Reply #33: My recollections [View All]

[RFKHumphreyObama]

I've included a few other milestones that some other non-US DU'ers like myself may remember as well

REAGAN'S ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
I don't remember this. I was born in January 1981 so I would have been a very young baby

CHALLENGER
I was 5 and living in SE Asia. I don't think it was as a big deal there as it was in the US -though I could be wrong

RAJIV GANDHI'S ASSASSINATION
I had just woken up and was having breakfast before going to school. Our family always tuned into BBC radio news in the morning and it was the leading news item. I was devastated. Rajiv Gandhi was one of my first political heroes and his death impacted me greatly. I still grieve for him

CLINTON'S ELECTION
I remember this. In the country where I lived at the time, it was in the afternoon. This was the first presidential election that I had followed closely and I remember coming home from school and watching a live news feed from the US with Tom Brokaw doing the election coverage

OKLAHOMA BOMBING
My dad had just gone to work and I was alone with my visiting grandmother and my sister and a family friend. I got up early in the morning and turned on the television to watch the news and of course it had all the latest news and coverage of the event. It also had news of another bombing in Spain on the same day (presumably by ETA). I looked at those two incidences and just thought the world had gone mad. I remember how everyone assumed that Middle Eastern terrorists were responsible until they were discovered not to have been

ISRAELI PM YITZHAK RABIN'S ASSASSINATION
This tragic event occurred while I was studying for school exams. I turned on a Sunday morning news show and heard the news that he had been injured in an assassination attempt. I couldn't believe it -I was stunned. I didn't concentrate at all while studying that day. I later learned that Prime Minister Rabin had died and I was devastated. Prime Minister Rabin was another of my political heroes and I mourned his loss greatly

PRINCESS DIANA'S PASSING
Was studying for another round of exams (these things always seemed to happen when I was studying for exams) and my mother had just come home from shopping. I think it was she who mentioned that she'd heard that Princess Diana had been injured in a car crash. We subsequently turned the television on and learned the tragic news. I was devastated by that -Princess Diana was someone whose career and life I had followed closely and whom I had absolutely adored. I remember having problems sleeping that night

BORIS YELTSIN RESIGNS AS PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA
I was at a New Year's Eve Party while on a visit to SE Asia. Someone told me the news and I rushed in to watch it on a TV in one of our host's rooms.

9/11
It was late in the evening when it happened here. I was at university and had just concluded a long and exhausting day at university. I had returned to the university college where I was staying and was trying to complete some study notes on -coincidentally enough-American history. It was around midnight and I decided to give up and go to bed because I was too exhausted. But I decided to have one last check to see whether my favorite online paper had changed put tomorrow's edition of the paper online yet and that's when I heard the news. At that time there were still rumors flying around of bombs going off and the like and it was very uncertain. I turned on the television and all of our national channels had crossed live to the US. I stayed up the whole night watching the latest updates come in. The next day I went to my American history tutorial and of course it was the main topic of discussion