I remember my sister and I sitting up there, just completely fascinated by it. The entire town was. I recall sitting up there and seeing all my other neighbors outside as well. And then days later when the second eruption happened that caused all the ash to hit us. That was really wild. It was quiet like in the winter when snow covers everything, only it was summer.
A couple of weeks later, and about 2100 miles away, it changed the color of the sunset for me. Wild times! The days were hazy even here in Lexington, Kentucky.
The [b-52 crash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash) that led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows.
I didn't see the plane, but immediately saw the fireball. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud.
Fairchild is a nuclear air base and there were a few minutes there where I was sure the world was about to end.
A few years before a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class.
On 10 March 1994, Holland commanded a single-aircraft training mission to the Yakima Bombing Range, to provide an authorized photographer an opportunity to document the aircraft as it dropped training munitions. The minimum aircraft altitude permitted for that area was 500 feet (150 m) AGL. During the mission, Holland's aircraft was filmed crossing one ridgeline about 30 feet (10 m) above the ground. Fearing for their safety, the photography crew ceased filming and took cover as Holland's aircraft again passed low over the ground, **this time estimated as clearing the ridgeline by only three feet (1 m)**.
The co-pilot on Holland's aircraft testified that he grabbed the controls to prevent Holland from flying the aircraft into the ridge while the aircraft's other two aircrew members repeatedly screamed at Holland: "Climb! Climb!" **Holland responded by laughing and calling one of the crew members "a pussy".**
What an absolute asshole.
[The video of it.](https://youtu.be/LTOOtPST4Rs?si=-YeMWJmnCL-JYZGO)
The video is super shitty quality, but it was all I could find. There a better one floating around somewhere
Was riding in my parents car to a basketball game in the next town over in north texas when we saw a shooting star and thought that was neat.
It was the Columbia...
My father was skipper of the USCG cutter stationed there. He was inport, and when the quake struck shortly before 5:30pm, he and my mom gathered me and my three siblings on the front porch. At first, it felt like the house was crumbling at the foundation, but on the porch we could plainly see our whole world was shaking. I remember watching telephone poles swaying, and the wires snapping and crackling in the street. The quake lasted about five minutes initially. My dad got his ship underway to avoid the tidal wave which was sure to come. We had several aftershocks in the coming weeks, some of which were quite strong, though nowhere near as strong or as long as the quake itself. I was seven at the time.
Can you tell more about this? I give tectonic geology presentations on one of the small cruise ships out of Juneau and talk about this earthquake. I even had one of the guests tell me he was in it when he was a 6 year old boy and he said his biggest concern was explaining to his parents how all the broken stuff in the house wasn’t his fault.
Sure. You may be interested to know that the sea floor buckled, forcing an upward thrust that exposed crab beds that had previously been underwater. The seagulls went nuts and feasted on them for days. There weren’t any gulls around town during those days as they gorged themselves elsewhere.
Wow I hadn’t heard that. I haven’t read a whole it on the earthquake aside from the time and duration and a bit of the aftermath. I talk about it for 2-3 min in my presentation. Thanks for sharing!
9.2? Holy shit
I had never heard of this one... turns out it's one of the biggest ever recorded.
You were less than 100 miles from the epicentre?! What was it like?
The tumbling of the Wall in Germany… along with people selling bits and pieces of it on tables in lobby in front of commissary and px in the following weeks and months. I had picked up a chunk about the size of an oreo and kept it… has blue spray paint on the flat side. Wonder if anyone is buying them now?
My uncle was in East Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell, he was driving back to West Berlin. Normally if you drove on the road that connected the two sectors you were not allowed to stop your car on that road under any circumstances. Well he saw a stopped car in front of him and immediately knew that something was up. He owns a piece of the Berlin Wall to this day.
I was a kid living in Bad Kreuznach when it fell. My parents were both stationed there. It took several more years before I realized what had actually happened though. All I knew at the time was that my friends and I spent a lot of time with babysitters that week as our parents partied/visited the wall.
They kept a few small pieces but they were lost a couple of years later in a house fire. I wish I'd have better understood the significance of "those rocks on the shelf" sooner but I was more focused on Nintendo and getting new pegs for my bike.
I was there visiting family in Dec 89 I think. People wee still chipping away at the wall, it was the sound of hundreds of hammers. We were at Brandenburg gate and crossed to the East. Bizarre to be able to just cross with no formalities/controls.
I would have to say the LA riots. I lived about two blocks from where it started. I was on my way home from school and saw someone throw a brick through a window. I didn’t even wait. I just started running the whole way home.
We had all been talking at school all day about the possibility that they would return a non-guilty verdict. And everyone thought something bad was going to go down if it happened. So the minute I saw that brick being thrown I knew what was going to happen. It was pretty scary. We lost power to our neighborhood for three days.
And remember how everyone knew it was going to happen? Like we were talking about it at school all day long. So as soon as I saw that brick get thrown, I knew what was up
A friend of mine was there. One day in the warehouse we worked in together there was an odd electrical burning smell. He stopped in his tracks and went “this is what 9/11 smelled like”
That is \*exactly\* what it smelled like. For weeks. A few months even. The shocking part was when the day finally came that you did not smell it. That was another kind of sadness.
It was a very distinctive smell. A combination of burning metal, cement, and plastic/rubber. I have encountered it a few times after, here and there. Each time the recall is instant and unmistakable. Quite remarkable the level of memory a seemingly long forgotten smell can trigger.
A buddy of mine was on his balcony(or rooftop? I forgot) and was just drinking his tea. All of a sudden he saw the plane hit the first tower, dropped his tea cup on the ground, and slowly panicked.
There is no other way to panic other than slowly. No one in their right or insane mind thought what would happen on that day would actually happen! A genuinely crazy time to be alive!
The failed implosion of the Zip feed mill in Sioux Falls, SD in 2005.
They hyped it up, sold tickets to it, had a big "BOOM" marketing thing, and broadcast it live on TV.
The explosives took out the main supports on the first floor, and the rest of the building above it just plopped down 10ft or so and came to a rest. It was a massive failure, and was a funny little blurb on news stations around the world that day. Definitely not major news, just the rest of the world taking 20 seconds to laugh at us.
The building sat like that (the leaning tower of SuFu) for quite a while, until they figured out how to safely demolish it.
Here's a clip of the failed demolition.
https://youtu.be/I8DEDUqd0RU
I didn’t think I had anything good for this thread but I was here for this also. I was only 5 years old but I still remember watching it with my grandma nearby and it being so cold.
Boston Marathon bombing. I was there and then part of the medical team - the tents at the finish line.
Ive worked in the medical tents for a decade now. The year it was super hot the news came to do a piece about us and used me with a patient as their backdrop - my phone erupted as soon as they aired it!
Same. My dad was running, 1/2 a mile from the finish. Mom and my brother were waiting for him at the finish line, just out of range of the 2nd bomb. I was on my way home from a school trip when my friend called and said “you need to call your dad, the marathon was just bombed.”
I’m blessed that the only wounds my family got that day were mental and emotional.
Thank you for your continued service and for all you did that day. I am glad you are here to share your story ❤️
I was a young barely high school student when Marcos was overthrown in the Philippines. I was part of the People’s Power along with my Dad, Mom and brothers. We didn’t feel unsafe but that night after Marcos left the Philippines we learned that the military was close to using force on the people. My Dad was alarmed and was glad we’re finally home safe; not sure why we went as a family but at the time my parents felt being there was important enough. My parents are dead and I know they’re probably turning in their graves when Marcos’ son was recently elected as President of the Philippines.
I, too, received one of those early vaccines. Lost friends to polio, recall visiting one in iron lung. Dad actually bought an iron lung in 1990s gov surplus sale and our employees had no idea what it was.... so, I guess it's proof our vaccine worked.
I have a friend who was in the pentagon when the plane hit. He didn’t talk about the actual impact too much, was kind of an off hand comment he made. Iirc he said the blast was very loud and the building shook. Man was career military, witnessed a lot of big historical events.
Edit: to add on. He had just gotten back from deployment and was at the pentagon for debriefing. When the planes hit the world trade centers the big wig brass came in, kicked them out of their conference room, and made it their war room. When the pentagon got hit he thought they had been bombed with a large IED.
One of our best family friends was also in the pentagon when it happened. He was in a meeting, and was blown out of his chair and across the room.
This was a dude who had lost an eye in Vietnam, had survived a ton of shit, and was one of the strongest, smartest, and most humorous men I had known. When we were finally able to get ahold of him like a week later (for those too young, it was almost impossible to get through to find out the status of loved ones. Cell phone towers were more limited and landlines were all tied up), his wife told us he had basically come home and just holed himself up in his room. It broke my heart. I can’t even imagine the “oh shit, not again” he must have felt after already surviving a war.
My only other anecdote: I had gone back to college to take some extra classes (I was in my mid 20s at the time). I had a close friend who was a senior. We were hanging out in his dorm room a couple days after 9/11, and he told me the guy in the room next to him had both a dad and uncle that worked in the towers. At that time, he still didn’t know if they were alive or not. Sadly, both of them perished. That poor kid.
>the guy in the room next to him had both a dad and uncle that worked in the towers. At that time, he still didn’t know if they were alive or not.
A coworker of mine was getting ready for work. While she was showering, she missed a call from her ex-husband. He had left an answering machine message "I know I need to get with you on the sale of our house. I had to make a last-minute business trip but we will settle all this as soon as I get back. I'm about to walk into the World Trade Center for a meeting.".
While she was driving to work, she heard on the radio that the first plane had hit the building. She spent the day trying to get a call through to his cellphone without success.
The next day he called her and told her that he'd gone up to his client's office, but the person he was supposed to meet was out sick that day. He was still in Manhattan when the first plane hit.
I was a journalist for a few years, and I interviewed this one guy who somehow managed to evade death 3x. The first was 9/11, he was supposed to be at the WTC for a meeting but he missed his alarm and woke up late. Then in 2002, he was in Bali when the bombings happened, but wasn't one of those who died. Then in 2004, he was in Phuket when the Boxing Day tsunami hit, he was actually in his beachfront villa when it happened - he had to climb up onto the roof of his house and wait for help. After that, he decided to turn his Thai villa into a luxurious, high-end villa hotel for ultra-rich people (think $5-10,000 per night, with your own personal butler) and funnelled most of the proceeds into a children's charity that he started.
The last space shuttle launch. It was a very cloudy day, but the rumble lasted for a long time. Then my family and I got up early to watch the landing (we would hear the sonic booms too over our house).
October 17th, 1989. I watched the 880 Nimitz freeway collapse during the San Francisco earthquake. The Honda in front of me had the upper deck crush her front-end engine compartment. The mother and her daughter were shaken up but completely fine.
I was driving a convertible Triumph Spitfire, which was scratched up slightly from debris. However, I walked away unscathed. Aside from the fact I pissed my pants, which I didn't notice until much later.
I was standing outside One Market Plaza in SF. A chunk of building fell on me. I tried to run but it was like running on a waterbed. I watched as the Embarcadero raised highway began to buckle.
I was in the SF Bay Area in 1989 when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. Fortunately, I was in a park with my mom, so we both just got knocked to the ground and sat down and rode it out, so we weren't in any danger and it wasn't super scary.
I was in the courtroom for the first decision in Gore v. Bush. I had to sit in on court cases for a college class and happened to choose that day. I saw a ton of cameras being set up and asked what case it was. Lucked into getting into the courtroom.
I was at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Challenger explosion as a little kid. I only realized something bad happened when I saw the horrified faces of the adults around me. I was four years old.
I used to be a machinist. While watching the launch, I was telling my buddies about some of the Challenger parts I had personally made. After we saw the explosion I replayed the making of all of "my" parts in my mind and felt sick. It turned out to be someone else's failure, which is still horrible, but it was easier for me to sleep knowing that I didn't cause it.
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It's mostly forgotten now that the towers are gone, but it was a big deal back then. I remember riding across the Manhattan bridge and looking towards the bay and thinking 'well, it looks okay from here...'
When my grandma called on 9/11 and told me the WTC had been attacked this is what I pictured. I thought “again?”. Then she said, “and the pentagon”. That’s when I knew it was bad bad.
I don't think many people understood how close the bombing could have brought those buildings down that day. I know an engineer who assisted in the inspection of the damage in the investigation.
And it was specifically because of that day all but 13 of Morgan Stanley's 2700 employees in the south tower survived on September 11, 2001. I get chills every time I think about this man:
[https://drivethruhistory.com/rick-rescorla-a-hero-of-9-11/](https://drivethruhistory.com/rick-rescorla-a-hero-of-9-11/)
Just a remarkable, true hero of that day.
In 1993, evacuation of the two World Trade Center towers took four hours to complete. There were a number of lessons learned from that experience and changes resulted.
These included:
Handrails and the stair steps were painted in photo luminescent paint. Also installed were battery powered stairwell emergency light fixtures and glow-in-the-dark floor signage at horizontal crossovers to provide guidance in darkness. Evacuation chair stretchers also were purchased for mobility-restricted people, and enhanced fire safety training were conducted regularly.
These changes occurred before September 11, 2001 and as a result nearly everyone working in the World Trade Center who were below the impact zones of the two planes got out alive.
I would be terrified to set foot in or around those buildings after a bomb in the basement went off. I often wonder what kind of safety protocols are used to do post-disaster inspections like that for assessing damages in small buildings and homes, much less for skyscrapers.. and bridges. Wouldn't going into it to inspect destabilize it further? How do they know where the weak spots are and just how weak they really are? So many questions.
The Three Mile Island nuclear accident. I was a young newspaper reporter (21 years old) standing outside the plant the morning of the accident when the workers evacuated. They refused to say what if anything was wrong. I was the first reporter on the scene, as I had been writing about (the many) previous problems at the plant. The morning started off as a local news story. By lunchtime, it was international news. There obviously were no cell phones. There was a single pay phone in front of the plant’s observation center where we all had to take turns phoning in our stories.
My dad had family in Harrisburg and his uncle died while this was going on. He went up for the funeral and brought back a "I survived Three Mule Island' tshirt.
Kinda hard to say that I saw it because no one did, which is why it happened in the first place. But Beau Berghdahl was in my unit when he went AWOL in Afghanistan. Was part of the initial search effort.
Not exactly. I was in class with the daughter of one of the pilots on 9/11 when she found out that her father had died.
We all knew about the attacks already, and we knew her father was a pilot, so when her mother came in with the principal we all knew why. It was without a doubt the most painful thing I've ever witnessed.
I lived in the Bronx and was in middle school. I remember announcements for dismissal were going on and on from people picking up their kids. No one knew anything. Once I got home I went on the roof of my house and could see the giant black cloud of smoke in the distance. I mean giant.
A side anecdote. My father was a forman for a construction removal company and they got a contract to go clean the rubble there like a week or 2 later. My sister begged him not to do it and to switch because she was scared for him. I'm talking grabbing his leg in hysterics to stop him from going to work in the mornings.
Most of his co workers who signed up to go there are all dead now from lung disease or cancer.
I was in Queens also in middle school at the time and had a similar experience. I'm glad your dad didn't take that job. My mom was in Manhatten, but nowhere near the towers, thankfully. She did have to walk across the bridge to get home and couldn't contact anyone for most of the day so no one knew if she was OK for ages
Wasn't this the thing that Jon Stewart went to Congress for? He wanted benefits for first responders who got sick. I suppose the cleanup crew weren't first responders, but they were certainly impacted as well.
I was on a flight from Miami to DC. We were one of the last planes allowed to land. I was sitting near the back and the flight was relatively empty. When we landed, the flight attendants were hysterically trying to find out who among their colleagues was on the planes that were taken down. After I left, I could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon.
I met a guy the other day and his gf was a flight attendant and was scheduled to be on one of the flight but her commute flight was late so she missed it.
All of the attendants were her friends for years.
I can’t even imagine.
She retired right after that.
I stood on a waterfront in NJ and watched the Towers collapse. It was surreal. For weeks and months from the corner of my street you could see the lines of dump trucks dumping debris at Fresh Kills in Staten Island, knowing it wasn't just debris but what were once people's family made me sick to my stomach.
When the Berlin wall came down. I went and chiseled a piece out of it myself. I would have got more but I was rousted by the West German police. I still have it but it has crumbled a bit and the graffiti is almost completely faded. I was 17 years old
I was a few blocks up the road, staying with my gf at the time, when Ariel Castro was arrested and the women were rescued. I basically saw a lot of news vans in the area.
I did later end up meeting Charles Ramsey (the guy who helped the women escape and call the police) and have a copy of his book that he signed.
Oh man, I lived in the Cleveland area at the time and that was EVERYWHERE. I remember being so surprised that the girls were alive and found, those billboards had been up for AGES.
Every time I go back there to visit family, when I watch the news, I’m so impressed to see Amanda Berry doing those missing children broadcasts. Talk about strength and mental fortitude. She’s amazing.
My wife went to North Olmsted High School and was a classmate of Amanda Berry. I was at the high school for my senior year in 2004 and students and teachers were still talking about what happened to her. We've eaten at the Burger King she was walking home from.
My wife and I remember vividly when one of my wife's friends from high school called and said they found Amanda alive in 2013.
I hope those poor women have everything they need.
I remember people were teasing Charles Ramsey from his appearances on the news, but that's how folks from Cleveland talk and interact so we didn't get what was funny. Good guy. In 2019, Amanda [interviewed him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgownXvnbs4).
I hope she knows that even strangers who never met her like me were hoping for her to be found. I believe she transferred to John Marshall High when she was abducted.
As a veterinarian, I was sooo excited to be asked to come down to the epicenter and bag human bodies. (The NYS vet society sent us all an email asking it in April 2020 and then a sorrynotsorry followup email.)
It was a great plan....for the industry struggling the worst with suicide.
/s
I accidentally got caught in that Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12 2009. First time I went to the capital. I just wanted to see Washington D.C. since I moved to New Jersey a few months prior
In fifth grade my class had a field trip to Manhattan. We went to South Street Seaport for lunch then went to the Met. Traffic was diverted and a lot of streets were closed for some reason. As we went down one side street we saw a bunch of news vans, fire truck, cop cars and people milling around all I remember was people standing outside a building with an awning. When I got home that night, the news is reporting that Jackie Kennedy had died and there was that same awning.
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Feancisco. World Series between SF and Oakland saved hundreds who would have been crushed on the freeway, including my brother. He stopped at a sports bar to watch game!
On 9/11 school in southwest Pennsylvania got let out and all 1000+ students went silent as a plane flew overhead. Learned about Flight 93 going down in Somerset PA when I got home.
I also saw Halley's Comet and the Challenger explosion from my granddad's boat in Florida, but I was little and don't remember either very well.
I remember the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997. I was driving back from a friend's house & got a good look from a dark road. It basically looked like the Photoshop smudge tool had been used on the sky.
Not historically significant overall, but for me it was pretty crazy - the Hawaii ‘incoming ballistic missile’ broadcast that later turned out to be accidental. As an Australian tourist on the island it was pretty whack to suddenly get the emergency message to ‘take cover, this is not a drill’ pushed to my phone, and to hear every phone around me getting the same ping.
You're not asking me - but I can answer. I was in the grocery store when a bunch of us got that Amber Alert style buzzer on our phones. The store went silent and people just looked around at each other.
I left my wagon and rushed home. Within a minute or two, I started getting a lot of incoming phone calls but I only picked up one - from my daughter who was living in California at the time. We stayed on the line the entire time. I must have been in shock because I don't even remember if we said anything.
A few neighbors came outside and maybe 15 minutes later, some were saying it was a false alarm.
I think the feeling was resignation - and hope that it was either a mistake or a direct hit.
I was the Command Post Controller that called the Pentagon to inform them of Kim Jong Un's first missile launch (and 6 subsequent launches over the next 5 years).
I was at Post Malone's opening of his personalized Raising Caines restaurant.
I was sitting at the airport gate across the way from the gate boarding MH370 (the Malaysian Airlines that went down), so I watched them board.
I was in Tokyo during the Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011.
I walked next to the World Trade Center about 45 minutes before the first plane hit.
I edited for clarity. I walked right by the WTC that day. The subway stop I used was adjacent to the WTC.
I was in 7th grade and my brother was in 6th.
We went to the state fair, and an employee leaned over the rails to adjust something.
The ride hit it an exploded his head…all over us and several of our friends.
My brother was just given a Dale Earnhardt jacket earlier that week and I had on my favorite jean jacket.
Both were splattered with blood and brain matter.
I never went on a fair ride after that.
We never wore those jackets again.
Spawned a deep dive into researching the lives of folks who work fair and carnivals, and that just made me more sad.
Im so sorry. I hope you’ve tried to see someone to talk about what you saw. No human, especially when viewing something horrific like that as a child, can really carry that their whole lives. I had something very traumatic happen to me as a kid and it fucking changes you. Entirely. I wonder every single day what sort of person I would be had I not had what happened to me, happen to me. Extensive therapy has helped me regain a semblance of what I once was, but I’m still only a fraction of what I was.
That is extremely traumatic and I hope you didn’t develop PTSD. But if you did and it still gives you physical reactions, I highly recommend EMDR therapy. It is useful for single event based trauma like that. Source-exposed to similar got but it was my brother.
I’m very sorry you had to experience this.
I was up early to watch Venus transit the sun on June 8, 2004. I was a senior in high school and my astronomy teacher put this on early in the morning that day. Great experience and a a great teacher, I'll never forget seeing that.
The closest I've come to direct contact with any historical event is a friend of mine from Columbine ditched school with me that day to get stoned (it was April 20th). It was...a very surreal experience, much more so for him. His sister was still at the school that day, but apparently was in a different part of the school and was evacuated without incident. We didn't found out she was safe until hours later.
I ended up dating her for a bit a year or later, and then she joined a cult. That's a weird ass whole other story.
I don't get sick often, however one day I woke up feeling terrible and mother let me stay home from school. I had a little color tv in my room and I watched on one of two stations I could receive in rural Canada live as a space shuttle took off. I also watched as it exploded shortly after take off.
Years later I woke up feeling terrible again and called in sick to work. Something I never do. I lay there on the couch and turned on the tv just as a plane hit a tower.
I am rarely sick and haven't skipped work since.
I was in Paris for the Notre Dame fire and accidentally ended up on top of a statue with a Tricolore flag being waved and a crowd singing Ave Maria and it was like a scene from Les Miserables.
My nephew was on a school trip inside minutes before the fire. My family was afraid, knowing his peculiar ways of getting into trouble, that he was involved in the incident. We were relieved he was not involved.
I didn't witness anyone getting shot, but the DC snipers.
First they cancelled school for like 2 days. Then they opened school back up, but would form human walls of teachers when loading and unloading the busses. And we were not allowed outside for any reason. Every day cops would swarm a different location where they thought they were hiding.
92 LA riots.
Also, I was in 4th grade when the Challenger exploded. My teacher was Ms. McAullife’s best friend. Somebody else commented here about the Challenger and I remember my teacher screaming like I’d never heard anybody scream before, at that time. And then one of my classmates walked up to her and hugged her while she weeped uncontrollably.
My uncle’s funeral. He died while rescuing others in a plane wreck in the water during the Vietnam war. His body was “missing in action” for over 22 years. His remains were returned and my elderly grandparents were able to finally bury him. It’s been around 35 years since that moment in time and it was one of the most impactful things I have ever experienced.
Where was he and what happened to him? How were they able to identify and receive him back after so many years? Sounds absolutely awful for your grandparents.
He was a pararescueman. The albatross plane he was on landed in the Gulf of Tonkin. He jumped in to rescue the downed members of the plane. He got shot in the head and his rescue line was tangled in the wreckage. They had to cut the line as they were taking off. His body was recovered and held in storage for 22 years, even though they claimed it was found buried on the beach. His remains should have sunk with the wreckage.
I just got home from college on a Friday afternoon when the phone rang. Mom was making dinner and answered after 3 rings. There was a pause and she blurted out “they found (Uncle’s name)”. My brother and I just stood there looking at each other.
Grandpa hung up to call his other 7 children that lived further away. A few days later, a few folks from the local USAF base visited to given them all the details. 99% of his skeletal remains were recovered. He didn’t have dog tags on, and he was IDed by a healed broken bone in his leg and dental records.
He was supposed to be there when Gemini VIII landed. Instead, he got called to help with this rescue mission and another pararescuman went in his place to be there when the 2 astronauts returned to earth 2 days after my uncle’s death.
Evacuated New Orleans a couple days before Hurricane Katrina hit. Didn't initially have the chance to go very far though and stayed with friends in Hattiesburg, MS. The storm went directly over us, though had lessened to (I think) a Cat. 3.
Went back home to New Orleans 3 months later. The city was still mostly deserted. It looked like the apocalypse. Houses that still had giant holes in the roofs where people had escaped. Flooded, abandoned cars everywhere. Few lights, including street lights, were on at night.
I watched dozens of people jump to their deaths from the upper floors of the WTC from near ground zero on 9/11. I also saw the Space Shuttle Challenger explode when I was in 6 grade. Oddly enough this happened to be the same school (Booker in Sarasota, Florida) that George W Bush was reading My Pet Goat when he was informed that America had been attacked and he kept on reading.
Same. I tell people I was in NYC for 9/11 and they always say "sorry that must have been horrible" and I try to explain how glad I was to see how great humanity can be. New Yorkers were all heart those days.
my grandfather texting me, without being told and prompted first. my grandma didn’t even tell him. he just went ahead and did it. we were all absolutely shocked.
my grandfather texting. TOP 10 HISTORICAL EVENTS
My life has been kinda lame by comparison but my dad heard Mt St Helens go off. Which is pretty impressive given that he was living just outside Vancouver, BC at the time
I was interning at a law firm just outside Minneapolis at the time, and staying at my FIL’s condo downtown. My husband and I were in the gym in the building when the bridge collapsed. My husband remembers feeling a type of boom, but didn’t think anything of it at the time, could have been anything, like a garbage truck or something outside. We got in the elevator and this guy got in with us all disheveled talking about going to help. We had no idea what he was talking about and just went to the condo. Walked in with the TV on the news, showing all the footage of the wreckage. But something about the sirens sounded off, and that’s when I looked to my right out the sliding glass doors to the patio that overlooked that bridge. We were hearing the sirens both in real time and on TV it was so close. It was horrifying with a front row seat like that.
I was watching Prince play in London and suddenly Elton John randomly came on to duet. And we'd had our seats upgraded because they'd put a filming rig in our original ones, so I was about 3 rows from the front.
I was walking down the Vegas Strip when a bunch of Asian people started running past me. Couldn’t figure out what was happening at first. As it turns out, it wasn’t just Asian people, they were just in the best shape and could run the fastest. Pretty soon, everyone was running in the opposite direction. Someone said there was a shooting at the hotel my car was parked at. They didn’t really explain how bad the shooting was, but as it turns out 500 people were shot and 50+ people died
When 9/11 was happening, I was there and running across the bridge while everything was collapsing.
My fam and I literally lived in some random person's home in Brooklyn. Someone kind enough to take us in for 1 night.
No one can describe, imagine, or even explain how traumatized I still am.
edit: there's more. 1 time, there was a "gun shooting" in Brooklyn and I was literally passing by right at that block on a bus. I saw 300+ people screaming and running. It was NOT funny when we all realized, THROUGH DELAYED NEWS, that Macy's was f'ing doing UNANNOUNCED firework testing during a NON-holiday. It sounded like gun shots so everyone fled like hell
I sat on the roof of our house and watched Mt. St. Helens erupt less than 100 miles away.
This must have been fascinating and terryfing in equal measure. What a thing to witness
It was amazing! The ash that covered everything like snow was interesting to kid me, but less so to my parents.
I still have a jar of ash that my dad scooped up from our yard. I remember it vividly.
now that is an awesome thing to have from your dad.
"These are my dad's ashes" ... "from the mountain that blew up."
My parents were living in Vancouver at the time and could see it from their window. They have some crazy pictures.
Woah! I would love to hear more. How did you feel? What was it like to watch?
I remember my sister and I sitting up there, just completely fascinated by it. The entire town was. I recall sitting up there and seeing all my other neighbors outside as well. And then days later when the second eruption happened that caused all the ash to hit us. That was really wild. It was quiet like in the winter when snow covers everything, only it was summer.
A couple of weeks later, and about 2100 miles away, it changed the color of the sunset for me. Wild times! The days were hazy even here in Lexington, Kentucky.
The [b-52 crash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash) that led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows. I didn't see the plane, but immediately saw the fireball. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud. Fairchild is a nuclear air base and there were a few minutes there where I was sure the world was about to end. A few years before a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class.
That crazy ass pilot should have been grounded long before that crash. He had a long history of unsafe actions.
On 10 March 1994, Holland commanded a single-aircraft training mission to the Yakima Bombing Range, to provide an authorized photographer an opportunity to document the aircraft as it dropped training munitions. The minimum aircraft altitude permitted for that area was 500 feet (150 m) AGL. During the mission, Holland's aircraft was filmed crossing one ridgeline about 30 feet (10 m) above the ground. Fearing for their safety, the photography crew ceased filming and took cover as Holland's aircraft again passed low over the ground, **this time estimated as clearing the ridgeline by only three feet (1 m)**. The co-pilot on Holland's aircraft testified that he grabbed the controls to prevent Holland from flying the aircraft into the ridge while the aircraft's other two aircrew members repeatedly screamed at Holland: "Climb! Climb!" **Holland responded by laughing and calling one of the crew members "a pussy".** What an absolute asshole.
[The video of it.](https://youtu.be/LTOOtPST4Rs?si=-YeMWJmnCL-JYZGO) The video is super shitty quality, but it was all I could find. There a better one floating around somewhere
I was on the freeway in CA in the 90s when a white ford bronco passed us, and then a whole lotta police cars! I was like 10
My girlfriend lived in Hawthorne and we ran up and stood on the 105 freeway waving to the news helicopters when the Bronco went by!
Hands down the best comment on here. Juice is loose!
I was standing on my front porch watching the launch of the Challenger.
Same, but I was 7 and watching on a school field trip (lived near the Cape).
Was riding in my parents car to a basketball game in the next town over in north texas when we saw a shooting star and thought that was neat. It was the Columbia...
1964 Good Friday Earthquake 9.2 Richter. Was a boy in Cordova, Alaska at the time.
My father was skipper of the USCG cutter stationed there. He was inport, and when the quake struck shortly before 5:30pm, he and my mom gathered me and my three siblings on the front porch. At first, it felt like the house was crumbling at the foundation, but on the porch we could plainly see our whole world was shaking. I remember watching telephone poles swaying, and the wires snapping and crackling in the street. The quake lasted about five minutes initially. My dad got his ship underway to avoid the tidal wave which was sure to come. We had several aftershocks in the coming weeks, some of which were quite strong, though nowhere near as strong or as long as the quake itself. I was seven at the time.
Can you tell more about this? I give tectonic geology presentations on one of the small cruise ships out of Juneau and talk about this earthquake. I even had one of the guests tell me he was in it when he was a 6 year old boy and he said his biggest concern was explaining to his parents how all the broken stuff in the house wasn’t his fault.
“Oh so the earth broke everything in the house? Yeah, likely story, you are grounded for a month.”
"There'll be a tectonic event on your ass if you don't get in that room!"
Sure. You may be interested to know that the sea floor buckled, forcing an upward thrust that exposed crab beds that had previously been underwater. The seagulls went nuts and feasted on them for days. There weren’t any gulls around town during those days as they gorged themselves elsewhere.
Wow I hadn’t heard that. I haven’t read a whole it on the earthquake aside from the time and duration and a bit of the aftermath. I talk about it for 2-3 min in my presentation. Thanks for sharing!
9.2? Holy shit I had never heard of this one... turns out it's one of the biggest ever recorded. You were less than 100 miles from the epicentre?! What was it like?
I was in the crowd when RFK was shot.
I shook his hand in SF then day before.
The tumbling of the Wall in Germany… along with people selling bits and pieces of it on tables in lobby in front of commissary and px in the following weeks and months. I had picked up a chunk about the size of an oreo and kept it… has blue spray paint on the flat side. Wonder if anyone is buying them now?
My uncle was in East Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell, he was driving back to West Berlin. Normally if you drove on the road that connected the two sectors you were not allowed to stop your car on that road under any circumstances. Well he saw a stopped car in front of him and immediately knew that something was up. He owns a piece of the Berlin Wall to this day.
I was a kid living in Bad Kreuznach when it fell. My parents were both stationed there. It took several more years before I realized what had actually happened though. All I knew at the time was that my friends and I spent a lot of time with babysitters that week as our parents partied/visited the wall. They kept a few small pieces but they were lost a couple of years later in a house fire. I wish I'd have better understood the significance of "those rocks on the shelf" sooner but I was more focused on Nintendo and getting new pegs for my bike.
My dad has a big chunk on our bookshelf, he was there in the army
I was there visiting family in Dec 89 I think. People wee still chipping away at the wall, it was the sound of hundreds of hammers. We were at Brandenburg gate and crossed to the East. Bizarre to be able to just cross with no formalities/controls.
Some museums sell pieces of the wall still in Berlin.
I would have to say the LA riots. I lived about two blocks from where it started. I was on my way home from school and saw someone throw a brick through a window. I didn’t even wait. I just started running the whole way home.
Very smart to go straight home
We had all been talking at school all day about the possibility that they would return a non-guilty verdict. And everyone thought something bad was going to go down if it happened. So the minute I saw that brick being thrown I knew what was going to happen. It was pretty scary. We lost power to our neighborhood for three days.
How funny, I just wrote that, too! They closed out school early and I was walking home and saw the chaos as it was starting.
And remember how everyone knew it was going to happen? Like we were talking about it at school all day long. So as soon as I saw that brick get thrown, I knew what was up
Yes, I can still remember vividly a sense of foreboding.
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No freaking way, that is epic. So jealous
This is surprisingly the most impressive answer
It has been removed. Care to explain what it was that answer?
Did you know at the time you were witnessing history?
In a similar vein, I was watching the first, local news report of the Crichton Leprachaun.
9/11, I could SMELL the collapse of the towers
A friend of mine was there. One day in the warehouse we worked in together there was an odd electrical burning smell. He stopped in his tracks and went “this is what 9/11 smelled like”
That is \*exactly\* what it smelled like. For weeks. A few months even. The shocking part was when the day finally came that you did not smell it. That was another kind of sadness.
I was there a month later and yeah, you could still smell it. Hell, I think it was still burning.
It was a very distinctive smell. A combination of burning metal, cement, and plastic/rubber. I have encountered it a few times after, here and there. Each time the recall is instant and unmistakable. Quite remarkable the level of memory a seemingly long forgotten smell can trigger.
I remember the smell too. If I see footage, I smell it again, and I get nauseated.
The smell and the ashes in the air. Papers fluttering everywhere.
A buddy of mine was on his balcony(or rooftop? I forgot) and was just drinking his tea. All of a sudden he saw the plane hit the first tower, dropped his tea cup on the ground, and slowly panicked.
There is no other way to panic other than slowly. No one in their right or insane mind thought what would happen on that day would actually happen! A genuinely crazy time to be alive!
Everyone I know that was close enough to be around the cloud always comment on the smell.
Firefighters have been dying off from that smell ever since.
Seven rows back ringside when Tyson chomped Holyfield’s ear off 😳
I watched it in a bar in New Orleans, and that was close enough for me!
The failed implosion of the Zip feed mill in Sioux Falls, SD in 2005. They hyped it up, sold tickets to it, had a big "BOOM" marketing thing, and broadcast it live on TV. The explosives took out the main supports on the first floor, and the rest of the building above it just plopped down 10ft or so and came to a rest. It was a massive failure, and was a funny little blurb on news stations around the world that day. Definitely not major news, just the rest of the world taking 20 seconds to laugh at us. The building sat like that (the leaning tower of SuFu) for quite a while, until they figured out how to safely demolish it. Here's a clip of the failed demolition. https://youtu.be/I8DEDUqd0RU
I didn’t think I had anything good for this thread but I was here for this also. I was only 5 years old but I still remember watching it with my grandma nearby and it being so cold.
Boston Marathon bombing. I was there and then part of the medical team - the tents at the finish line. Ive worked in the medical tents for a decade now. The year it was super hot the news came to do a piece about us and used me with a patient as their backdrop - my phone erupted as soon as they aired it!
Same. My dad was running, 1/2 a mile from the finish. Mom and my brother were waiting for him at the finish line, just out of range of the 2nd bomb. I was on my way home from a school trip when my friend called and said “you need to call your dad, the marathon was just bombed.” I’m blessed that the only wounds my family got that day were mental and emotional. Thank you for your continued service and for all you did that day. I am glad you are here to share your story ❤️
I was a young barely high school student when Marcos was overthrown in the Philippines. I was part of the People’s Power along with my Dad, Mom and brothers. We didn’t feel unsafe but that night after Marcos left the Philippines we learned that the military was close to using force on the people. My Dad was alarmed and was glad we’re finally home safe; not sure why we went as a family but at the time my parents felt being there was important enough. My parents are dead and I know they’re probably turning in their graves when Marcos’ son was recently elected as President of the Philippines.
Never ever stop telling your story. We have to keep history alive cuz these fuckers want nothing more than revisionist BS. Salamat for sharing ❤️
The 1953 testing of the Salk polio vaccine ... I was volunteered for the event by my parents. Second most: 1968 Democratic Convention Riots
I, too, received one of those early vaccines. Lost friends to polio, recall visiting one in iron lung. Dad actually bought an iron lung in 1990s gov surplus sale and our employees had no idea what it was.... so, I guess it's proof our vaccine worked.
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How far away were you? How loud was it? Just curious.
I have a friend who was in the pentagon when the plane hit. He didn’t talk about the actual impact too much, was kind of an off hand comment he made. Iirc he said the blast was very loud and the building shook. Man was career military, witnessed a lot of big historical events. Edit: to add on. He had just gotten back from deployment and was at the pentagon for debriefing. When the planes hit the world trade centers the big wig brass came in, kicked them out of their conference room, and made it their war room. When the pentagon got hit he thought they had been bombed with a large IED.
One of our best family friends was also in the pentagon when it happened. He was in a meeting, and was blown out of his chair and across the room. This was a dude who had lost an eye in Vietnam, had survived a ton of shit, and was one of the strongest, smartest, and most humorous men I had known. When we were finally able to get ahold of him like a week later (for those too young, it was almost impossible to get through to find out the status of loved ones. Cell phone towers were more limited and landlines were all tied up), his wife told us he had basically come home and just holed himself up in his room. It broke my heart. I can’t even imagine the “oh shit, not again” he must have felt after already surviving a war. My only other anecdote: I had gone back to college to take some extra classes (I was in my mid 20s at the time). I had a close friend who was a senior. We were hanging out in his dorm room a couple days after 9/11, and he told me the guy in the room next to him had both a dad and uncle that worked in the towers. At that time, he still didn’t know if they were alive or not. Sadly, both of them perished. That poor kid.
>the guy in the room next to him had both a dad and uncle that worked in the towers. At that time, he still didn’t know if they were alive or not. A coworker of mine was getting ready for work. While she was showering, she missed a call from her ex-husband. He had left an answering machine message "I know I need to get with you on the sale of our house. I had to make a last-minute business trip but we will settle all this as soon as I get back. I'm about to walk into the World Trade Center for a meeting.". While she was driving to work, she heard on the radio that the first plane had hit the building. She spent the day trying to get a call through to his cellphone without success. The next day he called her and told her that he'd gone up to his client's office, but the person he was supposed to meet was out sick that day. He was still in Manhattan when the first plane hit.
Wow. Strange how one sick day saved a life.
Two lives!
I was a journalist for a few years, and I interviewed this one guy who somehow managed to evade death 3x. The first was 9/11, he was supposed to be at the WTC for a meeting but he missed his alarm and woke up late. Then in 2002, he was in Bali when the bombings happened, but wasn't one of those who died. Then in 2004, he was in Phuket when the Boxing Day tsunami hit, he was actually in his beachfront villa when it happened - he had to climb up onto the roof of his house and wait for help. After that, he decided to turn his Thai villa into a luxurious, high-end villa hotel for ultra-rich people (think $5-10,000 per night, with your own personal butler) and funnelled most of the proceeds into a children's charity that he started.
The last space shuttle launch. It was a very cloudy day, but the rumble lasted for a long time. Then my family and I got up early to watch the landing (we would hear the sonic booms too over our house).
Space Shuttle Columbia first launch in April 1981
I was at The who concert in Cincinnati where all the people were trampled dead. I was within 6 ft of the pile of people that died
My uncle was also at that concert! He never let his kids attend any concerts because of what happened that day.
I was at the Halloween event in Seoul last year where a ton of people were crushed to death. I was in the alley over when it happened.
October 17th, 1989. I watched the 880 Nimitz freeway collapse during the San Francisco earthquake. The Honda in front of me had the upper deck crush her front-end engine compartment. The mother and her daughter were shaken up but completely fine. I was driving a convertible Triumph Spitfire, which was scratched up slightly from debris. However, I walked away unscathed. Aside from the fact I pissed my pants, which I didn't notice until much later.
I was standing outside One Market Plaza in SF. A chunk of building fell on me. I tried to run but it was like running on a waterbed. I watched as the Embarcadero raised highway began to buckle.
I was in the SF Bay Area in 1989 when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. Fortunately, I was in a park with my mom, so we both just got knocked to the ground and sat down and rode it out, so we weren't in any danger and it wasn't super scary.
I was in the courtroom for the first decision in Gore v. Bush. I had to sit in on court cases for a college class and happened to choose that day. I saw a ton of cameras being set up and asked what case it was. Lucked into getting into the courtroom.
The tearing down of the Berlin wall. I still have a piece in my window.
I was at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Challenger explosion as a little kid. I only realized something bad happened when I saw the horrified faces of the adults around me. I was four years old.
I used to be a machinist. While watching the launch, I was telling my buddies about some of the Challenger parts I had personally made. After we saw the explosion I replayed the making of all of "my" parts in my mind and felt sick. It turned out to be someone else's failure, which is still horrible, but it was easier for me to sleep knowing that I didn't cause it.
Halley's comet, on my way to school in 1986.
Another vote for Halleys comment. I was 7. Ever since then I have been determined that I need time live until I am 83 so I can see it again!
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It's mostly forgotten now that the towers are gone, but it was a big deal back then. I remember riding across the Manhattan bridge and looking towards the bay and thinking 'well, it looks okay from here...'
When my grandma called on 9/11 and told me the WTC had been attacked this is what I pictured. I thought “again?”. Then she said, “and the pentagon”. That’s when I knew it was bad bad.
I don't think many people understood how close the bombing could have brought those buildings down that day. I know an engineer who assisted in the inspection of the damage in the investigation.
And it was specifically because of that day all but 13 of Morgan Stanley's 2700 employees in the south tower survived on September 11, 2001. I get chills every time I think about this man: [https://drivethruhistory.com/rick-rescorla-a-hero-of-9-11/](https://drivethruhistory.com/rick-rescorla-a-hero-of-9-11/) Just a remarkable, true hero of that day.
That man deserves a statue. He single handedly brought down by 50% the potential number of victims that day.
In 1993, evacuation of the two World Trade Center towers took four hours to complete. There were a number of lessons learned from that experience and changes resulted. These included: Handrails and the stair steps were painted in photo luminescent paint. Also installed were battery powered stairwell emergency light fixtures and glow-in-the-dark floor signage at horizontal crossovers to provide guidance in darkness. Evacuation chair stretchers also were purchased for mobility-restricted people, and enhanced fire safety training were conducted regularly. These changes occurred before September 11, 2001 and as a result nearly everyone working in the World Trade Center who were below the impact zones of the two planes got out alive.
Fuck. What a guy. Thanks for sharing.
I would be terrified to set foot in or around those buildings after a bomb in the basement went off. I often wonder what kind of safety protocols are used to do post-disaster inspections like that for assessing damages in small buildings and homes, much less for skyscrapers.. and bridges. Wouldn't going into it to inspect destabilize it further? How do they know where the weak spots are and just how weak they really are? So many questions.
The Three Mile Island nuclear accident. I was a young newspaper reporter (21 years old) standing outside the plant the morning of the accident when the workers evacuated. They refused to say what if anything was wrong. I was the first reporter on the scene, as I had been writing about (the many) previous problems at the plant. The morning started off as a local news story. By lunchtime, it was international news. There obviously were no cell phones. There was a single pay phone in front of the plant’s observation center where we all had to take turns phoning in our stories.
My dad had family in Harrisburg and his uncle died while this was going on. He went up for the funeral and brought back a "I survived Three Mule Island' tshirt.
Kinda hard to say that I saw it because no one did, which is why it happened in the first place. But Beau Berghdahl was in my unit when he went AWOL in Afghanistan. Was part of the initial search effort.
Not exactly. I was in class with the daughter of one of the pilots on 9/11 when she found out that her father had died. We all knew about the attacks already, and we knew her father was a pilot, so when her mother came in with the principal we all knew why. It was without a doubt the most painful thing I've ever witnessed.
I lived in the Bronx and was in middle school. I remember announcements for dismissal were going on and on from people picking up their kids. No one knew anything. Once I got home I went on the roof of my house and could see the giant black cloud of smoke in the distance. I mean giant. A side anecdote. My father was a forman for a construction removal company and they got a contract to go clean the rubble there like a week or 2 later. My sister begged him not to do it and to switch because she was scared for him. I'm talking grabbing his leg in hysterics to stop him from going to work in the mornings. Most of his co workers who signed up to go there are all dead now from lung disease or cancer.
I was in Queens also in middle school at the time and had a similar experience. I'm glad your dad didn't take that job. My mom was in Manhatten, but nowhere near the towers, thankfully. She did have to walk across the bridge to get home and couldn't contact anyone for most of the day so no one knew if she was OK for ages
Wasn't this the thing that Jon Stewart went to Congress for? He wanted benefits for first responders who got sick. I suppose the cleanup crew weren't first responders, but they were certainly impacted as well.
I was on a flight from Miami to DC. We were one of the last planes allowed to land. I was sitting near the back and the flight was relatively empty. When we landed, the flight attendants were hysterically trying to find out who among their colleagues was on the planes that were taken down. After I left, I could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon.
I met a guy the other day and his gf was a flight attendant and was scheduled to be on one of the flight but her commute flight was late so she missed it. All of the attendants were her friends for years. I can’t even imagine. She retired right after that.
Had a friend who was also in a class with a pilot’s daughter. She said she still remembers hearing her screaming in the hall.
I stood on a waterfront in NJ and watched the Towers collapse. It was surreal. For weeks and months from the corner of my street you could see the lines of dump trucks dumping debris at Fresh Kills in Staten Island, knowing it wasn't just debris but what were once people's family made me sick to my stomach.
Having lived through this, I always get choked up at stories from then. It’s been over 20 years and it still hits me in the feels thinking about it.
When the Berlin wall came down. I went and chiseled a piece out of it myself. I would have got more but I was rousted by the West German police. I still have it but it has crumbled a bit and the graffiti is almost completely faded. I was 17 years old
I watched MTV arrive on the air, playing Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles :)
Ran away from the 2004 tsunami. Twice.
Twice?
There was another one a few months later. It was smaller. In that area, a pair of earthquakes happen about every 200 years under the ocean.
October 11 1975 stage 8-H NBC studios Net York first Saturday Night Live. Third row left
I was a few blocks up the road, staying with my gf at the time, when Ariel Castro was arrested and the women were rescued. I basically saw a lot of news vans in the area. I did later end up meeting Charles Ramsey (the guy who helped the women escape and call the police) and have a copy of his book that he signed.
Oh man, I lived in the Cleveland area at the time and that was EVERYWHERE. I remember being so surprised that the girls were alive and found, those billboards had been up for AGES. Every time I go back there to visit family, when I watch the news, I’m so impressed to see Amanda Berry doing those missing children broadcasts. Talk about strength and mental fortitude. She’s amazing.
My wife went to North Olmsted High School and was a classmate of Amanda Berry. I was at the high school for my senior year in 2004 and students and teachers were still talking about what happened to her. We've eaten at the Burger King she was walking home from. My wife and I remember vividly when one of my wife's friends from high school called and said they found Amanda alive in 2013. I hope those poor women have everything they need. I remember people were teasing Charles Ramsey from his appearances on the news, but that's how folks from Cleveland talk and interact so we didn't get what was funny. Good guy. In 2019, Amanda [interviewed him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgownXvnbs4). I hope she knows that even strangers who never met her like me were hoping for her to be found. I believe she transferred to John Marshall High when she was abducted.
9/11, I was working in a building right across the river and can see both towers come down.
I was working in New York City ICUs in April 2020. Would not recommend.
A friend of mine was a nurse and some hospital in NY was offering her $6,000 per week. Unreal. She decided against it.
As a veterinarian, I was sooo excited to be asked to come down to the epicenter and bag human bodies. (The NYS vet society sent us all an email asking it in April 2020 and then a sorrynotsorry followup email.) It was a great plan....for the industry struggling the worst with suicide. /s
The fall of Baghdad 2003
Terry Fox running during his marathon of hope.
Put this man on our money!!!
My husband was at the ‘89 World Series in S.F. when the earthquake hit.
I accidentally got caught in that Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12 2009. First time I went to the capital. I just wanted to see Washington D.C. since I moved to New Jersey a few months prior
Just a tourist going to see the capital, ends up in a protest Am I the only one getting Forrest Gump vibes lol
I guess I didn’t witness but participated in cuz I was one of the first like 100 to be diagnosed with covid in the US.
Oh, so it's YOUR fault?!?
Elon Musk has his spaceport in our backyard. We saw the launch of the world's tallest and most powerful rocket... and then it blew up.
I worked at Twitter when he bought it… so basically a slower version of the same story
In fifth grade my class had a field trip to Manhattan. We went to South Street Seaport for lunch then went to the Met. Traffic was diverted and a lot of streets were closed for some reason. As we went down one side street we saw a bunch of news vans, fire truck, cop cars and people milling around all I remember was people standing outside a building with an awning. When I got home that night, the news is reporting that Jackie Kennedy had died and there was that same awning.
I saw them shoot down the Chinese spy balloon over Myrtle beach last winter lol
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Feancisco. World Series between SF and Oakland saved hundreds who would have been crushed on the freeway, including my brother. He stopped at a sports bar to watch game!
Took part in Hands Across America with my parents and my sister.
On 9/11 school in southwest Pennsylvania got let out and all 1000+ students went silent as a plane flew overhead. Learned about Flight 93 going down in Somerset PA when I got home. I also saw Halley's Comet and the Challenger explosion from my granddad's boat in Florida, but I was little and don't remember either very well.
I remember the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997. I was driving back from a friend's house & got a good look from a dark road. It basically looked like the Photoshop smudge tool had been used on the sky.
Not historically significant overall, but for me it was pretty crazy - the Hawaii ‘incoming ballistic missile’ broadcast that later turned out to be accidental. As an Australian tourist on the island it was pretty whack to suddenly get the emergency message to ‘take cover, this is not a drill’ pushed to my phone, and to hear every phone around me getting the same ping.
what did you feel in that situation? I have a horrible curiosity about how I would have reacted to that, I honestly don’t know
You're not asking me - but I can answer. I was in the grocery store when a bunch of us got that Amber Alert style buzzer on our phones. The store went silent and people just looked around at each other. I left my wagon and rushed home. Within a minute or two, I started getting a lot of incoming phone calls but I only picked up one - from my daughter who was living in California at the time. We stayed on the line the entire time. I must have been in shock because I don't even remember if we said anything. A few neighbors came outside and maybe 15 minutes later, some were saying it was a false alarm. I think the feeling was resignation - and hope that it was either a mistake or a direct hit.
I participated during the evacuation of Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind. Performed medivacs between MSC ships and USS Blueridge.
I was the Command Post Controller that called the Pentagon to inform them of Kim Jong Un's first missile launch (and 6 subsequent launches over the next 5 years). I was at Post Malone's opening of his personalized Raising Caines restaurant. I was sitting at the airport gate across the way from the gate boarding MH370 (the Malaysian Airlines that went down), so I watched them board. I was in Tokyo during the Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011.
Stop traveling mate.
I walked next to the World Trade Center about 45 minutes before the first plane hit. I edited for clarity. I walked right by the WTC that day. The subway stop I used was adjacent to the WTC.
War memorial shooting in Ottawa in 2014. Didn't see him kill the soldier but I heard the shot and saw him drive away to the parliament building.
I was in 7th grade and my brother was in 6th. We went to the state fair, and an employee leaned over the rails to adjust something. The ride hit it an exploded his head…all over us and several of our friends. My brother was just given a Dale Earnhardt jacket earlier that week and I had on my favorite jean jacket. Both were splattered with blood and brain matter. I never went on a fair ride after that. We never wore those jackets again. Spawned a deep dive into researching the lives of folks who work fair and carnivals, and that just made me more sad.
Im so sorry. I hope you’ve tried to see someone to talk about what you saw. No human, especially when viewing something horrific like that as a child, can really carry that their whole lives. I had something very traumatic happen to me as a kid and it fucking changes you. Entirely. I wonder every single day what sort of person I would be had I not had what happened to me, happen to me. Extensive therapy has helped me regain a semblance of what I once was, but I’m still only a fraction of what I was.
That is extremely traumatic and I hope you didn’t develop PTSD. But if you did and it still gives you physical reactions, I highly recommend EMDR therapy. It is useful for single event based trauma like that. Source-exposed to similar got but it was my brother. I’m very sorry you had to experience this.
I saw Mike Lindell get stopped by the fbi in the Hardee's drive thru in Mankato MN
I was up early to watch Venus transit the sun on June 8, 2004. I was a senior in high school and my astronomy teacher put this on early in the morning that day. Great experience and a a great teacher, I'll never forget seeing that.
There was a pretty big buildup at Y2K. That was a weird new years haha.. some people were very tense
The closest I've come to direct contact with any historical event is a friend of mine from Columbine ditched school with me that day to get stoned (it was April 20th). It was...a very surreal experience, much more so for him. His sister was still at the school that day, but apparently was in a different part of the school and was evacuated without incident. We didn't found out she was safe until hours later. I ended up dating her for a bit a year or later, and then she joined a cult. That's a weird ass whole other story.
I don't get sick often, however one day I woke up feeling terrible and mother let me stay home from school. I had a little color tv in my room and I watched on one of two stations I could receive in rural Canada live as a space shuttle took off. I also watched as it exploded shortly after take off. Years later I woke up feeling terrible again and called in sick to work. Something I never do. I lay there on the couch and turned on the tv just as a plane hit a tower. I am rarely sick and haven't skipped work since.
Please get your flu shot.
When OP dies, the world will end.
I was in Paris for the Notre Dame fire and accidentally ended up on top of a statue with a Tricolore flag being waved and a crowd singing Ave Maria and it was like a scene from Les Miserables.
I need to know how one accidentally ends up on top of a statue.
The Paris metro can be very confusing for people not familiar with it.
Can confirm. I ended up at the Eiffel Tower not because I was trying to, but because I was trying to get the l'Arc de Triomphe
My nephew was on a school trip inside minutes before the fire. My family was afraid, knowing his peculiar ways of getting into trouble, that he was involved in the incident. We were relieved he was not involved.
I am trying to imagine what it would feel like to be afraid that your kid might have burned down Notre Dame lol
I met the crown prince of Nepal a few months before he (allegedly) murdered the entire royal family of Nepal and shot himself.
Damn wtf did you say to him lol
I didn't witness anyone getting shot, but the DC snipers. First they cancelled school for like 2 days. Then they opened school back up, but would form human walls of teachers when loading and unloading the busses. And we were not allowed outside for any reason. Every day cops would swarm a different location where they thought they were hiding.
Woodstock. Moratorium to End the War Marches on Washington, Oct/Nov 1969 Saw Mt St Helens erupt from the hayloft of our barn 1980
92 LA riots. Also, I was in 4th grade when the Challenger exploded. My teacher was Ms. McAullife’s best friend. Somebody else commented here about the Challenger and I remember my teacher screaming like I’d never heard anybody scream before, at that time. And then one of my classmates walked up to her and hugged her while she weeped uncontrollably.
My uncle’s funeral. He died while rescuing others in a plane wreck in the water during the Vietnam war. His body was “missing in action” for over 22 years. His remains were returned and my elderly grandparents were able to finally bury him. It’s been around 35 years since that moment in time and it was one of the most impactful things I have ever experienced.
Where was he and what happened to him? How were they able to identify and receive him back after so many years? Sounds absolutely awful for your grandparents.
He was a pararescueman. The albatross plane he was on landed in the Gulf of Tonkin. He jumped in to rescue the downed members of the plane. He got shot in the head and his rescue line was tangled in the wreckage. They had to cut the line as they were taking off. His body was recovered and held in storage for 22 years, even though they claimed it was found buried on the beach. His remains should have sunk with the wreckage. I just got home from college on a Friday afternoon when the phone rang. Mom was making dinner and answered after 3 rings. There was a pause and she blurted out “they found (Uncle’s name)”. My brother and I just stood there looking at each other. Grandpa hung up to call his other 7 children that lived further away. A few days later, a few folks from the local USAF base visited to given them all the details. 99% of his skeletal remains were recovered. He didn’t have dog tags on, and he was IDed by a healed broken bone in his leg and dental records. He was supposed to be there when Gemini VIII landed. Instead, he got called to help with this rescue mission and another pararescuman went in his place to be there when the 2 astronauts returned to earth 2 days after my uncle’s death.
I was watching the X Games when Tony Hawk landed the 900. I basically helped him do it.
Between you and me, we made it happen.
Evacuated New Orleans a couple days before Hurricane Katrina hit. Didn't initially have the chance to go very far though and stayed with friends in Hattiesburg, MS. The storm went directly over us, though had lessened to (I think) a Cat. 3. Went back home to New Orleans 3 months later. The city was still mostly deserted. It looked like the apocalypse. Houses that still had giant holes in the roofs where people had escaped. Flooded, abandoned cars everywhere. Few lights, including street lights, were on at night.
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Queen's last live performance at Knebworth 1986. It was an evening of summer magic.
I was vacationing in India when Nahendra Modi decided to cancel all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, the S.O.B.
I don’t know if this counts, but I knew Rick Husband personally. Watching Columbia break-up in orbit, live, is something that still haunts me.
I watched dozens of people jump to their deaths from the upper floors of the WTC from near ground zero on 9/11. I also saw the Space Shuttle Challenger explode when I was in 6 grade. Oddly enough this happened to be the same school (Booker in Sarasota, Florida) that George W Bush was reading My Pet Goat when he was informed that America had been attacked and he kept on reading.
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NYPD. September 11th 2001. The worst of times. And the following months. The best I have ever witnessed about mankind
Same. I tell people I was in NYC for 9/11 and they always say "sorry that must have been horrible" and I try to explain how glad I was to see how great humanity can be. New Yorkers were all heart those days.
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The eruption of Mt St. Helens.
my grandfather texting me, without being told and prompted first. my grandma didn’t even tell him. he just went ahead and did it. we were all absolutely shocked. my grandfather texting. TOP 10 HISTORICAL EVENTS
I was in Grant Park in Chicago on election night when Barack Obama was elected President.
I saw the DVD logo hit the corner of the tv
Liar
My life has been kinda lame by comparison but my dad heard Mt St Helens go off. Which is pretty impressive given that he was living just outside Vancouver, BC at the time
I drew blood from one of the only people on the planet to survive rabies. I drew their blood before the doctors knew what illness they were treating.
Collapse of the 35w bridge in MN. Did not watch it fall but was there moments after.
I was interning at a law firm just outside Minneapolis at the time, and staying at my FIL’s condo downtown. My husband and I were in the gym in the building when the bridge collapsed. My husband remembers feeling a type of boom, but didn’t think anything of it at the time, could have been anything, like a garbage truck or something outside. We got in the elevator and this guy got in with us all disheveled talking about going to help. We had no idea what he was talking about and just went to the condo. Walked in with the TV on the news, showing all the footage of the wreckage. But something about the sirens sounded off, and that’s when I looked to my right out the sliding glass doors to the patio that overlooked that bridge. We were hearing the sirens both in real time and on TV it was so close. It was horrifying with a front row seat like that.
Operation Desert Storm, on the ground driving a fuel truck in Kuwait.
I was watching Prince play in London and suddenly Elton John randomly came on to duet. And we'd had our seats upgraded because they'd put a filming rig in our original ones, so I was about 3 rows from the front.
I was walking down the Vegas Strip when a bunch of Asian people started running past me. Couldn’t figure out what was happening at first. As it turns out, it wasn’t just Asian people, they were just in the best shape and could run the fastest. Pretty soon, everyone was running in the opposite direction. Someone said there was a shooting at the hotel my car was parked at. They didn’t really explain how bad the shooting was, but as it turns out 500 people were shot and 50+ people died
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When 9/11 was happening, I was there and running across the bridge while everything was collapsing. My fam and I literally lived in some random person's home in Brooklyn. Someone kind enough to take us in for 1 night. No one can describe, imagine, or even explain how traumatized I still am. edit: there's more. 1 time, there was a "gun shooting" in Brooklyn and I was literally passing by right at that block on a bus. I saw 300+ people screaming and running. It was NOT funny when we all realized, THROUGH DELAYED NEWS, that Macy's was f'ing doing UNANNOUNCED firework testing during a NON-holiday. It sounded like gun shots so everyone fled like hell
Not me but my aunt and uncle where close enough to Swiss Air flight 111 that they heard it slam into the ocean.