Can you remember where you were when you heard Princess Diana had been killed?...etc

[Kt Templar]

The night Diana died I'd just finished a late shift and was going to bed... the report said she'd been in an accident and that Dodi had died. I thought nothing more of it and went to bed... I had a bizzare dream that she'd broken her nose in the accident but had walked away from the crash. Oh, I thought maybe they can fix the bump then. Not too proud of that one but in my defense it was my subconcious speaking! In the morning the full news came out, that week was one of the most amazing ones in the UK, people were so nice to each other and everyone seemed devastated.

9/11: Was working and my boss came in and said there'd been crashes in New York. We had a tiny 5" portable TV and spent the rest of the afternoon watching horrified.

London Bombings: I was at work again and people started to tell me that there'd been some explosions in town and that none of their mobile phones were working. My mum was travelling on the outskirts of London and I spent a good couple of hours trying to get hold of her. Thankfully she never got on the tube and ended up having lunch at a friend house on the way.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Princess Diana - I had just gotten done work at 8am that morning and went over to my mom's house to play on the Internet. She had on one of those morning news shows and that's when I heard the announcement.

Twin Towers - I was at work and heard it on Howard Stern. I heard the whole thing unravel on his show. My boss, who hated Howard and preferred we not listen to him, was even glued to the radio!! I remember that day -- orders stopped coming in! Our boss told us we could go home if we wanted, but no one did. I remember him walking by us saying "Both towers are down."

July 7th -- I woke up and read all the news on my Live Journal Friends page! It was so weird -- my husband (then fiance!) was visiting me from London and was scheduled to go home that day!!!! Instead, he married me and got to stay. He was a bit concerned about a few of his friends, but they turned out to be ok. One was excited by all the drama.

 

[Smithy]

Diana - I was at work when this came through on the news. I can remember that everybody stopped working and spent the rest of the working day watching all the reports on telly.

9/11 - Actually happened very early in the morning here and the first I heard of it was when I jumped into the car to drive to work. I had the BBC World Service on and to begin with I couldn't work out what the hell was going on. When I got to work nobody was working, everybody was watching the telly and online reading the reports.

7/7 - My fiancée and I were in the car driving along when the reports came through. This was scary as I have a lot of friends and family in London. And you couldn't call a cellphone in London afterwards. Took hours to find out if people were OK.

I can't remember the exact moment of hearing the declaration of war with Argentina but I remember quite a lot of the Falklands War. I was at school and ever morning the teacher would go over with us what had happened over the previous day. And I can still remember the awful pictures of HMS Sheffield on fire.

I'd imagine in the future that kids will mostly ask us where we were when 9/11 happened. For ever genration there's probably always been and always will be a "where were you when..." question and 9/11 will be ours.

 

[reetpleat]

I was busy earning a living in the American Capitalist marketplace so that I could pay my own way and not rely on government to support me. I totally missed the activities of Diana Spencer's life and her death.

-dixon cannon

Yeah, that Lady DI is jut a welfare mom. living off the state. ANd that deadbeat husband of hers who ran off with another woman. A bunch of white trash all of them.

 

[CharlieH.]

Lady Di: I was fooling around my parent's bedroom when whatever was on the TV got interrupted with the news. Didn't care much about it.

9/11: I had just arrived to school, and there was alot of hubub about a plane crash "on a tower". I dismissed it as a mere airport mishap, until someone gave me the details. We all hurried to the cafeteria to see the news, and that's when the second plane hit.

July 7th: I caught the news on CNN as I was waking up. I immediately checked my contacts in London to make sure everyone was fine.

 

[moustache]

Here are a few i remember:

Pull out of Saigon-1975-I was still in bed and heard my parents talking about it.Jumped out and went to the TV to watch the helicopters leaving with the last transports of people.

The 1980 Olympic Hockey Miracle:Watched it!!It was glorious!

Princess Diana:Came home from shopping to the news.Put a tape in my VCR and taped the next 12 hours of coverage.Then did it again for the funeral.Have the whole thing.

Twin Towers:Had the tv on just after the first plane hit.I was at work and watching the news.Then was rivited to the screen when the second hit.
This was probably THE most dramatic event in my young(40)life as far as tv goes.

The next most dramatic was probably the first Gulf War and the night time images.

JD

 

[koopkooper]

Princess Di- I was staying at a hotel in New York, I was working at the US Open and had just walked in my room after spending the weekend at a Rockabilly weekend in Jersey,I hadn't heard any news for two days, the phone rang and it was my mother, the line was very bad and I thought she said "have you heard that Diana has been killed by Pavarotti" I was beside myself, she actually said Paparazzi but the line was so bad it sounded like the big ol Opera singer had flipped out and pulled a gun on her! Well atleast that was the image in my head for about two seconds!

 

[BJonas]

When Princess Diana died, I was having an argument with an ex-girlfriend. I went into the other room and turned on the tv, and there it was.

On September 11th, my wife and I were awakened by a knock at the door by a friend who was staying with us. He said, "You guys gotta get up, something bad... REAL bad... just happened."

For the subway bombings in London, I was at work. I'm a customer service telephone operator, and a caller asked me, "Have you heard what happened in England?"

And, for some reason, I remember when Graham Chapman from Monty Python died. I guess I was in junior high school, and my mom had read it in the paper. She told me when I woke up.

Strangely, I can't remember where I was when anything really good happened, like the Berlin wall coming down. Just the sad things.

...

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Well, I am going way back into history here:

April, 1945: I was almost 3 when I heard my grandparents and mother say in hushed and anguished tones, "Roosevelt's dead!" I remember litle else but that it was talked about for days and people were fearful. The war was not yet over, he had guided our nation through a depression and that war, and then he suddenly died. My mother's family adored him.

February, 1959: I was in high school and was going to the Val Air Ballroom in Des Moines, Iowa, the next night to see Buddy Holly and the Cricketts. I was looking forward to that. I liked his music, as well as Richie Valens. I was in study hall when I heard the news. It was the day the music died and I never got to see either one of them.

In August, 1962, I got out of a friend's car to go home and was told that Marilyn Monroe had died, alleded suicide. I was not surprised as I knew she had been having mental difficulties.

November, 1963: I was in an Ed Psych class at Drake University, when a woman in our class came in and said shots had been fired at Dallas and that President Kennedy had been shot. Later, others came in and reported all sorts of wild stories. Finally, my best friend's brother came in with a radio and the teacher asked him to just keep it on. When we heard the announcement that Kennedy was dead, the instructor said "Let's go home." The entire campus was in shock, people were crying, I had sleet in my hair and on my face and didn't care, just wandered around campus looking for my friend.

April 1968. I heard on the radio that Martin Luther King, a man I greatly admired, had been killed. I was very upset, went to the campus (University of Iowa) and found many African American's meeting and crying, two young women I knew had shaved their heads.

June, 1968: A friend I was staying with came in from an early morning job. I was still sleeping. She woke me up and said that Robert Kennedy had been shot. "It figures," I said.

December 1980: I heard on the news that John Lennon had been shot and killed. I was depressed for several days. It was the end of an era.

In 1986, I got up to watch the news before going to work and found a somber Dan Rather announcing that the Challenger had blown up. I was freaked by it not only because of the tragedy, but, I had envied that school teacher going up into outer space. If someone had called me the night before to say, "Krista McCullough has the flu, would you like to take her place?". I would have said, "Yes!" And I'd have been dead.

August 1997, was home watching CNN when the news came on to say that Princess Diana had been in an auto accident. Dodi and the driver had been killed, Diana was in the hospital. I thought maybe she would survive, but several hours later, she was gone.

9/11/01 -- Again, I got up to get ready for work, turned on the news to find one of the towers burning. It was a plane crash, that was what I thought, until, of course, the 2nd plane hit. I called my mother and told her to turn on the TV. "I think the tragedy of our generation has just happened," I said. "Yours was Pearl Harbor, this one may be worse."

karol

 

[pigeon toe]

Princess Diana: I was young, probably 11 or so, and was already in bed. We had a little earthquake that woke me up, so I ran downstairs to ask my mom if she felt it, and she was watching the news, and told me that she died. I was totally shocked. I hardly knew anything about her, but I still felt terribly sad.

Twin Towers: I was in 9th grade, and my mom woke me up while it was still dark, saying that "they bombed New York". Of course I got up, went downstairs and watched TV with my mom. She started calling everyone up in our family, since my uncle worked across the street from the WTC. I remember going to school and having kids tell me to "cheer up" and "it's not so bad". I wanted to slap them all! None of them had any connections to NY, and all day I was worried about my family. My dad used to work there and I remember being up in his offices when I was little, pressed against the window. I couldn't believe that it was just gone.

That moment actually flashed me back to my own "Flashbulb Moment" where I was probably 10 or 11, brushing my teeth one night and thought to myself, "I am so lucky to live in the United States because we will never go to war or have terrorists." Obviously, I was wrong about that one.

 

[Merlin]

The night Princess Di was killed (Labor Day weekend, 1997), I was vacationing in New Hampshire with my cousin and a friend of hers. We were watching "Saturday Night Live", and they broke into the broadcast to announce the accident. For the first 10 minutes, we thought it was an SNL sketch, and were just waiting for it to become funny.

It never did. Which is sort of a hallmark of a lot of SNL sketches lately. Come to think of it, I don't remember where I was when Belushi died. . .

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

JFK: I was two and a half, no memories no matter how hard I try.

RFK and Martin Luther King: I was 7, and I hadn't heard of either gentleman before I heard of their murders.

Elvis: I was 16, and I think I heard about it on the radio at a friend's father's gas station.

John Lennon: Watching a local Hawaii TV show called "Hawaiian Moving Company" and saw the crawl at the bottom of the screen. That one hit me the hardest.

Diana, Princess of Wales: Read about it online, on The Drudge Report.

9/11/01. I was asleep in California. I awoke and read my e-mail and had a message from an old friend who basically said "What now?" I didn't have a TV in my room, but I saw a few images on the Drudge Report. I came out to the living room ( I rent a bedroom in a house) and just said "Turn on the TV." Both towers had already fallen at that point, I think.

I live near Van Nuys Airport and the one thing I remember most vividly, besides watching the news on TV and chain-smoking, was the utter silence in the skies above.

 

[Mr. Lucky]

Munich: I remember watching it on TV not understanding what was happening, but KNOWING that it wasn't right.

John Lennon: Sixteen and living in Buffalo, Ny. I remember they had a Memorial for him, candlelight, in Delaware Park. I still have pictures somewhere.

Reagan: I have no clue, just foggy memories.

Challenger: After my roomate called me, I spent the day in the Linwood Grill off The Fens in Boston watching it on TV. It was especially poignant since Christa MacCullife was from New England.

Princess Diana: Sitting in the bar at Lawry's Prime Rib in Beverly Hills watching, again, the TV. The odd part was looking over all the others assembled and noticing a number of Hollywood folk (Richard Grieco in particular) that were deeply effected. It also ended my pre-post-pubescent fantasy that I had been carrying since I was 18 of having a secret affair with Diana.

9/11: Just back from Vegas when we got a call that morning from a friend Back East who was in tears. Spent the day watching TV and praying that all those I knew in The City were safe. Most were. Some weren't. God bless them.

And, like Tony, the eeriest thing was the utter lack of air traffic. I live under the Burbank flight path and there was nothing more deafening than that three days of silence.

 

[Brooksie]

When Princess Diana had been killed, I was living in Portland at that time and I was visiting my parents at there house (on the coast) watching the TV.

When 9/11 happened I was living in Portland and visiting my parents again. I had spent the night and when I woke up my mom and dad said something was going on in New York, I could not believe my eyes (what I was seeing on tv).

What is funny though is that I only used to visit my parents a few times a year (and these things happened while visiting) and now I live next door.

Brooksie

 

[jazzzbaby]

Absolutely! I was getting ready to go out for the evening and the news came on the tele...at the time she was being transported to the hospital and then the news came that she had passed. I was quite effected by it. I really liked her.

I can even recall her wedding...as I was a young girl at my aunts home watching it in the florida room with my cousins.


AND The Challenger: I was in 9th grade living in Florida just an hour north of the Cape. I had the day off as I was not feeling well. It was typical for us to go outside to watch the lift off.
It's an incredible feeling to see it with the naked eye. The plum of smoke underneath it and the ground shaking minutes after it has taken off. Quite powerful indeed. Anyhow...my mom and I noticed something odd seemed to have occurred. We had seen so many lift offs and this one was not right. We went inside and watched the news. That was when the reality was sitting in. The next lift off occurred when I was a senior in high school. We were all let out of our classes to watch it. We were all so nervous (many kids parents work there, including my father)...so ... we were praying and holding hands. When it was a success we just hugged one another and even cried. The memory of seeing the Challenger explode had really marked us years earlier.

 

[OldSkoolFrat]

I was busy earning a living in the American Capitalist marketplace so that I could pay my own way and not rely on government to support me. I totally missed the activities of Diana Spencer's life and her death.

-dixon cannon

You were working on Labor Day Weekend?[huh]

Kennedy, missed it by a few months.

Bobby and MLK, don't remember. My dad was in Vietman at the time and my mother never watched the news until I was in bed.

Reagan, In high school, went to the car to get my clothes for Cross Country/Track practice and heard it on the car radio.

Challenger, Skipping a class to cram for a test in the next class in college. UAH Located in Huntsville, Alabama; home of the Marshall Space flight center where much of the shuttle was designed and built. Built literally over Werner von Braun's dead body. He would never alow a reusable space craft to be designed, built and used during his lifetime. Too much wear and tear on the craft was his thoughts on the matter.

Diana, Was in New Orleans with my wife, my inlaws and friends of theirs. Interesting as Labor Day Weekend in the French Quarter is Southern Decadance Weekend and we all had no idea that it was such: Indeed a gay ol' time.

9-11, Teaching High School. Learned later that a HS chum was on the second plane.

 

[TheCelt]

The Celt

Yes, I was in the hospital, no one seemed to know what my illness was, but, I called my fiancee, who was in en-route. She was the Princess Di fan and I was on my "Death Bed"

 

[Amelie]

I can't remerber where I was for diana
I was probably too young

The only one I clearly remembered, is where I was when I heard for the towers: physics class, just after a short break
I was in a sort of trauma, I couldn't belive what I was hearing, andI was so frightened for the future..
New York, when we think of if is next door for montreal, and so is US in general
( I am saying this because even though it wasn't in my country, nor touching people I knew, I felt so close to those events)

 

[PADDY]

Just watched the Prince's memorial service in the Guard's Chapel, London.

I just cannot believe it is 10-years-ago [huh]

 

[Kishtu]

My parents were on holiday and I was "entertaining" the creature who is now my ex husband. He was still in bed and I'd gone up to the local shop to get the morning papers... and there it was in glorious technicolour.
I remember her funeral rather more vividly because we were supposed to be looking at a house that day and couldn't get a bus for love nor money - the roads were as empty as Christmas Day because everyone was watching the funeral.

09/11 was much stranger because I was working in a call centre in Manchester at the time which took thousands of calls a day.... and when the news came through, obviously we didn;t know because we were in a little room with no windows.... but the phones went silent. And we all sat there looking at each other thinking what? eh? what's happened, is there something up with the phones? till one of the guys' mums rang up and said, get to a TV and you will see what's going on.
And the phones still didn;t ring for about an hour afterwards, people were just so shocked.
Unless you've worked in a call centre you have no idea how silent it gets when the phones just stop ringing for that long. And how much of an impact an event would need to have, to make people stop ringing you....