where were you?

I was watching a documentary about the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption on Discovery Channel earlier. It got me thinking about the major news and world events that has happened during my lifetime. Frankly, I don't remember the eruption at all. It probably didn't help my memory because I had lived on the other side of the world at the time and was would only turn 3 yrs old later that year. Although, since many of the people I know now had grown up in the Northwest, they all seem to remember exactly where he/she was and what he/she was doing at the time.

So it got me thinking about the major events in world history that had occured so far during my lifetime. I think I will make a list of the "I do remembers" and the "I don't remembers" and add on if I remember more.

The I don't Remembers:

• Mt. St. Helens eruption - May 18, 1980 ( I just watched the documentary, so the date is in my head)
  
• Challenger explosion - January 28, 1986 (had to look this date up - later that same year, I would have moved to the US and turned 9 yrs old)

The I do Remembers:

• Fall of the Berlin Wall (I had this piece of concrete encased in a plastic polymer for a long time. Don't know where I got it, but my recollection is that it supposedly was a piece of the Berlin Wall)
• L.A. Riots/Rodney King (my sister reminded me of this one. It was listed in the yearbook my sophomore year in high school)
• Gulf War (I was in my typing class in junior high when they made the announcement over the intercom that President Bush had made the decision to invade Bagdad at 1pm that day. Oh yea, and I always seem to remember the cartoon I saw of Saddam watching CNN and the camera showed a missile coming down at him, live. Remember the green flashing lights and the talk about patriot missiles?)
• Waco, Texas (David Koresh and the smoke coming plumes from their cult compound)
• 9/11 (My roommate knocked on my door asking me to go watch the TV broadcast. It was showing the jumbo jets plummeting into the World Trade Center. It looked so unreal, like a movie. I did end up going into work that day, but was told to go home)
• Oakland hills firestorm (I lived across the Bay. You could see the black smoke in the sky. Years later, while living in Oregon, I would hear a story from one of my friends who had lived through it. )
• Thurston High School shooting - May 1998 (Vase majority of the population would remember Columbine. I don't remember Columbine, but I do remember the Thurston shootings. I was a junior at the University of Oregon. Heard what had happened and I drove down to the school after a few days. Flowers and notes adorned the school's fence. It made me sad.)
• Tianemen Square, China (saw the student protestor run over by a military tank on TV.)
• Invasion of Panama (I only kind of remember this. Something about Noriega being a bad guy.)
• SF Earthquake - October 17, 1989 (game 4 of the World Series at Candlestick Park. Pieces of the ballpark fell on people. I was living in Sacramento at the time, but wrote something in school about it)
• Princess Diana's passing - August 1997 (Jen & I were on a roadtrip back from somewhere. We were staying in a motel room. She was sleeping and I was watching TV broadcast of the funeral.)

Ok, enough for now..