Cultural moments

[Mercutio]

I'm trying to be a conscientious objector to anything more than a moment of silence on 9/11 - the last thing I want is another unctious rememberance with a corporate logo very close by, but today I had an interesting conversation with someone just a bit older than me about moments everyone remembers - those little tiny shocks when you first hear of an event and say "I just heard a piece of history".

Of course I'm too young to remember JFK/RFK/MLK - the classic boomer zeitgeist crap, but here's some of the moments I came up with:

Do you remember what you were doing when you heard about the following:

The Sept. 11 attacks/Trade Tower collapse?
The day the Berlin Wall fell?
The challenger disaster? The first shuttle launch?
The day Ronald Reagan/John Lennon/the Pope was shot?

Those were the moments that stood out in my mind.
Some disturbing surprises, too.

Everyone I asked today could describe the moment they heard about the OJ Simpson verdict, for example, and almost everyone, except myself, seems to have a vivid memory of hearing of Princess Diana's death. A personal moment for me was hearing that IBM had laid off workers for the first time, as it did in 1991.

Oddly, very few people had as keen a rememberance of things like the start of the Gulf War, or some other recent historic milestones (Bush II being summarily placed in office, the Quebec independance vote - sorry Coug - or the Russian coup attempt that ultimately put Yeltsin in power).

I say these are cultural moments because literally everyone I spoke to today remembers first hearing about 9/11. Literally everyone I spoke to remembers hearing that OJ's not guilty.

Kind of an amazing phenomenon, when you think about it.

 

[timwhit]

One of my friends was just talking about this today, it is known as flashbulb memories. There is a mechanism in the brain called now print which takes a snapshot during a extrodinary time or a shocking moment. These tend to decay and change over time depending on many factors.

Someone with a better background in psychology should be able to give a better explanation than that. I got my info second hand...

 

[jtr1962]

The Sept. 11 attacks/Trade Tower collapse?

I was up all night playing MSTS and my brother called about 9:05 AM and said that something happened to the WTC. He didn't have cable and wasn't getting reception so he came over to our place to watch. I was in utter shock when the first building went, although after that I figured it was only a matter of time before the second one collapsed. I remember sleeping less that 6 hours total that entire week, and to be honest, after seeing those images again, the feelings are just as raw a year later. I doubt me or many others this close to the disaster will ever be truly over it.

Incidentally, I remember the first attack, too. I was home alone and one of my neighbor's daughters rang the bell asking for my brother. Right then the regular TV programming broke away to the WTC coverage and we both watched the next hour or so completely in disbelief.

The day the Berlin Wall fell?

Don't remember.

The challenger disaster? The first shuttle launch?

I was talking about classes with my sister while she was watching TV and doing her laundry. The regular programming broke into coverage of the disaster. I don't remember what I was doing during the first launch, but I do remember watching it.

The day Ronald Reagan/John Lennon/the Pope was shot?

I remember both those events, just not exactly what I was doing.

Everyone I asked today could describe the moment they heard about the OJ Simpson verdict, for example, and almost everyone, except myself, seems to have a vivid memory of hearing of Princess Diana's death.

I have zero recollection of those events. I really didn't pay any attention to the Simpson trial. In fact, I got tired of hearing about it. I remember being shocked at Princess Diana's death, but don't remember what I was doing. In time, coverage of that event became tiresome as well.

Oddly, very few people had as keen a rememberance of things like the start of the Gulf War, or some other recent historic milestones (Bush II being summarily placed in office, the Quebec independance vote - sorry Coug - or the Russian coup attempt that ultimately put Yeltsin in power).

Well, I remembered the Gulf war pretty well, and also Yeltsin's coup.

How many people here vividly remember Tianamin Square, especially that footage of the person blocking the tank? That's probably the bravest thing I've ever seen anybody do. In fact, the whole thing was pretty brave, and I'm sure those protesting knew they had a good chance of being killed for what they were doing, but evidently believed in it enough to continue.

 

[slo crostic]

Perhaps because 9/11 and OJ were sensationalised by the media so much?

An interesting fact.....
I'm no psychologist, but I do know that smell is the best memory trigger. I have a bottle of really cheap aftershave that was given to me whilst on a family vacation in Europe in 1988. I used that aftershave only once while on holidays and that was in Innsbruck in Austria. Still to this day, if I smell that scent and close my eyes, I can vividly see the view from the window of the hotel room that very morning. It's a really strange phenomenon, but nice too, in it's own funny little way.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't remember the massacre at Tienammen Square as such, but I really remember watching "Good Morning America" the morning before it happened. There was an intense "China is going the way of Germany" vibe from the reporter stationed in Beijing even up to a few hours before it happened.

9/11 - I was on my way to the dentist, and stopped to check slashdot. Something about a plane hitting the WTC. This was MAYBE two minutes after it happened. Couldn't hit CNN. I thought it was a joke for a second and then I realized that there were 1000 replies to the slashdot story instantly. I flicked on the radio... second crash, crash at the Pentagon... by this time I'd gotten to cnn.com, seen the pictures... flicked between slashdot, where eyewitnesses were posting what was happening at NYC, NPR and SR, where people were doing play-by-play of the TV coverage (and saying stupid, stupid things). Never got the dentist. Donated blood, though.

Challenger Crash - I was home with Chicken Pox. Watched the disaster live on TV (back when TV carried live feeds from shuttle liftoffs). It was an amazingly quiet event. I remember hearing Dan Rather (newscaster for non-USians) say something dry about "Launch Vehicle Problems" after it was utterly apparent that the thing had exploded in mid-air.

Simpson Verdict. I was at Purdue. It was late morning and EVERYONE was watching TV. There were no cars on the street, no blaring stereos, no one walking to class. SILENT. I was in my dorm room, and I was pissed about how seriously everyone was taking the whole thing. I put on Shostikovich's 9th symphony and blared it, as much to make some noise as to remind people there's more to life than celebrity news. A consequence of that is that I missed what friends tell me was an almost campus-wide collective groan when the verdict was announced. Oh well.

 

[CougTek]

For both the Challenger crash and the WTC collapse, I first thought it wasn't really happening. In fact, I thought it couldn't be happening.

Like you Merc, I saw Challenger boomed in direct on TV and it took me like 30 seconds to realize that it wasn't normal to see the shuttle explode.

I learned about the WTC when both towers were already down, from the SR bar&grille forum. It was during my trading days on the stock market and I used to wake up just in time for the beginning of the session at 9:30am. But since I wasn't expecting anything special to occur on that day on the market, I just opened my computer(yep, no @home things running back then so my boxes weren't running 24x7) and I started my usual search for IT news on the web. Around 10am, I went on SR's Bar&Grille and noticed a thread with a title like "OMG! Plane crashed on WTC!" I thought "Yeah, right, a poor cesna went into it, big deal." and I continued to read other threads. But then the thread about the WTC kept growing wnd growing and growing so maybe around 10:20am, I clicked on it and started reading it. When I saw someone posting that one of the 2 towers was down and later on on the second tower too, I almost laugh, thinking it was an hoax. The WTC down...because of cesna : OF COURSE! At the moment, I still was sure it was a small plane. It never past through my mind that someone could be crazy enough to fly a boeing, much less two, on a building in downtown New York. But moments later, when I realized other members didn't react like if it was a bad joke, I opened the TV and had a hard time to believe what I saw. All the fucking channels showed the same pictures and talked about the same thing.

So I learned about the WTC on SR B&G.

And the only thing I remember from the JFK murder was to see the news reader (which I don't remember the name though he was fairly well known - had glasses with thick black borders) announcing it, taking off slowly his glasses when he read the news and drop a tear.

Oddly, very few people had as keen a rememberance of things like the start of the Gulf War, or some other recent historic milestones (Bush II being summarily placed in office, the Quebec independance vote...

Recent historic milestone, the Québec independance vote? For us yes, for the world, much less and for the United States, I pretty sure most American except those on the northern East coast and Florida can't tell where Québec is. At least, that's the impression I have. So our indépendance vote being an historic milestone, doubtful. Thanks for mentioning it though. I would be curious to know if people in Oz or remote corners of Europe (like the mediaval-like Greece) knew (by an other mean than Google search or my yeilling about it) that there's been an independance vote in Québec in 1995.

 

[Tea]

Island in the Carribean, isn't it? They make some kind of liquer, one of those odd-coloured bottles that the Bartender tries to hide when I come in.

 

[Tannin]

Ignore her, Coug. She has been a little odd all day. No head for medication.

There are two answers to your question:

1: The vast majority of Australians would probably answer much as Tea just did.

2: Those few who draw their information about the world from the fast-dwindling remains of the public broadcasting system - ABC radio in particular - heard a good deal about it. Those with better memories than mine could probably run over the major issues and personalities. I should imagine that PM and The World Today would have had six or a dozen articles about it over a period of a month or two, and that one or two of those would have run five minutes or more. (Five minutes of Radio news contains approximately the same amount of information as 30 to 40 minutes of TV news, or about the same amount as you can read in two minutes.)

 

[Mercutio]

One of the big reasons Quebec stands out in my mind was that it was one of the first moments in the internet age I can remember where "online" trumped traditional media. I sat, with 4000 other people, on IRC channel #quebecvote, and got a moment-to-moment accounting of the vote.

Those online just a little bit longer have similar stories about most of the fall of communism.

 

[Buck]

Let's see, OJ verdict, my boss had us all stop the printing presses, come into his office, and watch the verdict on TV. WTC, I was sitting down to eat breakfast and switched on Good Morning America. The first building had already been hit, and then I saw the second one get smacked. Gulf War, I was at work and the feeling was weird, especially considering my father was in Germany at the time (a German citizen) and we worried how far this war would escalate, and whether or not he'd be able to come home. Challenger incident I heard live on the radio first and didn't see the actual event until the evening news. Reagan being shot, let me see, that happened mid-day I believe, or early afternoon - I heard that on the radio too. Oh, the Berlin Wall, I saw that live on television. Princess Diana's death was being broadcast on the evening news when I finally saw it. Incidentally, I watched her wedding live on television (what a waste of time). The Pope getting shot - I didn't get that tidbit until the evening news either. Locally, the Los Angeles riots were memorable. I was at work, we heard about the riots starting on the radio. My boss wanted to go out and buy a gun to protect his shop, but his wife (a bit more rational) talked him out of it. We were 60 miles away for crying out loud! What, were they all going to hop into cars and drive down to his shop?

 

[SteveC]

I was too young to remember Reagan/the Pope being shot.
For the challenger disaster, I found out in class just after the lunch break. The students that went home for lunch told us that it had exploded.
The Berlin Wall I remember watching on the news. For the start of the Gulf War, I remember I was listening to the radio in my room, when the announcer interupted and said that the bombing had starting. The first WTC bombing in 1993, I was home sick from school, and watching TV. All of the local channels went out, and I flipped to CNN, and they said that there had been an explosion. For the Oklahoma City bombing, I remember driving to Taco Bell for lunch with two of my friends when we heard on the radio that there had been a huge explosion in a building and 16 people were dead with 100 missing. The OJ Simpson verdict, I was in college, and someone had a portable radio on in my class where we heard the verdict. Reaction on campus was definitely split along black/non-black lines.

For 9/11, my dad called me up really quickly and said "There's been an explosion on top of the WTC. Turn on your TV, and I'll call you back." I thought it was a transformer on the roof, when he said that. I turned on my TV, and a couple of seconds later, they switched to a picture of it. I saw the huge hole in the side of building, and I called him right back. By that time, he had heard off the wires that it was a small plane. I told him that it couldn't have been, because the damage was too big. We heard bits and pieces of information and I make about 10 calls between my dad, my mom, and my sister. Then I was flipping through the channels, and I just got to CNBC when the second plane hit. I immediately tried calling my dad, but couldn't get through. After about 15 tries, I finally got through but it was a horrible connection. I could barely hear him, and I think I heard him say that he was getting out now.
I called up my sister, and she was freaking out, so I decided to go to her place. By this time, I was literally shaking. When I pulled out of my complex, I saw about 10 people on the side of the road looking towards the skyline. I glanced over, and I couldn't believe it. There was a huge black cloud coming out of the towers that didn't seem real. I remember looking at the other drivers' faces, and they all had the same blank expression. I saw the buildings collapse from my sister's place, and we were still trying to get through to our dad. We didn't know he was okay until about two and a half hours later when he arrived home. When I was driving home, I looked towards the city, and this time I saw an even larger cloud of grey smoke covering most of lower Manhattan.
The next day, I found out that my 26-year old neighbor was one of the missing. She worked on the 91st floor of 1 WTC, and decided to go into work that day at the last minute even though she was sick. I still can't believe that she's gone. My development dedicated a flag pole and a plaque to her last night.

Steve

 

[Tannin]

JFK: I just barely remember that. Something on the radio and everyone was shocked and solemn. I was four.

The Apollo capsule fire: Heard about that at home, I think. Remember the shock and horror of it clearly.

1966 Grand Final: Collingwood lose to St Kilda by 1 point.

Harold Holt (Oz PM) drowning. Remember that well. It was summer and I was at the local swimming pool all day. We must have had a transistor radio with us.

1969: Moon landing: How could anyone forget that? We watched it at school on live TV. Black and white, of course, Oz didn't go to colour TV till about 73 or so. We had live TV of some of the later moon events too, but I was bored by then. Seen it all before. (How foolish we are as children!)

1970 Grand Final: Collingwood are 40-odd points up at half time and Ron Barassi invents modern football on the spot. Carlton go on to win.

1972: Ashes cricket live by satellite from England! Lillie and Thompson at their very best, and we could actually watch it live from 10,000 miles away!

Whitlam Government election night in '72 - the event that finally catapulted Australia into the 20th Century. We were camping, four friends and I, and catching eels. Slippery damn things!

1975: The Dismissal. November 11th. The Governer General, who is the man appointed by the Queen to make sure that the rules are kept and the constituion followed, broke the rules and dismissed the elected Prime Minister and his government. This was an event completely without precedent (and given the huge public reaction to it, an event that will never, ever be repeated). It wasn't a coup South American republic style, but it was as close as we have ever come to that. I was at work. I had just turned 16. I just said "they can't do that", and figured I had to do something. I grabbed some cardboard boxes and some string, cut them flat, made a sandwich board out of them, and caught a tram into the Melbourne City Square. I figured someone had to do something and that was all that I could think of. I suppose I expected to be marching up and down, all alone in front of the city shoppers and accountants. When I got there, 20 or 30 thousand other people had had exactly the same idea. No-one organised it, no-one planned it, it just happened. After a while, I took my hat off, threw all the money I could spare into it, walked around until it was full. Other people started doing that too. Someone brought some big plastic rubbish bins, we threw the money into them, passed the hats around some more. Eventually, the appropriate people arrived and started organising things. But that massive protest just happened. I'll never forget it. And neither will any of our future Governers General. Kerr will live on in history's infamy, and no GG will flout the constitution again in a hurry.

1976: Collingwood win the wooden spoon for the first time ever.

1977: Rags to riches: Collingwood and North Melbourne play the only drawn grand final there ever was or ever will be. I was at work, at McDonalds in St Kilda, and the whole damn place just stopped. You want a burger? You can damn well wait. One of the three most unforgettable sporting events I have ever witnessed - alongside the almost drawn Ashes Test at the MCG where AB and Thommo batted and batted and batted in a glorious last-wicket partnership all afternoon and into the next day after Kim Hughes and Co had collapsed yet again. I was there for that, at the G. In the end, Botham took Thommo's wicket with the new ball and England won 578 to 575. And the third of my trio of unforgettables, which is likely to surprise a few people here, I should imagine: World Series baseball, around about 1981 or '83. New York vs Boston was it? Red Sox? Best of seven series, and I watched all seven of them live on late-night TV - like 4:00AM or something. Was it New York who had lost the first three and were way, way down in the 4th and final game? Final inning, two batters out, the last batter had struck out every time so far in the series and he was on two strikes already ... and they came back from there. Won the series. Awesome! Can anyone give me a link or two to that game? It must be famous. I'd love to refresh my memory, but not knowing even what the sides are called, I don't know where to look it up. (Oh, and after an agony of confusion and indecision, they announced that the '77 drawn grand final would be replayed the next week. Then they changed the rules so that it could never happen again. But we lost the replay, of course.)

1977: Lynyrd Sknyrd plane crash. I think this is the public event that shocked me more than any other. I was just stunned, numb.

1979: We are miles in front at half time, but loose to Carlton again, this time by just 8 points.

1980: A different result. We are behind at half-time, and way behind by the end. David Cloke kicked 7 goals from the pocket.

1981: See 1979. But make it 4 points.

1982: Falklands War. At home, at work, really, really hoping that England could pull off a miracle. Very dissapointed in Bob Hawke's token help. They are our friends, they needed all the help they could get, and we did near enough to nothing. Hawke was a Prime Minister so lack-lustre that John Howard probably admires him a great deal.

1990: Collingwood are miles in front by half time, same as usual. But I'd learned by then. Collingwood never win Grand Finals. This time, I refused to get excited. And then, as we entered time-on in the final quarter (say, about five minutes to go in a 120-odd minute game) I started to question things. "Hey", I said "it's time on in the final quarter and we are 50-odd points up, more than double Essendon's score. We could nearly win it from here, it's got to be at least a 50-50 chance." Fair dinkum: I didn't honestly start to believe that we could win it until time-on in the last quarter. In consequence, after all those years of hoping and preying and dreaming and wishing, when it finally happened, it was .... nothing special. I wish it had happened when I was 12 instead of when I was 32. It would have meant a lot more when I was 12.

1991: Gulf War. At work with the radio, then at home sitting up all night watching it on TV. That terrible night when the Scuds were falling thick and fast and no-one knew if they had biological warheads yet. Chilling.

The day the Berlin Wall fell? Nope.

The challenger disaster? Nope.

The first shuttle launch? Nope.

The day Ronald Reagan was shot? Nope.

The day John Lennon was shot? Nope.

I had forgotten that one of the Popes was shot.

OJ Who?

Princess What?

Sept. 11th attacks: On Storage Review. Didn't pay too much attention at first, thought it was a mistake or a joke or something. It wasn't the B&G, it was "general": there was no B&G then, and the thread was: "OT: planes fly into World Trade Centre", I think. After a while I thought about turning the TV on, decided that I'd already read Tom Clancy, left it off.

Part of the reason was that I remembered back to when I'd watched the Gulf War and there was a deep buried part of me that wanted something to happen when the Scuds were falling, even something bad to happen, a part of me that wanted there to be CBW warheads and wanted Bush and Co to retalliate and wipe thoe bastards off the face of the earth. Mostly I wanted it to be resolved with the minimum death and suffering, of course, but still, I remembered that feeling of watching the war unfold like it was a football event and decided I didn't want to do that again. To this day I have not seen that famous footage of the second plane hitting. I'm quite possibly the only person in the whole damn world that has TV and hasn't seen it yet. I heard on the radio yesterday that two of the three commercial TV networks alone had twenty one hours of rehash coverage of it last night. I actually flipped the TV on last night, seeing as I have spent the last five days here at home with nothing to do bar read and surf, watched 20 random seconds of a fireman writing a number on his arm in front of some wreckage, thought "I don't need to see this, it won't increase my understanding of the world in any way, it won't help anyone, least of all me" and flipped the channel. Watched two minutes of The Simpsons, said "to hell with it" and flicked it off, went back to my book.

 

[Buck]

Ah yes, the Falkland Islands. I forgot about that. I saw the event on television. When I first heard about it, I was shocked.

 

[Bartender]

Buck, you don't remember any of these events! You've been sick with drink and passed out since the sixth grade.

 

[Buck]

pffft!

 

[Tannin]

Woops! Nearly forgot:

2002: Collingwood play Brisbane in the Grand Final. At half time, they are 25 points up. Naturally, Brisbane go on to win by 9 points.

 

[Cliptin]

While not not on truely on topic, I think I'll just call this a veer.

There was an interesting article on MSN.com today about the lives of 4 people immediately following the "event" and for a few days after. A life timeline if you will.

This is the story of how a widow, a general, a key Bush adviser and Pakistan’s president braved the fires of September 11.

The general is Gen. Peter Pace vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, the Bush adviser is national security advisor Condi Rice.

 

[Mercutio]

I didn't list the OKC bombing. I was eating lunch in my dorm cafeteria when I heard about it - the building had a low-power FM station that was broadcast to a couple of surrounding dorms - and the monkey running the thing broke through the music that was playing, some insipid, singsongy Beatles thing (la la la la life goes on), to tell us that someone had just blown up a building in Oklahoma.

I thought it was a joke. Then I realized that the people I was eating with, Rafat and Mahoud (I think that's how it's spelled), were getting REALLY funny looks from most of the rest of the cafeteria. We got up and left. Rather than feeling sad for the victims, I walked upstairs ashamed of the fact that, these people one sees every day at a university, are suspect the INSTANT something goes wrong.

Of course, everyone, including my friends, thought Iraq did it, anyway.

Reagan being shot: I saw it on TV, live. I was four years old at the time. My mother was hosting a birthday party for one of our neighbors, and I was parked in front of the TV. I went and got my mother when I heard the president was shot. Mom's reaction was "oh well, I didn't for him." Then we ate birthday cake. Which probably has more to do with my memory than the shooting.

 

[Tannin]

Fpund it: New York Mets vs Boston Red Sox, 1986. I wonder if it's possible to get the series on video or DVD?

 

[SteveC]

Fpund it: New York Mets vs Boston Red Sox, 1986. I wonder if it's possible to get the series on video or DVD?

Now that is something I definitely remember. I had tickets to Game 4 of the NLCS, but my mom wouldn't let me go because I was sick (I was 9 at the time). As for the infamous Game 6 of the World Series, I thought for sure the Mets had lost. Then, a couple of hits, a wild pitch, and of course the ball through Buckner's legs. It's a shame Buckner got the blame for losing the series, because he didn't. Boston had to also lose Game 7, which they did.

Steve