wings to let us know it was time to cheer loudly but when we heard the plane approaching, much lower than normal, one of the older boys yelled, ‘Take cover, We’re being strafed!’ We all screamed and hit the deck with our hands over our heads. The poor teachers had to calm us down and clean us all up because we were covered in sand!

TiggyW

Surely all history is real? 🤔

Yes, but some is written by the victors or by those who want us to remember it in a certain way.

I suppose this is 'lived' history through the eyes of children.

Dandylion

My uncle was in Bomber Command in the RAF and promised my Mother (his sister) that he would fly over the house to say Goodbye when they were going back to their base in Scotland. On the day, she heard the plane, and lifted me and rushed outside - then an ENORMOUS plane came really low over the garden, everything went dark, it waggled its wings and rose into the air again and left. The noise was so awful, I was terrified and burst into tears. So did she.

Such a beautiful memory. I too have tears in my eyes just reading it. Thanks for sharing.

I also remember the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan saying in 1957 “Let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good” and my father snorting with derision and saying "He can speak for himself but not us"!

In 1953 my parents had bought a small television to watch the Coronation and a lot of the neighbours crowded into our small house to watch in black and white.
I remember the magnificent Queen of Tonga riding in her carriage in the rain, waving at the crowds.

The moon landings and the freeing of Nelson Mandela are my most significant historical memories I think along with the end of the worst of the troubles in Northern Ireland

I just remembered - the bombing of the NatWest Tower in London. I remember seeing lots and lots of paper and files streaming out of the windows onto the street.

Surely all history is real? 🤔

I remember the Cuban Missile crisis, my SisIL had just had her second baby and she gave me the biggest hug ever, we were both very scared.

Perhaps we should all write something for our families to have.
That's a really good idea, Romola

The local newspaper from where I grew up published a photo of a street party which they said was on VE Day 1945 but I knew it must have been a later VE Day celebration because I'm in it, and I hadn't been born on VE Day. I'm being held in the arms of a teenage girl, a neighbour. I do remember her.
I doubt they'd had had time to organise a street party on 8th May 1945.

I remember most of those things although strangely enough not the Cuban missile crisis. I can remember the lights going off and managing by candlelight in the fifties and seventies; rationing; the old king dying and watching the queen's coronation on my grandparents' TV; the Suez canal crisis; the assassinations of JFK and Bobby Kennedy; the moon landings .... but for some reason I don't remember the Cuban missile crisis although I must have been about 16 at the time.