@fmf saidThis is timely. I remember I was in the basement of my sorority house, folding laundry I had just done, when I heard of the untimely death of Princess Diana.
Or what were you doing when you heard about some momentous event?
You hear people saying that everyone remembers what they were doing when they heard Kennedy had been shot. I don't as I hadn't been born yet.
What about famous deaths or events in your lifetime?
@Suzianne
9/11 attacks: I was at Volvo working in a large office landscape. The girl behind me had a news channel on and we gathered around her, and we watched the second tower being hit, the first one already in flames and smoke. A few years ago I visited National September 11 Memorial & Museum with friends - a moving moment I will never forget.
@fmf saidShortly after news broke about Princess Diana, my mother rang me to tell me. So, when I heard about her death, I was standing in my kitchen holding the phone.
Or what were you doing when you heard about some momentous event?
You hear people saying that everyone remembers what they were doing when they heard Kennedy had been shot. I don't as I hadn't been born yet.
What about famous deaths or events in your lifetime?
@fmf saidThat's not true. I was in Britain, still on holiday. We were all sitting around at someone's house and it was on the morning TV and everyone was dumbstruck.
Shortly after news broke about Princess Diana, my mother rang me to tell me. So, when I heard about her death, I was standing in my kitchen holding the phone.
@fmf saidNo, wait. That's just a YouTube clip I once saw. This was it. We were watching the evening or morning news in Japan and it was interrupted by coverage from CNN with Japanese newsreaders talking over it. There was no plane that hit a second tower live on that occasion.
That's not true. I was in Britain, still on holiday. We were all sitting around at someone's house and it was on the morning TV and everyone was dumbstruck.
@fmf saidWe couldn't believe what we saw - a plane crashing into a high building in New York? Nobody was clear what was happening on the screen right in front of us at that very moment - the transmission was all quiet. Then shortly after, the reporters caught up.
We were watching the evening news in Japan and it was interrupted by coverage from CNN with Japanese newsreaders talking over it. We saw the plane hit the second tower live.
@torunn saidAs I recall, the initial commentary was that a plane had accidentally crashed into a skyscraper in New York. About a quarter of an hour later - the second tower was hit - and there was no more talk about it being an accident.
We couldn't believe what we saw - a plane crashing into high building in New York? Nobody was clear what was happening on the screen right in front of us at that very moment - the transmission was all quiet. Then shortly after, the reporters caught up.
I was watching Regis & Kelly morning show. Regis was wondering it was real. Everyone seemed to be in shock. I believe they switched over to cover the planes hitting the towers showing 1 hit and then the 2nd one a short time later. I was making chess moves and stopped what I was doing. I don't believe I had joined RHP yet.
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@fmf saidI was at work. The first plane hit, and for some reason - I don't know why, because before this, there was no real reason for them to have the news on a live feed; after all, this was well before Twitter - my colleagues had this on a monitor.
We were watching the evening news in Japan and it was interrupted by coverage from CNN with Japanese newsreaders talking over it. We saw the plane hit the second tower live.
After the first plane hit, I said that it might be intentional, but it was much more likely that it was a horrible accident. Of course, after the second plane, I knew I was wrong.
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The one event that will always stay with me is when Yeltsin took over from Gorbachev. (Quite coincidental, that.)
I was walking down the street in the city where I was, then, studying. There was a newspaper board showing a headline, something like "Revolt in the Soviet Union - party factionites lock Gorbachev in his dacha and install Yeltsin in his place".
I very vividly remember thinking "Oh God, they can't be this stupid!". But they were. They removed Gorbachev, and installed Yeltsin as a drunk puppet for the oil oligarchs. And nobody dared complain. They just laughed. And now we have Putin and Trump.
@fmf saidI always thought it was odd how I found out about Frank Zappa's death in December 1993.
Or what were you doing when you heard about some momentous event?
I'd been kind of off the grid for several years living in what was basically a frontier town in pre-internet and, in those days, one-TV-channel eastern Indonesia.
I had never seen anything on the telly about ANY Western pop or rock music. The only foreign music you might see [where I was located] was Japanese pop.
There I was, sitting in someone's house, not even really watching the TV, and up came a picture of Frank Zappa and "December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993" underneath.
Very strange given how relatively obscure he was even in the U.S. [by that time in his life].
I've always harboured the theory that someone senior in that Jakarta newsroom was an unlikely Zappa fan perhaps having studied abroad. I would doubt whether his death was even mentioned on the UK TV news at the time. although I could be wrong.
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@fmf saidElvis while living in Kansas City.
Or what were you doing when you heard about some momentous event?
You hear people saying that everyone remembers what they were doing when they heard Kennedy had been shot. I don't as I hadn't been born yet.
What about famous deaths or events in your lifetime?
Climbing into a pillow case and getting stuck, it was really scary😢.
I heard about the death of Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 from the BBC World Service and then in a phone call from a friend about 5 minutes later. That was followed by several other phone calls or voice notes in the hour that followed.
Most of my UK-based friends marked her passing with all manner of assertions or manifestations of how bitter they were about her and their memories of her term in office. Basically, they were still feeling anger.
I understood but was rather nonplussed by it. I just no longer felt any rancour about her. My friends were surprised.
I explained: I voted with my feet at the end of the Thatcher decade. If I were STILL bitter about her after almost 25 years over-the-fence-and-running having made my choice, wouldn't that reflect poorly on that choice and on the positivity of those 25 years?
Regardless of what I thought about the UK in the 1980s, may she continue to rest in peace.