The Cuban missile crisis of 1962. I was 12 at the time. Russia had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba which is just 90 miles from the USA (Florida). People in the states were building fall out shelters in their basements and stocking it with non-perishable food and water. Students would have drills at school much like the kids during World War II. The real crisis was that we were a hair-breath away from having a nuclear war with Russia. The president at the time was John Kennedy (the best president we ever had). The military wanted us to engage in a nuclear war with Russia but Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy said "no". The only way to win a nuclear war is to not play.
I had just had my 15th birthday, and come home the night before, from a camping trip. I was fully determined to spend most of the morning in my nice, dry, warm bed... but my Mother had other ideas.
She came into my room and woke me up, then told me to get dressed and come downstairs. I asked why?(confused and sleepy), and she said to watch tv.
I went downstairs and she was sitting in front of the screen, and motioned for me to sit beside her... which I did. I sat and peered at a dreadfully 'grainy' picture and tried to understand what I was looking at. Eventually I realised it was something to do with those American people.
I turned to my Mother and asked her why I had to watch this? She said... because it is history... and very few human beings have ever had the chance to watch it being made. She was right. I am 60 now, and I have never stopped being grateful to my Mother for dragging me out of my 'pit' and making me watch Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, and hear his first words.
Long before the internet, she understood that technology would change the way we see history, not least because we would actually see it as it was happening. In the history of the human race, this first human step on a body that was not the Earth was remarkable enough... but for half the world's population to be sitting in front of tv's watching it happen (not all beside their mother's)... is something of a miracle.
Now THAT... is history.
Watching the televised mistimed demolition charges called squibs and pulverized debris flung sideways out from the twin towers on September 11.
My co-worker who at one time worked with detcord (what's used in building demolition) called me up on the phone and said ""Are you catching this"
Yup, another day for America we call a false flag event. At this time we didn't know who was the mark, but within minutes some former CIA asset called Usama binLaden was fingered by a fellow in downtown NYC who looked surprisingly like a military guy in civies.
I remember being a kid at school, old enough in the 1960s to go out on my own in the evenings.
The Island I live on is in England and is very popular with language students from other countries.
I have vivid memories of holding hands around a beach party fire with a multitude of different nationalities of young people and we were all singing the Beatles hit "all you need is love"
My youth was so influenced by the bright and intelligent young people from all over Western Europe. So much so, that I travelled and lived in these countries as an older, but still young person
National feelings for my own countrymen were diluted and I truly felt European. I then travelled further afield...yet still felt fervently an internationalist.
Those days of holding hands at that beach party fire with Germans, Swedes, Danish, Dutch, French, Belgians and Austrians will live with me forever as will the song.
It was John Lennon's death that was the single most traumatic event and awful loss for me !
I was affected a while go when that ceiling collapsed in London when the show was on
Tell me your best personal story of a historic event you lived through such as 9/11, Hurricane Andrew, the assassination of JFK, etc..
Tell me how your day went as if you were planning your day out.
