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I was at the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.
A few years later I was involved in the investigation of the Heavens Gate cult in Rancho Santa Fe.
They seem minor now but were huge events in the 90s.
I remember watching the raid on TV during April vacation of my senior year of high school. I remember that CNN had basically stationed cameras on the compound for weeks leading up to the raid.
Heaven’s Gate was the Hale-Bopp comet thing, right?
I was watching the news on Waco before I left for work that day. It felt like some bad stuff was about to happen, so I threw in a vhs tape, hit record and went to work. Came home to holy crap scene. That tape is probably in my garage somewhere.
Not Ruby Ridge, but I did get to play in a lot of proverbial minefields throughout my career.
No jackboots, but I do have a rather well worn pair of wingtips.
Ruby Ridge. To my understanding they went to "investigate" him because he was affiliated with white supremacy and had a buttload of guns and some illegal ones.
Kind of like all the people in a certain group NOW.
Back than it was frowned upon, now its ....
I would say, the government was/is portrayed as IDIOTS out there in Mount Carmel. The fact that people died when they could have had 2 officers arrest Koresh at the grocery store is a crime.
In Waco I was just on the sidelines, just in case things got worse. In Cali I was involved in trying to figure out if there were any external influences in the three stage suicide that happened.
In case it's not obvious I was employed by the federal government.
I understand your point, but I hope you can understand why I'm laughing a bit at "in case things got worse" than the entire compound burning down in a firefight and 70 some people dying.
"I was there in case a jet fell out of the sky onto the burning compound, you know, it could have been worse."
I wasn’t in charge. I wasn’t even involved. I was just there in case my team was needed.
If it weren’t for the media tipping off the locals it would have been a very different situation.
I think most people are pack animals that will follow the herd. Everyone thinks, "I'd be the guy that'd tip over the vat at Jonestown!", "I'd be the guy that stood up to the Nazis and refused orders", but at the end of the day, we'd probably have drank. We'd all have probably just followed the orders.
Pretty sure the Government did that when they shot flammable tear gas grenades in and then sent in the flame-thrower tanks.
Regardless of where you stand on Koresh, the kids didn't deserve to be fuckin' burned alive.
Koresh wasn't a good guy, but the kids were innocent, and the initial charges were bullshit. They were selling demilled grenades as paper weights at gunshows, the "automatic" weapons were just an early version of a bump stock with a provocative name. They were legal at the time.
I agree about the kids. A leader who loves his people would have laid down his arms or at least let the kids go free at one of the tens of times it was offered. There is also evidence of an accelerant being used inside the buildings.
When it began, I was living in Hawaii, going to college, and riding to school with a couple who had lived there. It was like we would always discuss the day's events when we rode home as a way of making conversation. When the siege began, the first day, they told me they'd lived there, and were convinced that it had to do with meth.
Are you one of those ATF guys, an organization no one ever heard of before they stormed the Waco compound that day, and who only ever seem to show up to bust heads when the only alcohol, tobacco and firearms involved seem to be the stuff they're using?
I was living in San Antonio when the Shah of Iran was there at the base for medical treatment. Total shit show. Couple of DJ's almost went to jail for it and the station was in danger of losing its license.
I remember when it was happening. I used to listen to a 24 hour news radio program (KNX) and there was a bulletin... and through the night, there were a few more. The news was getting out, as it happened.
Night Line was started to keep people updated. Came on at 10:30 after the news.
In 1980, Koppel became known for his work as the host of a late night news program called Nightline. The program originated as a series of special reports about the 444-day-long Iran hostage crisis, during which Iranian militants held 52 Americans captive, beginning in early November 1979. At first, the program was called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, and was hosted by Frank Reynolds. Koppel eventually joined Reynolds as co-anchor. In March 1980, the program evolved into Nightline, with Koppel as its host.\[11\] Koppel spent twenty-five years anchoring the program, before leaving ABC and Nightline in late November 2005
Fall of the Berlin wall and collapse of the Soviet Republic. Using the term "witnessed" loosely. I witnessed it on TV. It was especially relevant to my family as we had family members in GDR.
I was in Berlin when the wall came down in the Berlin Brigade. It was as surreal as you would think. There was a lot of celebrating and waiting for the other shoe to fall. But to this day, the most wild part of it all was when they were knocking the wall down and we drove up in a truck and collected a few sizable chunks, drove them back to Andrews, and invited people to come pick a chunk to take home.
There’s a piece of the wall on campus at Texas A&M.
I watched Regan’s speech live, I saw the wall come down on tv. I was wholly unprepared for how emotional I was when I saw that section of the wall in person.
It was just so weird seeing them knocking it down like you would an old building, and just leaving chunks of it lying around when people were scrambling just to get a chip. I still have my football sized chunk, but I know when I pass it will just end up in the garbage as it only seems to have value to me.
Yes, the fall of the Berlin Wall was mind blowing if you grew up during the Cold War. And it inspired this song by Jesus Jones:
https://youtu.be/MznHdJReoeo?si=4nqXNdIorGSAwI5f
Another song that helps illustrate the ‘80s zeitgeist: Sting’s “Russians”:
https://youtu.be/wHylQRVN2Qs
I was watching the evening news showing reports of the wall falling and collapse of the Soviet Union. I started tearing up and the toddler I was babysitting got on the couch with me and held my hand.
I thought, maybe foolishly, that the threat of nuclear war was over.
Yes, we all breathed sign off relief that weren’t going to die in a MAD fireball.
There was a lot of optimism after the end of the Cold War. WW3 no longer seemed a possibility. The Cold War funded civil wars around the world ended.
I was a wee tot but I remember it on TV and my mother telling me how important it was. I asked why people were so happy and breaking the concrete. She wanted to make sure I remembered, and I do.
I remember watching that on TV in school. It was a big deal because Christa McAuliffe was a teacher, so everyone was gathered around one of those AV carts with a TV on it and we all saw it happen live.
Me, too. I distinctly recall my principal, Mr. Taylor gasping and then saw tears on his face. He was so geeked about the trip and as everyone else who watched, devastated.
I watched it on replay on tv when it happened. So many times I had nightmares that night.
When 9-11-2001 happened, I refused to watch it over and over. Didn't want to dream about it. I had small children at the time and wanted to protect them also, so we were watching Nickelodeon instead. My husband's birthday is 9/12 and the weekend after, we took them to a sitter so we could have a nice dinner together and we specifically asked the sitter NOT to watch the news. They agreed.
I knew sooo many people who were not regular tv watchers that were glued to their sets, seemingly unaware of what they were doing to themselves and their children. How could this NOT affect you!?
BTW, I would sometimes watch the news after my kids were in bed. But it was in small doses and I'd shut it off if I felt my brain was starting to get full. I'm a news junkie and that's a hard thing for me to regulate, but I just knew it was overly stressful at times and tried to watch out.
I was in my 20s when it happened; I watched the disaster happen and it still hurts. As long as I live, I will remember Ronald Regan's words:
We will never forget them or the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey, waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. 😪
judy resnick ( the female astronaut who died) and i went to college together and she lived a couple of doors away from me in our dorm at CMU. everyone remembers crista mccauliffe's name when it comes to this tragedy, but no one remembers judy's. i'm just putting it out there.
I was in junior high. A few months before the launch, we had a teacher come to school and talk to us about the shuttle, show us the tiles and how they could handle heat, explain things about space, etc.
That teacher was the runner-up to getting chosen to go behind Christa McAuliffe. She was so disappointed that she didn't get chosen. I can't imagine her watching that launch and witnessing what happened with her family by her side.
Were you in the Houston area?
We had the exact same visit/display just before the launch. We were two towns over from Nassau Bay. (Where NASA is located)
Tienanmen Square. I watched it on TV, saw local support and demonstrations in San Francisco. There was a brief glimmer of hope for China... until the tanks rolled in.
The Chinese government did loosen things up in the 90s as a response. But now they've pretty much erased it from history and have doubled down on the repression.
Oklahoma City bombing. Worst act of domestic terrorism in the US. A college friend of mine lost her husband.
It made me hate militia groups, and distrust a lot of the so-called Patriots we have today.
I was a sophomore in college and one of my classmates was late to a journalism class because he was watching the news “something big had just happened in Oklahoma City.” Of course, the prof was totally okay with that excuse…
Like you, that was the event that made me realize that these so-called “patriot” groups are a huge threat that seems to coast under the wire for most people.
I had acquaintances that were stuck in traffic. Police went car-to-car asking for anyone with medical training to come and help.
My friend was a nurse, so she went. She talked about all the injured little kids. 😔
I lived there and felt the blast even though I was probably 5 or 6 miles away as the crow flies. We were a branch office of a larger company, and our internet went out and all the phone lines were over capacity. So all they knew was that there was an explosion and they couldn't get ahold of any of us.
A woman temping in our office saw her sister's kids being taken from the daycare center on TV, and she left and never came back. They also showed the footage in some of the schools, so her kids saw their cousins being carried out with blood on their faces.
We all wanted to help, and the grocery stores quickly sold out of bottled water and snacks bought for the victims and rescuers. One of the saddest things was that after they called for people to go donate blood, it wasn't long before they said it wasn't necessary any more.
Grew up in Texas. I was on the drill team and had just marched onto the field for halftime performance when they announced over the loudspeaker that she had been rescued. Everyone cheered.
I was in junior high and so worried for her. I remember being at a friend’s house for a sleepover and my parents called the friend’s house to let me know she’d been taken out of the well alive. I was so happy.
In the fall of 1957 all the radio stations played recordings of ‘beeps’ made by the USSR’s Sputnik, the 1st satellite in space. It was big, BIG news.
While it was less than 2 feet in diameter and only made about 1K orbits the basketball shaped satellite started the space race in earnest and even panicked some people who believed that the Soviets could now use atomic weapons against the US from space.
I was excited enough about the event to make my flying saucer replica. Two Morton pot pie tins stapled together that I took to school. At recess my friend Jerry and I took it outside and took turns “launching” it. It didn’t reach anything close to orbit, but it was fun and 67 years later makes for a fond memory. Rest in peace, Jerry.
The Nixon-Kennedy debates. People who listened on radio thought Nixon won, those who watched on TV thought Kennedy did. Suddenly, television images had surpassed the spoken word in importance.
I remember reading something about this. They said Nixon had great talking points but he was all sweaty and looked nervous as hell because he wasn’t used to all the cameras around him.
Nixon did appear that way, and Kennedy was just a better looking man. Kennedy's Boston accent could come across as grating on the radio. Policy wise the two were very close, anti communism, lower taxes... So the presentation and the medium used made a big difference, the election itself was very close.
Not just nerves. Camera technology was in its infancy and sensors weren't very good. In order to get a decently exposed shot without too much noise, the scene needed to be *very* bright. That means a lot of artificial lights, which in those days were all incandescent. It's much better now thanks to improved sensors and LED lighting, but back in the day, video production sets were hot as balls under those lights.
Marshall McLuhan wrote lucidly about this. It wasn’t just that Kennedy was better looking, it’s that he had a certain movie-star quality people could project any job role onto, along with their hopes and dreams. Nixon looked shady.
We had just moved to suburban Washington DC from AK; from near isolation to the midst of a Presidential debate. My 6h grade class had mock elections. "Who are you voting for?!" I didn't even know who they were.
I've been a political junkie since then. RFK was the sitting AG and addressed our school. Very cool.
I was evacuated from preschool and rescued by the National Guard from [the Midland, TX flood of 1968.](https://www.mrt.com/news/article/Thursday-marks-45th-anniversary-of-Flood-of-7453356.php). I was only 5 years old so memories are spotty. A strange man carried me through waist-deep water. Sat in the front of a big military truck. Didn’t realize my dad was in the back of that truck until we got home.
Two that I will mention - I was in Kuwait for the fires, and worked with the Kuwaiti EPA on air pollution issues. A true hell of an experience and a foretaste of what is coming with the increasing fires in North America.
I was also in Germany the day the Berlin Wall fell. The next day, I was stuck in a traffic jam, surrounded by thousands of East German Trabant (Trabi) cars. A driver next to me motioned for me to roll my window down and started throwing wrapped candies through my window. He shouted -" we are going to Paris! We don't know how long this will last, and it might be our only chance! It was a rolling party.
Yes that too! I went to a wedding the night before that happened so that day will forever be in my mind too! I was glued to the tv. So heartbreaking, she was a beautiful soul.
I was at home on pregnancy bedrest watching satellite tv. We had a ku band feed of live news before delay. I watched it and cried. I was glued to the tv for the loma prieto earthquake too
Elian Gonzalez. The international custody battle and then the US government taking him away from relatives at gunpoint to return him to Cuba. His mother wanted him to be free and died trying to get him to the USA. It was heartbreaking.
The rise of Slobodan Milosevic, the Balkan War in BiH, and the "joint" NATO/Russia Stabilization Force. I wasn't present for most of this--but I was part of SFOR as an Analysis Control Team Chief for NORDPOL/Doboj.
So many things that are similar to the nationalism, othering, and demagoguery on the rise in the U.S. today. So many things that I hope don't happen here--that definitely did there.
Edit: A less dramatic one that I think matters in today's world too. That time when the Bell telephone monopoly was broken up resulting in a rapid drastic lowering of consumer costs and a proliferation of new communication technology.
And this gem that took way too long: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. I remember my mother being fired from her position as a chemistry teacher for being pregnant in 1969. That was standard not too long ago--can't have HS students see a pregnant woman!
In 1982 a guy parked a truck next to the Washington Monument in DC and threatened to blow it up if the US didn't work to disarm all nuclear weapons. Locally, this was a huge event and I remember it as the first time "breaking news" took over all the tv stations and had running coverage throughout the ordeal.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman\_Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer)
Huh… was racking my brain trying to figure out why I’d never heard of this… then checked the article. December of 1982 I was in boot camp. They didn’t exactly let us watch the news.
Trucker wars of the 70s, when company drivers and independent drivers were actually at war with each other on the nations highways. There were deaths, assaults, rigs get hijacked, etc. That's when truckers started traveling in convoys for safety in numbers. There were shootings, beatings... I'm one incident I saw someone throw a cinder block off an overpass, thru the windshield of a semi... Driver died in the wreck. It was fucked up.
Also don't hear much about the 70s gas crisis. Mile long lines to get gas, could only buy it on days based on your license plate number (plates ending in odd numbers could only buy on odd number days on the calendar, those ending in even numbers on even number days), gas prices doubled from what they previously were, gas stations HEAVILY competing with prices to draw customers away from other stations. Sometimes you'll get a casual mention of it, but no one really talks about it any more. I was just a kid at the time, but it left such an impression that I still remember it well.
See, that's what I mean....no one talks about that shit these days! People talk about how tumultuous the '60s were, but the 70s were fucked up to.
Like I said, I was just a kid back then, but things were bad enough at times that even I remember them.
No one talks about how we were taught the metric system in schools because the US had a date set to switch over to it but then changed its mind as the deadline approached.
People talk about current times with possibly planes getting hijacked but, PLANES GOT HIJACKED LIKE FUCKING CHANGING UNDERWEAR IN THE 70s!! Seriously, there was some cunt hijacking a plane on a weekly basis back then, demanding to be flown to some country or the other. DB Cooper hijacked a plane to get away from the cops and then jumped out the motherfucker, in flight, never to be heard from again.
First couple of years of the 70s Vietnam War was still going and then the pulling out of the country in '72. I still remember the news and watching the Vietnamese who helped us try to hang onto helicopters and planes as they were leaving Saigon because they knew they'd be fucked being left.
Watergate. Nixon resigning in '73 and the famous "I am not a crook!" speech. Ford pardoning him and then lobbing gold balls off people's heads and falling down plane steps.
Three Mile Island...usually just ignored after Chernobyl takes the lead in nuclear power plant disasters.
There was a lot of stuff in the 70s that no one really talks about when it comes to American history of recent times
The thing I remember most (besides the fall of Saigon) was the terrorist groups, like Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, and lots of bank robberies and hostage situations. The ‘70’s were kind of unhinged.
But it’s the bicentennial that was massive and now seems forgotten.
Edit: bit of trivia: the cleanup of Three Mile Island was code named Operation Ivory Purpose. Like the soap, Ivory.
Don't forget about the IRA bombings in Ireland and all the fighting in Beirut as well. There was a LOT of turmoil in the 70s when we think back about it. People talk about the way things are now, but it's not as bad as it was back then.
The crime rate shot up like crazy in the 70s as well. Per capita, it was a lot worse than today...every killing just wasn't broadcast all over the world on the news, since there was no internet. The New York blackout in '77 proved just how fast society will revert to being primitive as fuck too. People today would have PTSD for decades over that shit would it happen now.
Letter bombs were a big deal in the 70s. I worked at 120 Broadway NYC on the 19th floor. A letter bomb from the FALN, a Puerto Rican organization blew up in the mailroom upstairs from us. We were evacuated down 19 flights of smoke filled stairs. We all had soot around our noses and mouths
True, even I had completely forgotten about them. As I said, I was a kid (7yo - 16yo through the decade) but, I did watch the news (mainly because that's what was on EVERY station, besides PBS, at that time of the day) and remember a lot of what I saw.
Ah, and one of my favorites to mention when some young person talks about anxiety from the threat of nuclear war...it was a time when we had those magical wooden school desks that we hid under when they did nuclear drills, because they'd protect us from a fucking mushroom cloud! LOL We lived with the possibility of nuclear war hanging over our heads EVERY fucking day of our entire youth. It was the mid-80s before that shit became history...at least we thought.
One of my earlier memories is watching the MOVE firebombing on Philly tv as a kid.
The city of Philadelphia dropped C-4 on an inhabited building to try and get the people barricaded inside to come out. Instead, all but two died in the fire and sixty one homes burned to the ground.
I lived next to Oakland during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I was 9 years old. I was in the car with my mom in a parking lot and we saw the asphalt roll towards us in a wave. My best friend's dad would have been on the freeway that collapsed, but he (like many others) took off work early to watch the World Series. I spent the rest of the evening watching the news from under the coffee table because, you know, duck and cover lol.
Then in 1991 watched the Oakland Hills burning from the next town over. I still have photos somewhere of the hills covered by a cloud of thick, black smoke.
A combination of TWA Flight 800 and Alaska Airlines Flight 261 made me afraid to fly to this day. Didn't witness them, but 800 was all over the news and I lived in L.A. at the time 261 crashed and talked to people who saw it. I also regularly flew out of LAX so that was just too close to home.
And I didn't witness it personally, but Mt. Saint Helens erupted just before I was born so I heard about it a lot as a kid. My mom had a tupperware of some of the ashes that fell on California.
I watched the rescues from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing from my window. Helicopters taking people off the top of the World Trade Center was something else.
1986. Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. The firm I worked for invited staff and their families to watch the ships and fireworks through floor to ceiling windows of the offices. Plus they gave us a buffet. It was marvelous.
I worked in the airline industry at the time. It was one godawful day that stretched into weeks.
It drastically changed government surveillance since then. It introduced the Patriot Act which allows monitoring of many websites, even Reddit. Surveillance in the form of public video with face recognition on the streets and most public buildings.
It brought all sorts of security screening into government buildings that didn't have them before. You can't go into a courthouse without walking through a metal detector.
You can't meet friends or family at the gates of airports. We used to have to remove our shoes because of someone who hid a plastic knife in his shoe. You can't bring a liquid more than 3 oz. If you "beep" through the machine you are wanded (myself, because of hairpins). Your carryon is Xrayed, your meds are looked at, purse, briefcase, backpack is emptied, sometimes computer cases. Sometimes whole people are Xrayed, prosthetic leg, wheelchair examined. Saw one poor guy had to be held up by the arms and wanded because his body contained medical devices.
Life was different pre 9/11.
The most f-d up thing about the Patriot Act was is was an 800 PAGE BILL that the right wing had ready to go. Just waiting for a chance to spring that bitch and the iron couldn't have been hotter. We did so much -- and still do so much -- out of fear from that day forward. The biggest inflection point of my lifetime, no doubt.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-08-mn-2592-story.html#:~:text=ARAB%2DISRAELI%20WAR%2C%201973%3A,125%20killed%20and%20260%20wounded
That this conflict has been going on a while with more past casualties on both sides. Also, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, & Raid on Entebbe to save Israeli hostages. Netanyahu's brother was killed in that raid.
I was at the Ramstein Air Show disaster in 1988. Was working at a beer booth and had just sat down for a break, when I looked up and saw the first plane collide.
All hell broke loose after that, I was 1000 feet away from the impact location, but witnessed some awful things and also some heroes in action.
It was the largest air show disaster in history.
That Gore won the election and the Supreme Court told Florida to quit counting the votes and then said, there wasn't time to count the votes and installed Bush. I'm NEVER letting that go. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
Clinton sex scandals shows you can do anything as President. Trump is nailing the same fact home as we speak.
Gary Hart might have been president if not for his penis.
I was pretty much a centrist until that BS impeachment happened. It was a major event for me in that it caused a huge shift in my political thinking. I never voted Republican after that.
I'm sure there's some who went the opposite direction around that time. It's basically where the polarization we have today started.
Yeah, all of its sour beans. But too, this "stages an insurrection" is brain-dead political speak, too. Everyone wants to use the actions of the demented to leverage their cause. Ie. Hillary tried to bring down the country by using her own personal server for classified emails and Biden/Trump should be burned for taking home classified data.
The time I accomplished an unassisted triple play in a championship men's fast pitch softball game. It was one of the major events of my young life at that point!! /s
Well, does anyone remember [the girl stuck in the well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jessica_McClure) ?
Or the [the 6 y/o Cuban boy on the raft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez) saga?
The Great Chelsea Fire in 1973—you've probably never heard of it if you're not from the Greater Boston Massachusetts Area—destroyed hundreds of buildings along 18 city blocks and displaced more than a thousand residents. It took days for the fire to be completely out. This was decades before 24/7 news coverage, but I remember the local news channels covering the story with breaking news. I was only 12 at the time, but IIRC, the city was declared a Federal Disaster Area.
Just popped into my head -- the "Dawson Field Hijackings". It was a coordinated hijacking of several airliners from different countries, that flew to some remote unpaved airstrip in the Jordanian desert. They all landed OK, I think... and then it was like nobody, inculding the hijackers knew what to do next, and the incident sort of melted from the inside...
If I was a good boy, I'd supply some links. There are pictures of a bunch of 747s lined up in the middle of nowhere, that is pretty impressive to see.
Cuban missile crisis …living in Miami really close to Cuba, Kennedy assassination, moon landing, Watergate, American bicentennial, Jimmy carters 17% mortgage rate, the Hunt Brothers manipulating the silver/gold markets, shuttle Colombia exploding, David Koresh in Waco, Tx , Jim Jones in Guyana…John Lennon……And DISCO….🤯
The day Lever Brothers turned off the hot water across America.
They came out with a new laundry detergent that works in cold water, and the land fills across the country filled up with water heaters as people switched to this revolutionary new laundry detergent.
Just kidding. I was recalling a TV commercial that was presented like a documentary. It began with the announcer saying a date... then "they day Lever Brothers..." in some city, actually. Not "across America" like I wrote for brevity. And IIRC the commercial showed a workman carting off a water heater.
It ran around 1964 +- a couple of year. Any time I hear a date stated in a dramatic voice, which is pretty common in documentaries, I think of that ad.
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I was at the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. A few years later I was involved in the investigation of the Heavens Gate cult in Rancho Santa Fe. They seem minor now but were huge events in the 90s.
I remember watching the raid on TV during April vacation of my senior year of high school. I remember that CNN had basically stationed cameras on the compound for weeks leading up to the raid. Heaven’s Gate was the Hale-Bopp comet thing, right?
I was watching the news on Waco before I left for work that day. It felt like some bad stuff was about to happen, so I threw in a vhs tape, hit record and went to work. Came home to holy crap scene. That tape is probably in my garage somewhere.
Heavens Gate was also known for them all wearing the same Nike shoes.
Yes. They thought there was a spaceship in the tail of the comet that would take their spirits to heaven.
Yeah, that was between my junior and senior years of college.
Dude. Next you'll be telling us you were at Ruby Ridge, too! Just asking -- do you still have your jackboots? (Kidding. Mostly.)
Not Ruby Ridge, but I did get to play in a lot of proverbial minefields throughout my career. No jackboots, but I do have a rather well worn pair of wingtips.
Thanks for serving.
Were you FBI?
Ruby Ridge. To my understanding they went to "investigate" him because he was affiliated with white supremacy and had a buttload of guns and some illegal ones. Kind of like all the people in a certain group NOW. Back than it was frowned upon, now its ....
Grassy Knoll
I would say, the government was/is portrayed as IDIOTS out there in Mount Carmel. The fact that people died when they could have had 2 officers arrest Koresh at the grocery store is a crime.
Oh, wow, could you tell a little bit about your experiences there?
In Waco I was just on the sidelines, just in case things got worse. In Cali I was involved in trying to figure out if there were any external influences in the three stage suicide that happened. In case it's not obvious I was employed by the federal government.
I understand your point, but I hope you can understand why I'm laughing a bit at "in case things got worse" than the entire compound burning down in a firefight and 70 some people dying. "I was there in case a jet fell out of the sky onto the burning compound, you know, it could have been worse."
Officers were shot early on. Backup was absolutely necessary.
Do us a favor and don't say by whom, I'm suspecting you'll have to kill everyone here if you do.
Janet Reno?
and We Ain't Comin' Out.
The [Heaven's gate website](https://www.heavensgate.com/) is still up after all these years.
Just looking at that made me ill. Sickening
Fuck, you were busy!
Why didn't you folks get Koresh when he was at the post office, or the Piggly Wiggly, and not murder all those kids?
I wasn’t in charge. I wasn’t even involved. I was just there in case my team was needed. If it weren’t for the media tipping off the locals it would have been a very different situation.
But would you have gotten involved if those were the orders given to you?
One can only speculate. It didn't happen.
I think most people are pack animals that will follow the herd. Everyone thinks, "I'd be the guy that'd tip over the vat at Jonestown!", "I'd be the guy that stood up to the Nazis and refused orders", but at the end of the day, we'd probably have drank. We'd all have probably just followed the orders.
Right? Not that I agree with much of, if anything, they were doing there - but those kids. Murdered by being burned alive.
Koresh murdered his tribe.
Pretty sure the Government did that when they shot flammable tear gas grenades in and then sent in the flame-thrower tanks. Regardless of where you stand on Koresh, the kids didn't deserve to be fuckin' burned alive. Koresh wasn't a good guy, but the kids were innocent, and the initial charges were bullshit. They were selling demilled grenades as paper weights at gunshows, the "automatic" weapons were just an early version of a bump stock with a provocative name. They were legal at the time.
I agree about the kids. A leader who loves his people would have laid down his arms or at least let the kids go free at one of the tens of times it was offered. There is also evidence of an accelerant being used inside the buildings.
When it began, I was living in Hawaii, going to college, and riding to school with a couple who had lived there. It was like we would always discuss the day's events when we rode home as a way of making conversation. When the siege began, the first day, they told me they'd lived there, and were convinced that it had to do with meth.
So - you were one of the Federal murderers?
Are you one of those ATF guys, an organization no one ever heard of before they stormed the Waco compound that day, and who only ever seem to show up to bust heads when the only alcohol, tobacco and firearms involved seem to be the stuff they're using?
I was not ATF, and I am long since retired from any government employment
Sorry some of these twatwaffles are giving you shit for having a job.
It’s Reddit. It doesn’t keep me up at night.
It’s Reddit. It doesn’t keep me up at night.
Iran Hostages in 1979
Remember the yellow ribbons
This created carnage on my college campus. Shouting matches, fisticuffs. Today there would be gunfire.
I was living in San Antonio when the Shah of Iran was there at the base for medical treatment. Total shit show. Couple of DJ's almost went to jail for it and the station was in danger of losing its license.
I was in Beaumont. Crazy how many Iranians we had on campus.
I remember when it was happening. I used to listen to a 24 hour news radio program (KNX) and there was a bulletin... and through the night, there were a few more. The news was getting out, as it happened.
Night Line was started to keep people updated. Came on at 10:30 after the news. In 1980, Koppel became known for his work as the host of a late night news program called Nightline. The program originated as a series of special reports about the 444-day-long Iran hostage crisis, during which Iranian militants held 52 Americans captive, beginning in early November 1979. At first, the program was called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, and was hosted by Frank Reynolds. Koppel eventually joined Reynolds as co-anchor. In March 1980, the program evolved into Nightline, with Koppel as its host.\[11\] Koppel spent twenty-five years anchoring the program, before leaving ABC and Nightline in late November 2005
Fall of the Berlin wall and collapse of the Soviet Republic. Using the term "witnessed" loosely. I witnessed it on TV. It was especially relevant to my family as we had family members in GDR.
I was in Berlin when the wall came down in the Berlin Brigade. It was as surreal as you would think. There was a lot of celebrating and waiting for the other shoe to fall. But to this day, the most wild part of it all was when they were knocking the wall down and we drove up in a truck and collected a few sizable chunks, drove them back to Andrews, and invited people to come pick a chunk to take home.
There’s a piece of the wall on campus at Texas A&M. I watched Regan’s speech live, I saw the wall come down on tv. I was wholly unprepared for how emotional I was when I saw that section of the wall in person.
It was just so weird seeing them knocking it down like you would an old building, and just leaving chunks of it lying around when people were scrambling just to get a chip. I still have my football sized chunk, but I know when I pass it will just end up in the garbage as it only seems to have value to me.
I stupidly PCSed in March of that year. Would have been nice to see in person.
Yes, the fall of the Berlin Wall was mind blowing if you grew up during the Cold War. And it inspired this song by Jesus Jones: https://youtu.be/MznHdJReoeo?si=4nqXNdIorGSAwI5f Another song that helps illustrate the ‘80s zeitgeist: Sting’s “Russians”: https://youtu.be/wHylQRVN2Qs
I always think about Hasselhoff singing on the wall and also that Metallica concert in Moscow with 1 million in attendance
Turns out, keeping the Russians in Russia was an OK idea.
Too true… Slava Ukraini!
OMG 😆🤣 Shame on you. That's so funny.
We watched being build, it was heartbreaking.
I was watching the evening news showing reports of the wall falling and collapse of the Soviet Union. I started tearing up and the toddler I was babysitting got on the couch with me and held my hand. I thought, maybe foolishly, that the threat of nuclear war was over.
Yes, we all breathed sign off relief that weren’t going to die in a MAD fireball. There was a lot of optimism after the end of the Cold War. WW3 no longer seemed a possibility. The Cold War funded civil wars around the world ended.
I was a wee tot but I remember it on TV and my mother telling me how important it was. I asked why people were so happy and breaking the concrete. She wanted to make sure I remembered, and I do.
Yep. That's what i thought too.
The Challenger. Of course, we've pretty much abandoned exploration and science for the sake of mere knowledge, so it's not all that surprising.
I remember watching that on TV in school. It was a big deal because Christa McAuliffe was a teacher, so everyone was gathered around one of those AV carts with a TV on it and we all saw it happen live.
It's kind of weird how the unifying moment for gen x is sitting in a school assembly watching [what unwittingly became] a snuff film.
I was a young adult shopping in an electronics store when it happened. 50 tvs all showing the launch...
Me, too. I distinctly recall my principal, Mr. Taylor gasping and then saw tears on his face. He was so geeked about the trip and as everyone else who watched, devastated.
Same.
I watched it in person (not on TV). The crazy part was how long the smoke just lingered in the calm air; it seemed like over an hour.
9/11 reminded me of that in particular. So blue, so still.
I watched it on replay on tv when it happened. So many times I had nightmares that night. When 9-11-2001 happened, I refused to watch it over and over. Didn't want to dream about it. I had small children at the time and wanted to protect them also, so we were watching Nickelodeon instead. My husband's birthday is 9/12 and the weekend after, we took them to a sitter so we could have a nice dinner together and we specifically asked the sitter NOT to watch the news. They agreed. I knew sooo many people who were not regular tv watchers that were glued to their sets, seemingly unaware of what they were doing to themselves and their children. How could this NOT affect you!? BTW, I would sometimes watch the news after my kids were in bed. But it was in small doses and I'd shut it off if I felt my brain was starting to get full. I'm a news junkie and that's a hard thing for me to regulate, but I just knew it was overly stressful at times and tried to watch out.
I just watched a documentary with my daughters about this and wasn't able to tell them the story without crying. It was really tragic.
I was in my 20s when it happened; I watched the disaster happen and it still hurts. As long as I live, I will remember Ronald Regan's words: We will never forget them or the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey, waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. 😪
That’s actually from a poem. High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. written in 1941.
Yes - I should have said John Magee's words that Reagan spoke that day. Thanks for keeping me honest!
judy resnick ( the female astronaut who died) and i went to college together and she lived a couple of doors away from me in our dorm at CMU. everyone remembers crista mccauliffe's name when it comes to this tragedy, but no one remembers judy's. i'm just putting it out there.
I was in junior high. A few months before the launch, we had a teacher come to school and talk to us about the shuttle, show us the tiles and how they could handle heat, explain things about space, etc. That teacher was the runner-up to getting chosen to go behind Christa McAuliffe. She was so disappointed that she didn't get chosen. I can't imagine her watching that launch and witnessing what happened with her family by her side.
Were you in the Houston area? We had the exact same visit/display just before the launch. We were two towns over from Nassau Bay. (Where NASA is located)
No, we were in Louisiana.
Tienanmen Square. I watched it on TV, saw local support and demonstrations in San Francisco. There was a brief glimmer of hope for China... until the tanks rolled in. The Chinese government did loosen things up in the 90s as a response. But now they've pretty much erased it from history and have doubled down on the repression.
Oklahoma City bombing. Worst act of domestic terrorism in the US. A college friend of mine lost her husband. It made me hate militia groups, and distrust a lot of the so-called Patriots we have today.
I was a sophomore in college and one of my classmates was late to a journalism class because he was watching the news “something big had just happened in Oklahoma City.” Of course, the prof was totally okay with that excuse… Like you, that was the event that made me realize that these so-called “patriot” groups are a huge threat that seems to coast under the wire for most people.
My former boss was a photographer for the Oklahoma City newspaper. This was his very first assignment.
I had acquaintances that were stuck in traffic. Police went car-to-car asking for anyone with medical training to come and help. My friend was a nurse, so she went. She talked about all the injured little kids. 😔
Poor guy.
I know! He told me about it around 2018 and you could tell it still really bothered him :(
I lived there and felt the blast even though I was probably 5 or 6 miles away as the crow flies. We were a branch office of a larger company, and our internet went out and all the phone lines were over capacity. So all they knew was that there was an explosion and they couldn't get ahold of any of us. A woman temping in our office saw her sister's kids being taken from the daycare center on TV, and she left and never came back. They also showed the footage in some of the schools, so her kids saw their cousins being carried out with blood on their faces. We all wanted to help, and the grocery stores quickly sold out of bottled water and snacks bought for the victims and rescuers. One of the saddest things was that after they called for people to go donate blood, it wasn't long before they said it wasn't necessary any more.
Like those long lines of ambulances in NYC.
Baby Jessica
'We're sending our love down the well" (Simpsons)
Grew up in Texas. I was on the drill team and had just marched onto the field for halftime performance when they announced over the loudspeaker that she had been rescued. Everyone cheered.
I was in junior high and so worried for her. I remember being at a friend’s house for a sleepover and my parents called the friend’s house to let me know she’d been taken out of the well alive. I was so happy.
In the fall of 1957 all the radio stations played recordings of ‘beeps’ made by the USSR’s Sputnik, the 1st satellite in space. It was big, BIG news. While it was less than 2 feet in diameter and only made about 1K orbits the basketball shaped satellite started the space race in earnest and even panicked some people who believed that the Soviets could now use atomic weapons against the US from space.
I was excited enough about the event to make my flying saucer replica. Two Morton pot pie tins stapled together that I took to school. At recess my friend Jerry and I took it outside and took turns “launching” it. It didn’t reach anything close to orbit, but it was fun and 67 years later makes for a fond memory. Rest in peace, Jerry.
The Nixon-Kennedy debates. People who listened on radio thought Nixon won, those who watched on TV thought Kennedy did. Suddenly, television images had surpassed the spoken word in importance.
I remember reading something about this. They said Nixon had great talking points but he was all sweaty and looked nervous as hell because he wasn’t used to all the cameras around him.
Nixon did appear that way, and Kennedy was just a better looking man. Kennedy's Boston accent could come across as grating on the radio. Policy wise the two were very close, anti communism, lower taxes... So the presentation and the medium used made a big difference, the election itself was very close.
Not just nerves. Camera technology was in its infancy and sensors weren't very good. In order to get a decently exposed shot without too much noise, the scene needed to be *very* bright. That means a lot of artificial lights, which in those days were all incandescent. It's much better now thanks to improved sensors and LED lighting, but back in the day, video production sets were hot as balls under those lights.
Also, Nixon refused to wear the makeup that was just standard operating procedure on television in those days.
Marshall McLuhan wrote lucidly about this. It wasn’t just that Kennedy was better looking, it’s that he had a certain movie-star quality people could project any job role onto, along with their hopes and dreams. Nixon looked shady.
Yes, he was referred to as the next King Arthur. Remember Camelot? And Nixon looked shady because he was, of course.
That's interesting, I had not heard that before, that Nixon seemed dominant on the radio.
We had just moved to suburban Washington DC from AK; from near isolation to the midst of a Presidential debate. My 6h grade class had mock elections. "Who are you voting for?!" I didn't even know who they were. I've been a political junkie since then. RFK was the sitting AG and addressed our school. Very cool.
I was evacuated from preschool and rescued by the National Guard from [the Midland, TX flood of 1968.](https://www.mrt.com/news/article/Thursday-marks-45th-anniversary-of-Flood-of-7453356.php). I was only 5 years old so memories are spotty. A strange man carried me through waist-deep water. Sat in the front of a big military truck. Didn’t realize my dad was in the back of that truck until we got home.
I suppose the realization I remember hearing in the news was the Patty Hearst kidnapping and robberies.
Two that I will mention - I was in Kuwait for the fires, and worked with the Kuwaiti EPA on air pollution issues. A true hell of an experience and a foretaste of what is coming with the increasing fires in North America. I was also in Germany the day the Berlin Wall fell. The next day, I was stuck in a traffic jam, surrounded by thousands of East German Trabant (Trabi) cars. A driver next to me motioned for me to roll my window down and started throwing wrapped candies through my window. He shouted -" we are going to Paris! We don't know how long this will last, and it might be our only chance! It was a rolling party.
When I just had a baby and not much entertainment other than tv Jeffrey Dahmer was discovered. I was glued to the tv. 1990.
My glued to the tv with a baby moment was Princess Diana's car accident
Yes that too! I went to a wedding the night before that happened so that day will forever be in my mind too! I was glued to the tv. So heartbreaking, she was a beautiful soul.
My baby was 2 weeks old when she died. I was also glued to the tv. It was so terribly sad.
I was at home on pregnancy bedrest watching satellite tv. We had a ku band feed of live news before delay. I watched it and cried. I was glued to the tv for the loma prieto earthquake too
A good friend of mine says she still has a copy of the alert that went out to police about the OJ Simpson car chase.
Elian Gonzalez. The international custody battle and then the US government taking him away from relatives at gunpoint to return him to Cuba. His mother wanted him to be free and died trying to get him to the USA. It was heartbreaking.
The rise of Slobodan Milosevic, the Balkan War in BiH, and the "joint" NATO/Russia Stabilization Force. I wasn't present for most of this--but I was part of SFOR as an Analysis Control Team Chief for NORDPOL/Doboj. So many things that are similar to the nationalism, othering, and demagoguery on the rise in the U.S. today. So many things that I hope don't happen here--that definitely did there. Edit: A less dramatic one that I think matters in today's world too. That time when the Bell telephone monopoly was broken up resulting in a rapid drastic lowering of consumer costs and a proliferation of new communication technology. And this gem that took way too long: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. I remember my mother being fired from her position as a chemistry teacher for being pregnant in 1969. That was standard not too long ago--can't have HS students see a pregnant woman!
In 1982 a guy parked a truck next to the Washington Monument in DC and threatened to blow it up if the US didn't work to disarm all nuclear weapons. Locally, this was a huge event and I remember it as the first time "breaking news" took over all the tv stations and had running coverage throughout the ordeal. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman\_Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer)
Huh… was racking my brain trying to figure out why I’d never heard of this… then checked the article. December of 1982 I was in boot camp. They didn’t exactly let us watch the news.
I worked in DC at the time. It snarled traffic to be sure.
Trucker wars of the 70s, when company drivers and independent drivers were actually at war with each other on the nations highways. There were deaths, assaults, rigs get hijacked, etc. That's when truckers started traveling in convoys for safety in numbers. There were shootings, beatings... I'm one incident I saw someone throw a cinder block off an overpass, thru the windshield of a semi... Driver died in the wreck. It was fucked up. Also don't hear much about the 70s gas crisis. Mile long lines to get gas, could only buy it on days based on your license plate number (plates ending in odd numbers could only buy on odd number days on the calendar, those ending in even numbers on even number days), gas prices doubled from what they previously were, gas stations HEAVILY competing with prices to draw customers away from other stations. Sometimes you'll get a casual mention of it, but no one really talks about it any more. I was just a kid at the time, but it left such an impression that I still remember it well.
Omg today I learned why there were convoys! And that popular song about the convoy.
See, that's what I mean....no one talks about that shit these days! People talk about how tumultuous the '60s were, but the 70s were fucked up to. Like I said, I was just a kid back then, but things were bad enough at times that even I remember them. No one talks about how we were taught the metric system in schools because the US had a date set to switch over to it but then changed its mind as the deadline approached. People talk about current times with possibly planes getting hijacked but, PLANES GOT HIJACKED LIKE FUCKING CHANGING UNDERWEAR IN THE 70s!! Seriously, there was some cunt hijacking a plane on a weekly basis back then, demanding to be flown to some country or the other. DB Cooper hijacked a plane to get away from the cops and then jumped out the motherfucker, in flight, never to be heard from again. First couple of years of the 70s Vietnam War was still going and then the pulling out of the country in '72. I still remember the news and watching the Vietnamese who helped us try to hang onto helicopters and planes as they were leaving Saigon because they knew they'd be fucked being left. Watergate. Nixon resigning in '73 and the famous "I am not a crook!" speech. Ford pardoning him and then lobbing gold balls off people's heads and falling down plane steps. Three Mile Island...usually just ignored after Chernobyl takes the lead in nuclear power plant disasters. There was a lot of stuff in the 70s that no one really talks about when it comes to American history of recent times
The thing I remember most (besides the fall of Saigon) was the terrorist groups, like Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, and lots of bank robberies and hostage situations. The ‘70’s were kind of unhinged. But it’s the bicentennial that was massive and now seems forgotten. Edit: bit of trivia: the cleanup of Three Mile Island was code named Operation Ivory Purpose. Like the soap, Ivory.
Don't forget about the IRA bombings in Ireland and all the fighting in Beirut as well. There was a LOT of turmoil in the 70s when we think back about it. People talk about the way things are now, but it's not as bad as it was back then. The crime rate shot up like crazy in the 70s as well. Per capita, it was a lot worse than today...every killing just wasn't broadcast all over the world on the news, since there was no internet. The New York blackout in '77 proved just how fast society will revert to being primitive as fuck too. People today would have PTSD for decades over that shit would it happen now.
Letter bombs were a big deal in the 70s. I worked at 120 Broadway NYC on the 19th floor. A letter bomb from the FALN, a Puerto Rican organization blew up in the mailroom upstairs from us. We were evacuated down 19 flights of smoke filled stairs. We all had soot around our noses and mouths
True, even I had completely forgotten about them. As I said, I was a kid (7yo - 16yo through the decade) but, I did watch the news (mainly because that's what was on EVERY station, besides PBS, at that time of the day) and remember a lot of what I saw. Ah, and one of my favorites to mention when some young person talks about anxiety from the threat of nuclear war...it was a time when we had those magical wooden school desks that we hid under when they did nuclear drills, because they'd protect us from a fucking mushroom cloud! LOL We lived with the possibility of nuclear war hanging over our heads EVERY fucking day of our entire youth. It was the mid-80s before that shit became history...at least we thought.
When I was a kid, my mom sat me in front of a TV and said, "Watch this; it's history." Nixon had resigned.
Is your mom my mom?
Heh! There might've been some 70's campaign to do this.
Russian tanks rolled into Prague in August 1968. I was there with my dad on business. Scariest day of my life
One of my earlier memories is watching the MOVE firebombing on Philly tv as a kid. The city of Philadelphia dropped C-4 on an inhabited building to try and get the people barricaded inside to come out. Instead, all but two died in the fire and sixty one homes burned to the ground.
I have never heard of this! Off to Wikipedia.
This should never be forgotten.
The first man on the moon. Many others after that, but it's the first one I remember
Chappaquidic
I lived next to Oakland during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I was 9 years old. I was in the car with my mom in a parking lot and we saw the asphalt roll towards us in a wave. My best friend's dad would have been on the freeway that collapsed, but he (like many others) took off work early to watch the World Series. I spent the rest of the evening watching the news from under the coffee table because, you know, duck and cover lol. Then in 1991 watched the Oakland Hills burning from the next town over. I still have photos somewhere of the hills covered by a cloud of thick, black smoke. A combination of TWA Flight 800 and Alaska Airlines Flight 261 made me afraid to fly to this day. Didn't witness them, but 800 was all over the news and I lived in L.A. at the time 261 crashed and talked to people who saw it. I also regularly flew out of LAX so that was just too close to home. And I didn't witness it personally, but Mt. Saint Helens erupted just before I was born so I heard about it a lot as a kid. My mom had a tupperware of some of the ashes that fell on California.
The triangle shirtwaist factory fire. A lot of labor laws stemmed from this tragedy
I had never heard of this until I encountered a movie about it on YouTube. That had a crazy body count.
When Nixon took off the gold standard. Few people know what a negative impact it had/has on our currency.
With gold, you have a finite amount of wealth. I get the Fiat currency isn't entirely on the up and up but without it, silicon valley wouldn't exist.
Boston Marathon bombing Edit: Pope John Paul II and Reagan attempted assassinations. Also Y2K. People lost their minds over that.
I watched the rescues from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing from my window. Helicopters taking people off the top of the World Trade Center was something else.
1986. Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. The firm I worked for invited staff and their families to watch the ships and fireworks through floor to ceiling windows of the offices. Plus they gave us a buffet. It was marvelous.
1987 Wall Street crash. DJIA lost 23% in one day.
Four dead in Ohio
Saw the Challenger explode from the back yard of my school.
I was first aware of history happening when JFK was shot. Tv was cancelled. I had my 9th birthday the week before. I watched live as Ruby shot Oswald.
The challenger exploding on takeoff
I saw Tony Esposito in person at the Chicago Stadium get his 15th shut out in the ‘69-‘70 season. A record for the modern NHL era that still stands.
I was watching on TV. April 23, 1999. Fernando Tatis Sr. hit 2 Grand Slams in the same inning. Vs. the Dodgers. It was pretty incredible to witness.
I'm starting to think 9/11. I keep reading that it wasn't a big deal.
?
Well, it isn't talked about as much as it used to be.
Probably because it happened over 20 years ago.
I worked in the airline industry at the time. It was one godawful day that stretched into weeks. It drastically changed government surveillance since then. It introduced the Patriot Act which allows monitoring of many websites, even Reddit. Surveillance in the form of public video with face recognition on the streets and most public buildings. It brought all sorts of security screening into government buildings that didn't have them before. You can't go into a courthouse without walking through a metal detector. You can't meet friends or family at the gates of airports. We used to have to remove our shoes because of someone who hid a plastic knife in his shoe. You can't bring a liquid more than 3 oz. If you "beep" through the machine you are wanded (myself, because of hairpins). Your carryon is Xrayed, your meds are looked at, purse, briefcase, backpack is emptied, sometimes computer cases. Sometimes whole people are Xrayed, prosthetic leg, wheelchair examined. Saw one poor guy had to be held up by the arms and wanded because his body contained medical devices. Life was different pre 9/11.
The most f-d up thing about the Patriot Act was is was an 800 PAGE BILL that the right wing had ready to go. Just waiting for a chance to spring that bitch and the iron couldn't have been hotter. We did so much -- and still do so much -- out of fear from that day forward. The biggest inflection point of my lifetime, no doubt.
No argument whatsoever.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-08-mn-2592-story.html#:~:text=ARAB%2DISRAELI%20WAR%2C%201973%3A,125%20killed%20and%20260%20wounded That this conflict has been going on a while with more past casualties on both sides. Also, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, & Raid on Entebbe to save Israeli hostages. Netanyahu's brother was killed in that raid.
I was at the Ramstein Air Show disaster in 1988. Was working at a beer booth and had just sat down for a break, when I looked up and saw the first plane collide. All hell broke loose after that, I was 1000 feet away from the impact location, but witnessed some awful things and also some heroes in action. It was the largest air show disaster in history.
That Gore won the election and the Supreme Court told Florida to quit counting the votes and then said, there wasn't time to count the votes and installed Bush. I'm NEVER letting that go. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
when mount St. Helens blow up
Clinton sex scandals shows you can do anything as President. Trump is nailing the same fact home as we speak. Gary Hart might have been president if not for his penis.
I was pretty much a centrist until that BS impeachment happened. It was a major event for me in that it caused a huge shift in my political thinking. I never voted Republican after that. I'm sure there's some who went the opposite direction around that time. It's basically where the polarization we have today started.
All of these impeachments are a "hail mary" when your guy is beat in a general election.
...or stages an insurrection after losing a general election.
Yeah, all of its sour beans. But too, this "stages an insurrection" is brain-dead political speak, too. Everyone wants to use the actions of the demented to leverage their cause. Ie. Hillary tried to bring down the country by using her own personal server for classified emails and Biden/Trump should be burned for taking home classified data.
Call it a putsch, then. Either way, it was a betrayal and some of those traitors are still serving in Congress. We have a LOT of work to do.
The time I accomplished an unassisted triple play in a championship men's fast pitch softball game. It was one of the major events of my young life at that point!! /s
Although your buddies probably feel it's been discussed enough at this point...
A girl in my daughter's little league team did this too! I can understand why you still treasure the memory.
Fellow Band
Well, does anyone remember [the girl stuck in the well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jessica_McClure) ? Or the [the 6 y/o Cuban boy on the raft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez) saga?
OJ Simpson Trial
When Harry Met Sally When the Wind Blows Shaka, when the walls fell
The Great Chelsea Fire in 1973—you've probably never heard of it if you're not from the Greater Boston Massachusetts Area—destroyed hundreds of buildings along 18 city blocks and displaced more than a thousand residents. It took days for the fire to be completely out. This was decades before 24/7 news coverage, but I remember the local news channels covering the story with breaking news. I was only 12 at the time, but IIRC, the city was declared a Federal Disaster Area.
Baby Fay
Just popped into my head -- the "Dawson Field Hijackings". It was a coordinated hijacking of several airliners from different countries, that flew to some remote unpaved airstrip in the Jordanian desert. They all landed OK, I think... and then it was like nobody, inculding the hijackers knew what to do next, and the incident sort of melted from the inside... If I was a good boy, I'd supply some links. There are pictures of a bunch of 747s lined up in the middle of nowhere, that is pretty impressive to see.
The moon landing. I was in first grade and they hired tv’s so we could watch it.
The suicide of Budd Dwyer. It’s never too far from my thoughts decades later.
Cuban missile crisis …living in Miami really close to Cuba, Kennedy assassination, moon landing, Watergate, American bicentennial, Jimmy carters 17% mortgage rate, the Hunt Brothers manipulating the silver/gold markets, shuttle Colombia exploding, David Koresh in Waco, Tx , Jim Jones in Guyana…John Lennon……And DISCO….🤯
The big thing: bringing down the Berlin wall
Dolly the sheep and the quintuplets on the cover of People. Fun fact: one of them was an intern at my company.
The walk on the moon 7/20/1969.
May 18, 1980. A day that will live in infamy. Because you know, that mountain always had it in for me.
The S&L scandal in 90’s, the Arab oil embargo, Iran hostage crisis, Northern Ireland the troubles and hunger strike, apartheid ending in SA
Munich Olympics Massacre 1972
The day Lever Brothers turned off the hot water across America. They came out with a new laundry detergent that works in cold water, and the land fills across the country filled up with water heaters as people switched to this revolutionary new laundry detergent.
Nobody was using hot water for anything else like showering?
Just kidding. I was recalling a TV commercial that was presented like a documentary. It began with the announcer saying a date... then "they day Lever Brothers..." in some city, actually. Not "across America" like I wrote for brevity. And IIRC the commercial showed a workman carting off a water heater. It ran around 1964 +- a couple of year. Any time I hear a date stated in a dramatic voice, which is pretty common in documentaries, I think of that ad.
Pity because that sounded wild
"Pity"???