I have a pretty amazing story about the JFK assassination - it's my first memory. For years growing up I had this vague memory of being really young, sitting in a car with my mother driving and listening to the radio. I can kind of picture the road, a fairly bleak place with fields on both sides. It was grey and overcast. The radio was playing music, which I enjoyed, and then suddenly they cut off the music and a male announcer's voice came on, which I didn't enjoy. I couldn't understand anything he was saying but then all of a sudden my mom pulled over on the shoulder, stopped the car and started crying. I was mad because the nasty man on the radio had made my mother cry. Many years later, sometime in my late 20s, I asked my mom what this memory could have been and described it to her. She was absolutely amazed and told me that's what happened when JFK was shot. The thing is, I was born in July 1963, and JFK was shot in November - I was only 4 months old!
As for the others, I remember when the Challenger went down, I was at a local coffee bar getting coffee. I really didn't care and couldn't understand why people were getting so upset over it. I was at the same coffee bar getting coffee on 9/11, and this time I cared a lot, although the enormity of it took a few minutes to sink in. I went home and woke up my boyfriend, and we tried to get the news on our tv which is actually just a DVD player because we have no cable and no antenna. Then I had to drive down to Monterey to interview a dishwasher with a bad back, while planes were still missing - I kept peering up through the windshield to see if there were any stray jets coming down.
For the OJ chase, I was in our local county jail reading encyclopedias in the library when a bunch of people and the guard on duty came rushing in to watch the tv. It occurred to me that it would be the perfect time to escape (it was a minimum-security facility) but I held onto my self-control and didn't.
When the gulf war started I was deep inside the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with my girlfriend - I got in the elevator to come back up and the elevator attendant told us about it. I thought maybe we should just stay down there, since it'd be a pretty good bomb shelter. We thought it was World War III and we drove back to Calfornia nonstop, taking turns sleeping in the back of my van.
I think I was in 1st grade for the moon landing. I remember not getting a very good view of the tv because most of the other kids were bigger than me (story of my life).
The other one I remember was when John lennon was killed. I was in the kitchen of my mom's house playing Othello with my boyfriend, and when we heard the news I was just in such disbelief that such a thing could possibly happen. Growing up the Beatles were like gods to me, I was just stunned.