Pearl Harbor day. That was five weeks before my fifth birthday. It was the usual Sunday family gathering at my grandmother's apartment, but that Sunday was not at all usual. Everybody was focused on the big old floor standing radio console.

I remember watching Armstrong go down that ladder to the moon, and that is probably the earliest memory to which I can attach a date. I was three years and 8 months old at the time.

I think it was the Kennedy assassination in the fall of '63 closely followed by The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in winter of '64. I also have a pretty poor memory.

quote:

Originally posted by mark60:
My earliest event memory is the JFK assassination. I was 3 at the time and I think I remember it because my mother was very upset. I remember asking her why she was so sad and I remember the front page of the newspaper.

Same here . I heard my Mom cry out . I ran in the living room and she was watching the news report . I didn't understand why she crying . I was 5 .

Challenger explosion, Reagan/Mondale campaign and election if that counts, otherwise I'll stick with the shuttle.

Other than family/private events, the earliest distinct memory was when I was watching on the black & white TV, likely Walter Cronkite, a piece about The Beatles film Help, and seeing a short clip from the film, I'm sure it was 1965 when I was 4 years old. I also have very vague memories of the Watts Riots in the mid sixties. A little later, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and then a year later, the moon landing and Charlie Manson.

I'm an anomaly. I have many memories from when I was a toddler. Wheeling passed the neighbor across the street's house in a baby buggy. The house burned to the ground when I was two and I can still see it as plain as I saw it then. The day my sister (accidently) broke my leg at 18 months old. Yep...that day is seared in my memory. Many others...

Like many, I distinctly remember July 19-20, 1969. Sitting (too close!) to our black and white Zenith watching the moon landing.

Oddly, I often forget where I parked. And why is it that we can remember that we forgot something, but we can't remember what we forgot?

It's the JFK assassination for me. I was 7 years old in school. We were all sent home. I walked into my house to see my Mother crying and watching TV.

I remember specific events from my childhood, especially the unpleasant or traumatic ones: a brother almost losing a eye to a broken bottle; sister eating a bottle of baby aspirin (pre-childproof packaging), having a boil on my biceps lanced, strange knobs in the middle of doors in France, and any of many others. What I don’t remember very well, though, were the mundane things. A couple of years ago a brother thought he had found a modern picture of one place we lived in France: didn’t ring a bell at all with me. Although I have traveled fairly extensively with my wife who loved doing that, I have only the vaguest memories of most places I’ve been.

I wasn't that in tune with world events as a little kid. We didn't have a TV until I was 6 or 7. I vaguely remember people talking about the Berlin Wall coming down, but I didn't really understand it or its significance (I was 4). I vaguely remember the first Gulf war, more because my Dad had a buddy who was deployed than because of anything I saw on the news. And I remember George HW Bush losing to Bill Clinton in 1992...I remember being mad and not understanding how that could happen when my elementary school had overwhelmingly re-elected Bush in our mock election.

JFK.

Elvis on Ed Sullivan the first time.

I’m not sure about events, but I distinctly recall Mom regularly ironing clothes while watching As the World Turns when I was about three.

My earliest memory takes me back to a Christmas morning. I found a picture my mother took of me and my sister after the presents were opened. On the back it said I was four years old. I remember that morning and the gifts I got. That would have been 1951. That's about as far back as I can go.

My a hole sister stuck me on the back dash board of dad's "48" four door hugemobile and I fell asleep
Maybe two y.o.

Used to stand on the seat next to Dad all the time,
My left hand holding on to his overall strap.

Cuban missile crisis.
My dad coming home from work and saying we’re going out to eat. Maybe for the last time.

I remember quite a bit from when I was about 3 as a kid, freaks my Mom out about all that I remember. First snowfall and playing in the yard with a pet turtle. Remember waving to my Dad when he went to Vietnam.

30APR75 Fall of Saigon . I was 5. I remember seeing it on our black n white TV and not understanding what it was but that dad was upset. I clearly remember the helo lifting off the building.

Maybe not the earliest, duck and cover drills in elementary school and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I remember The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I was 4 years and three months old.

I remember asking my mother why the girls were screaming.

“They just like the music,”

I replied, “They can listen to the music on the radio.”