Where Were You meme

[cjwatson]

1. When John F. Kennedy was shot (22/11/1963)
Not born. My parents were in their early twenties.

2. When Mt. St. Helens blew (18/5/1980)
A year and a half old, not paying much attention.

3. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded (28/1/1986)
Just over seven years old. I remember seeing it on John Craven's Newsround, I think.

4. The Hillsborough disaster. (15/4/1989)
Ten, so still in primary school.

5. When the Berlin Wall fell (7/11/1989)
The day after my eleventh birthday. I was old enough to know that it was very important, at least.

6. When Nelson Mandela was released from gaol. (11/2/1990)
I don't remember this much.

7. When Thatcher resigned (22/11/1990)
Glued to the television set. :-) The world of politics was quite exciting at that point.

8. When the Gulf War began (16/1/1991)
I missed the first couple of weeks where the newspapers and television programmes explained what was going on, and therefore didn't understand a lot of the rest ...

9. When Princess Di was killed (31/8/1997)
I was on tour in America with the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra. Chris and I were staying with a family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (I think), which I remember largely because the man of the house had a fantastic games room in the basement. Because of being five hours behind the UK, I was awake to hear about it as it happened.

10. When Omagh was bombed (15/8/1998)
The summer holidays following my first year at university; I was at home in Belfast doing temporary work for the Department of the Environment. Some of my extended family live in Omagh, although they weren't affected, so we went to the memorial service.

11. When Bush was first announced President (7/11/2000)
Working for Zeus. I don't remember the day as such (probably a hangover from my twenty-second birthday the day before ...), but I'm sure I was despairing.

12. When terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center (11/9/2001)
In Texas on a business trip to IBM on behalf of Zeus. I woke up in the hotel that Tuesday and came downstairs to find a crowd of people gathered around the TV screen in the lobby: at that point, the first plane had hit but not the second. I remember saying to my host that I was sure it must have been an accident. I was very nervous about whether I'd be able to get back home the following Saturday, since flights were cancelled for most of the week, although in the event I wasn't even delayed more than usual.

13. When the Queen Mother died (30/3/2002)
Still working for Zeus, and I don't remember paying a lot of attention. I spent most of 2002 deeply engrossed in writing our version of mod_perl at work, I think.

14. When Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas. (1/2/2003)
Even though it's the most recent, I once again don't remember much about it. I think I was busy looking around for other jobs at that point, eventually getting hired by nCipher. I went to Texas again in March, but it never came up in conversation there.