It’s vague I know but I’ll give a few examples. I know a girl who sat on a clowns lap at an event in he late 70’s. The clown was John Wayne Gacey.

I also worked with a man who was at the concert in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock shot into the crowd killing 60 and wounding more than 850. He and his wife made it out without injuries.

I personally have never been involved in anything major be it a happy or sad occurrence. Have you?

Went to High School and often ate lunch with Leslie Van Houten.


PC

I was a SWAT medic for 15 years, retired now. 7 years ago we had an “incident” where the bad guy blew up a building while we were making entry….2 1/2 story building leveled in an explosion that resulted in a ball of fire….I was in the bearcat on the lawn when it occurred….I suddenly had 9 severely injured team members we had to drag into the bearcat…..surprisingly, no fatalities of team members…not so much for the bad guy. It did make “breaking news” nationally….my wife got a phone call from a friend who saw it in Florida and asked if I was involved! Of course my wife knew where I was but didn’t know until that call that there was a problem

I lived next to, bought drugs from and was friends with someone who later became a serial killer.

I watched someone try to catch and then kill someone else on the side of a mountain. The perp ended up slipping, and falling 100+ feet to his death. At the time it looked somewhat like an accident, but later the truth came out. The event was only in the local news.

This was similar to the movie The Eiger Sanction, as the perp was paid to do the job.

I was the whistleblower for the Georgia CRCT cheating scandal. There was a thread about it here when I was finally allowed to talk about it.

I survived the Peachtree 25th high rise fire by crawling over the dead and feeling my way to the stairs.

Lived in Harrisburg PA inside the 10 mile evacuation ring when TMI went down. Side note, that Wed morning my friend and I went to a Wed matinee showing of the China Syndrome. Came out to the car and radio was blasting emergency tones, -this is not a drill. It was a very Rod Sterling type moment.

I’ve eaten at Waffle House multiple times

I survived the Vietnam war twice by not being killed.

I was physically present for the restart of Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor (criticality achieved) and the subsequent "Going On Line" after the Unit 2 accident.

My Dad has a good one he likes to tell

He used to play baseball with other kids in a lot in Trooper, PA at his aunt and uncle's house. This is near Norristown, PA which sort of explains later the why.

He was maybe 10 one summer and it's the mid-1950's and this "old" guy used to come by and play catch with them and give them some pointers on playing. He was late 20's or early 30's but was "old" to those kids of course.

He found out years later that it was Tommy Lasorda who was coming by to play with them in that lot. He was home visiting his parents where he grew up nearby in Norristown.

I used to work with a guy who'd been robbed at gunpoint in a parking lot, was in a bank when it was robbed, and two other similar event the details of when I forget. I made note that I never wanted to go on an airplane or a boat with him.

I don't have one, but my father was 11 years old when he witnessed the Pearl Harbor attack. He said it was strange that most people simply went about their usual business as no-one knew what was really going on.

Not notorious, but I was standing next to my father when he shook the hand of John F. Kennedy during his visit to Paris, France.

I worked with Dennis Rader (BTK Killer), he had murdered six people by the time I came into contact with him. Talk about being an example of 'The banality of evil'.

AT U. of Mich. when I was a freshman, Ted Kaczynski lectured my math class a couple of times when the prof. took a break. I remember thinking how brilliant he seemed, in math at least, kind of "kooky" otherwise. The class was a 300 level class as I had already taken two years of college math in HS. I remember little of the material, and as far as I know, never did use any of it in my computer-related career.

I was also at the Pentagon and on the Mall during the anti-Nam protests in '67 and '68, as well as countless protests on campus (Jane Fonda was the featured speaker at one of them, talk about "notorious"). Never got arrested or beaten, for me these were more social affairs than political ones.

I heard, from my home office where I'm typing this right now, AA Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on 9/11. I was far enough away to not see the fire ball or hear first responders responding to the site, didn't really correlate it until I turned on the TV just in time to see the towers collapse and realized what I'd heard had to be the impact on the Pentagon.

And, oh yeah, one time when I was working in the S. Interior Bldg., and moving my car to a different parking spot on Constitution Ave. to avoid a ticket, Bill Clinton came jogging by and stopped to shake hands. Couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough to wash them afterwards.

I lived one street over from Ted Bundy's house. My older brother mowed their lawn - Bundy's mom was very nice...

I forgot to add this in my original post.
My wife’s grandmother was in her labor/recovery room in May of ‘42, and there were two beds in the room. In the other bed was a woman named Wanda Dombeck. She had just delivered a baby named Ted Kaczynski.

In '69 my buddies asked me if I wanted to go along to a concert. I asked "Where?". When they said "Downstate", I passed.
They went to Woodstock, I went to work.

My family religiously watched Bonanza every week when I was a pre-teen. The characters were my heroes.

I went to a Jerry Lewis telethon in Nashville where anyone who threw some change into a big pot got to meet Michael Landon, a.k.a. "Little" Joe.

The line wrapped all the way around the arena, I didn't care.

He was in costume from the show. When we shook hands he appeared to be a freaking monster!
My hand was lost in his, and he looked 10 feet tall as he looked down at me and smiled.

And he was supposed to be the "little" one That they reinforced them as hero status even stronger.

There was over 60 years ago and I will never forget... it impressed me that much.

I forgot! My mother was at Lakehurst when the airship Hindenburg blew up.