not exactly friday lulz....

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Exactly 25 years ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded a minute into flight, killing all seven astronauts on board. I was a junior in high school sitting in English class when a classmate who had been in the front office came in with the rumor that the shuttle was lost. Not many years earlier many of those same classmates and I had watched the first shuttle mission launch. The space program roared to life with that mission and Carl Sagan's Cosmos series helped spark my generation's imagination for space.

The rumor was confirmed over the intercom. Many of us sat stunned. Others made jokes in poor taste. I bet all of us remember the exact place we were when we heard.

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Some events leave vivid memories for an entire generation...the shuttle, both roaring our nation into space and being consumed in a fireball miles over our heads, is one of mine...what are yours'?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Columbia blowing up. I was taking a walk around the neighborhood and was asked to go inside. Turned out the Columbia had blown up. Suffice to say I watched the news quite a long time that night. 9/11 was pretty memorable, too, because my dad was visibly worried that day, I asked what was wrong, turned out that something had happened in New York. I had an uncle living there, but didn't know precisely what he'd be worried about.

Turned out instead that the Twin Towers had been destroyed, and I saw 5 WTC go down while talking with a friend on the phone.

The other was the assassination of Benazir Bhutto because one of my high school classmates was Pakistani and I thought she'd mentioned she might be going over there for the holidays.

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

I remember making the mistake at the time of commenting that given that planes often crash with much much bigger death tolls and much much smaller responses perhaps we were overreacting a bit. I was told, very bitterly, "you will never understand because you're not an American".

Dude spoke the truth, apparently.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

I was still in first grade then. It took me a while to really understand what had happened. The teacher turned off the TV pretty quick after.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was just 1 year old back then.

But if there's one event that has stuck in my head, it must be the day Apartheid was abolished, and Mandela was freed. February 11, 1990 was a big day, the event was broadcast live all around the world. It was a day of tremendous joy in many countries, and especially in my home, for many reasons. I still remember that day, although I wasn't even in school at that time yet. :-)

I also remember the summer of 1998. It changed my life. My dad was allowed to travel back to RSA as soon as 1991, just a year after the liberation, and had some more short visits after that. So in 1998 my family decided to spend one whole summer in South Africa, the now free South Africa. I was just 8th grade then. I remember it as if it was yesterday, the country was going crazy at that time because Bafana Bafana were playing in the football World Cup for the first time in history... I still remember our first goal ever, scored by Benni McCarthy against Denmark. :-) Those were the most exciting 3 months of my life so far! I opened my mind and heart to the country of my ancestors, and my long-time dream to be able to experience it personally finally became reality. We toured all across the country and I saw things and people that made me love it forever. After that magic summer, there was no other place that I wanted to live in. So I finished my study in my native Holland and after another year of specialization at LSE in London, I decided to move here. I applied in Witwatersrand (following the steps of my mother, but in a reversed order!) and I finally moved to Joburg. All the rest is my most recent history, and it is all here on my LJ. :-)

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

I was four years old when the Challenger explosion happened and I don't remember it, but I remember seeing Columbia explode and that was gut-wrenching. When I was in D.C. in '04, we went to Arlington an I had the chance to see the memorials for both Challenger and Columbia side-by-side. Very sad, but both are beautiful tributes.

Of course, I'll never forget where I was on 9/11/01. Every year on the anniversary, I remember the phone call I got that woke me up telling me to turn on the TV, stumbling to work in a shocked stupor, and trying to work through all the craziness and uncertainty.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Yeah for me they would be

Reagan Assassination attempt - I had just gotten home from school and turned the TV on

Challenger Explosion - The class I was in wasn't watching it (I'm pretty sure it was Algebra at the time) but lots of others were and one of my best friends told me about it in the hallway between classes with a poor taste joke. Interestingly my school had a couple of direct connections to that event as one of our English teachers was Christa McCaulffe's sister and my French Teacher's brother was the Morton Thiakol engineer who exposed the issue with the O-Rings

I think I'm supposed to say the fall of the Soviet Union or the Berlin Wall here but somehow even though I was in the military at the time the USSR collapsed and had just gotten out (and was therefore subject to recall) when the wall fell I don't have any specific memories of these events

Next would be 9-11. I was home looking for a job having just recently been laid off during the Dot Com crash and as usual listening to the news in the background as I checked the latest postings on Monster.

I do remember where I was when the Columbia blew up, standing in the lobby of the YMCA getting ready to take my kids swimming but I don't remember it being anywhere near as big of a deal to me as the Challenger.

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union, I think the thing was that it was actually sort of gradual. We were getting news and rumours about the wall and the fall of the Soviet Union, so it wasn't quite the same shock/surprise when each event actually occurred.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I was in class. We were following the Challenger cuz of the teacher thing. Then it blewed up. The teacher cried and we didn't do much in school that day. I was sad.

But then I played baseball, which is like magic.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

2nd grade, that is.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.s assassinations. And then the Chicago riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And yes, the shuttle explosion-- there hadn't been any prior causalities since the Apollo mission, so it was a real shocker when it happened.

[thies.livejournal.com]

25 years later the same old buckets still get shot into space and the uncertain successor will advance backwards to designs of the 60s. American exceptionalism, fuck yeah!

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

25 years later the same old buckets still get shot into space and the uncertain successor will advance backwards to designs of the 60s. American exceptionalism, fuck yeah!

Odd you should say that, I told the wife when we'd gotten back from Amsterdam that the planes we flew in, looked in worse condition than car's I've thrown away! (Didn't think she'd appreciate my telling her when I noticed it lol)

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Actually it's strange, I almost don't remember it at all. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing for JFK, Moon Landing, 9/11, and for crying out loud, even the first time I heard "The Weight" by the Band; but the Challenger, nothing.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

I was 16. Must have been a Monday (PD day)because I was home watching the lift off when it happened. I ran upstairs and told everyone but nobody believed me at first. Heck I remember seeing the Shuttle piggy backed on a low flying 747 over Toronto when I was 9 or 10.

I remember Lennon being shot and Reagen. Not sure which was first. Both times I was more shocked more by the media coverage then by the actual event. And I remember the soccer being interrupted by the OJ white Ford Bronco chase. And of course 9/11.

The 1995 Quebec reforendum was by far the most important event to recall. There was a huge lead-up to the vote. Everyone seemed to be going to Montreal for the Canada rally. And then the actual nail biter that almost lost the country.

9/11 was significant as it seemed to have the broadest implications. In that sense it was just as important as the Quebec reforendum.

But the Challenger or Columbia accidents really signified nothing. Perhaps the end of the Space Shuttle program.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

It signified our vulnerability. It made me question SDI a lot more at the time.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I was in 11th grade. Our teacher let us out into P.E. field 10 minutes prior to T=0 to watch the launch (My high school was 14 miles from the launch pad)

Most of the kids watching, including myself, had a parent who worked at KSC, either directly for NASA or for a contractor. I had met (that is, been in the same room with) several of the Astronauts.

In the minutes after the explosion we were in denial, telling each other that 'of course' the astronauts would be found alive, of course there was some kind of escape plan or pod, of course everything would be OK.

While there had been fatalities in the Apollo preparations, those had been during ground testing. Until the hours after the explosion, as real news filtered past that denial into our heads, the idea of Astronauts dying in flight operations had been inconceivable.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I bet all of us remember the exact place we were when we heard.

My first contact with the event was a reference made in "Punky Brewster".

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the Challenger explosion at all (very young), but I was going to college in Manhattan on 9/11 and won't ever forget that, or the weird, miserable weeks after. Or even seeing 'Cloverfield' in a NYC theater years later and going a little numb at about the same moment several people quietly but urgently walked out.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

I ironically had just gotten out of Astronomy class.


Tasteless joke:

Q: Why do the people at NASA drink Sprite?
A: They couldn't get 7-Up.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Ouch!