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“The Most Painful Thing I’ve Ever Witnessed”: 30 Historical Events Witnessed By These Folks
Interview With Author
We often tend to think of historical events as a little bit abstract, we have perhaps seen them a hundred times in various depictions, from different angles, with a multitude of sources and perspectives. But, as with so many things in life, seeing things with your own eyes is a very unique experience.
Someone asked “What is the most historically significant event you witnessed IN PERSON?” and people shared what they saw. So get comfortable as you scroll through and be sure to upvote your favorite posts and if you have witnessed a bit of history with your own eyes, share it in the comments. We also got in touch with FictionVent to learn more.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
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.
Bored Panda got in touch with FictionVent who posted the original question and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions. Firstly, we wanted to know why they decided to pose this question to the internet. "Recently I was thinking about my own life experiences, and if I had witnessed anything historic in my 38 years on this planet. But also, some of my favorite comments on Reddit are when someone tells a personal story about seeing something historic. Posing the question in an Ask Reddit post seemed to be a great way to curate a lot of those experiences in one place. I even got to ask some follow-up questions to people who had first-hand accounts of some very historic moments. What a great resource!
We also wanted to know why they though the post went so viral. "The most popular Ask Reddit posts are usually ones that make users think about themselves, but also pique the reader’s interest in hearing what other users have to say. The responses were fascinating, as I got comments from people young and old, all over the world. It was fun and insightful to read, and I was not surprised that the post hit the front page of Ask Reddit," they shared with Bored Panda.
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#3
I sat on the roof of our house and watched Mt. St. Helens erupt less than 100 miles away.
"I myself haven’t witnessed anything TOO historic. I saw Obama speak on the campaign trail in Philadelphia in 2008. I attended what turned out to be the final Beastie Boys concert (even though we didn’t know it at the time.) I live in Maui now, so I was around for the missile alert scare, and recently, I was in Lahaina on the day of the big fire. My takeaway was that most of the time, seeing history in the making just comes down to being in the right (or wrong) place at the right time. It’s not something you can force, and so those experiences end up being rare and in a sense, quite valuable."
Written depictions of history suffer a certain paradox, where, on the one hand, eyewitness records are vital to know what happened, while on the other, research suggests that individual accounts are often incorrect and misleading. The truth is, that our memories are not always accurate, particularly when we are scared, excited, or distracted.
After all, most of us don’t know we are part of a historical event until the significance sinks in later. Research into eyewitness accounts used in criminal cases shows that people constantly get details wrong, misremember, or end up influenced by later events. On a regular day, we don’t necessarily remember what clothes every person on the subway was wearing, for example.
#6
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.
It doesn’t help that the events that we might think of as historical tend to be extraordinary, often dangerous or monumental in some way. Excitement, fear, and confusion all have their own way of disrupting what we remember. For example, if a weapon is present in a situation, people tend to focus on it, while ignoring all other details.
#8
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
#9
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?
Ansgar 1 year ago
As a kid I was on one of the Monday Marches (The original ones, not that sh** happening right now in Germany. Those marches were the start to what happened in Berlin later that year.) with my parents. We walked through the streets of Leipzig with candles, past armed military and police. Later found out they were cleared to fire into the crowd.
VioletHunter 1 year ago
My parents didn't take me. Thought it was too dangerous.
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SkyBlueandBlack 1 year ago
No. I mean, yes, people are buying them, but unless it has a certificate of authenticity, it's just a chunk of concrete. I can pick up a chunk of concrete from the ground and say it's from Berlin. So can you. You could probably dupe a tourist into buying it, just like medieval pilgrims bought pieces of the True Cross, but as far as it being an historical artifact, it's not, because its provenance can't be established. That's the problem with looted artifacts sold on the black market (which is what you have).
Purple Sprinkles 1 year ago
The wall was full of asbestosis so I think the peices have been banned from being sold.
VioletHunter 1 year ago
We visited relatives in West Berlin shortly after. I got some pieces but lost them some time during my childhood.
howdylee 1 year ago
I recently visited the Frank Lloyd Wright designed home called Kentuck K**b. Private owner, British family. Also has many pieces of exterior art sculptures around the grounds that visitors are allowed to walk through and look around. One of the pieces is a 3-4 foot wide full height section of the Berlin Wall. Was shocked to walk up to that. Still has the graffiti on it.
howdylee 1 year ago
wow BP, censored the name of an actual building. Tsk tsk Kentuck K N O B. https://kentuckknob.com/
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Jan Moore 1 year ago
We were in Berlin a year or so after the wall went up. My Dad was an Army MP and on an assignment there and the whole family went. We were went to East Berlin and it was pretty intense. My brothers took a couple of bricks and barbed wire, not near A gate or anything. They got lost in a move later. There was still blood stains on the side walls where people had jumped trying to get away.
Kraneia The Dancing Dryad 1 year ago
they still pop up on Ebay from time to time. Wonder how many of the pieces are fake though? ;)
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
Yep, you can still buy pieces of the Wall. I've got a chunk of it on my desk right now, with a Zertifikat of Authenticity. My mum bought it for me and said you could also buy bier steins with bits of Wall set into the lid.
Hugh Cookson 1 year ago
The bizarre thing about the fall of the wall is that it was a complete clusterfuck with one part of the ruling communist party said 'OK' let people through, the floodgates opened and the rest is history ...
TheBlueBitterfly 1 year ago
I got to hold a piece of it, a former student visited our gifted class after spending a year in Germany. Brought it back with him.
Janet Sparrow 1 year ago
I always like to say that rock 'n' roll took the wall down. People just said f**k this we're not gonna take it anymore and then there was that one guy on the eastern side who just decided to let everybody through.
Awesome At Being Autistic 1 year ago
My best friend and I were sitting in Denny's watching the wall come down on TV. We were absolutely amazed, it was really thrilling. Well as thrilled as we could be, being completely stoned and having the munchies.
Lavern Defazio 1 year ago
Tom Brokaw did seem kind of tipsy when he was broadcasting live from Berlin.
This is referred to as “weapons focus,” where the presence of danger, caused by a weapon, draws our attention so that we can better protect ourselves. This comes at the cost of missing most background details, which is fantastic for bank robbers, as an example, but not so much for future historians.
#11
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.
#12
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.
As bleak as it sounds, the number one cause of wrongful convictions is eyewitnesses getting something wrong. Fortunately, in a manner of speaking, criminal cases tend to have just a handful of witnesses, while historic events have many. By consulting multiple people who were there, historians can actually build a more accurate picture and weed out the details that were, perhaps, added incorrectly.
#13
1964 Good Friday Earthquake 9.2 Richter. Was a boy in Cordova, Alaska at the time.
#14
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.
#15
Passage of the human rights bill on the Minnesota Senate floor in 1993. One of the first states to codify LGBT equal protection.
But setting all that aside, it is no doubt a very special feeling to know that you saw something unique and widely discussed with your own eyes. Most things that happen don’t immediately seem as important as they might be in the moment. But some people do recall a distinct feeling in the back of their brains, that what they just saw is special, even as the event is unfolding in front of them.
#16
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
#18
I was at the Women's March on Washington with half a million of my closest friends on January 21, 2017.
Also my husband applied for a job in the World Trade Center in June 2001, and we're forever grateful that he did not get the position.
#19
The 1953 testing of the Salk polio vaccine ... I was volunteered for the event by my parents.
Second most: 1968 Democratic Convention Riots
#20
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...'
#22
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!
#23
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.
#24
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.
#25
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.
#27
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.
#28
The 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.
#29
Chernobyl. When we were small, we used to spend time on farms that my father worked on. When Chernobyl happened, there were so many dead animals and deformed baby calves and sheep that my Dad stopped taking us out to farms. Our own cow was in a calf, and my mother rubbed iodine all over the cow twice a day in the hopes of protecting the unborn calf. It worked, and the calf survived. (She still is really proud of her efforts)
The fall of the Berlin Wall. The show on TV stopped, and the station went live to the Berlin Wall falling. I didn't really understand much about it, but it was the beginning of the end of the iron curtain. I remember we had a teacher bring in a piece of the Berlin Wall. It had googly eyes on it and was in a small plastic display case.
The fall of communism and the lines for bread in Moscow followed by the huge queue when McDonalds first opened in Moscow. Tens of thousands of people queued in the freezing cold in Moscow to get their first taste of McDonalds. It was so extremely interesting because we knew absolutely nothing about Moscow before that there were so many stories and so much we didn't have a clue about.
The IRA ceasefire marked the beginning of peace in Northern Ireland. Our teacher brought in a radio into the classroom as the IRA ceasefire was announced. It was truly amazing after 30 years of constant violence.
A couple of years later, I was on my bike cycling to work when I saw General de Chastelain's convoy pass me. It was super early in the morning, and they were on their way back from visiting an IRA weapons dump. I obviously didn't know who he was, but it was really, really unusual to see such high-end cars down an isolated country road. They were in a convoy of very fancy cars, like Mercedes and rolls Royce, etc, and I ended up pulling into a gate where one of the neighbours explained who they were.
I see a lot of 9/11, but I was working when it happened, and we only had access to a radio. I didn't actually know what the World Trade Centre was, I vaguely heard of a Bombing that occurred in that building in the 90s, but I thought it was just 1 building. We didn't really have access to the Internet and we had to wait until after work and go to the pub to actually see it on the news because we lived in student accommodation and no one had a TV. There was a communal TV, but we didn't have access to it.
Y2K. I remember where I worked. All the checkouts got upgraded, and we closed the supermarket early for IT upgrades!
Obviously, Covid.
#30
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
What do you think ?
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
It's probably mostly forgotten these days, even in Canberra itself, but I was there to witness the disastrous demolition of the old Canberra Hospital. It was supposed to be a nice safe implosion, to the point that people were encouraged to come and watch, but something went horribly wrong and it exploded instead, throwing shrapnel clear across the lake where we were all standing. I was one of two little girls named Katie to be present that day, and I was the Katie who made it home. The other was struck in the head and killed. There's a memorial to her by the lakeshore to this day. I was born in that hospital, and it still strikes me as bizarre that the same damn building could easily have taken me out again.
Doctor Strange 1 year ago
I watched the Towers fall. I went to school in Newark and you could see them from the top of our parking garage. A bunch of us where up there and saw it happen. I'll never forget that.
Corvus 1 year ago
My grandma was in Ukraine when Chernobyl happened. She noticed there was an unusual amount of street cleaning going on, but no one had any idea why (authorities tried to keep the accident a secret for as long as possible... the bastards!). As for me - I witnessed the fall of the communist regime in my country, but memories are vague (I was only 4-5 years old at the time).
Ariom Dahl 1 year ago
In Australia in 1957 my brothers and I went outside at night to see Sputnik One bee-beeping its way across the sky. Now, when the sky is clear and it passes overhead, I can see the ISS. (well, technically, the light reflected from it). I also watched the final orbit of Mir before it fell into the ocean.
Ariom Dahl 1 year ago
After writing this I realised it wasn't really a painful memory, just an old one!
Load More Replies...
David Paterson 1 year ago
I was present in the audience when the Higgs particle was announced. Earlier, I was in the audience when the immortal words "consider a spherical cow" were first spoken.
Floeckchen 1 year ago
I lived in the center of Hamburg during the G20-Summit in 2017 and it's affiliated riots... pretty much in the vicinity of the Messehallen and the Schanze. It were several days of absolute mayhem.
Bowtechie 1 year ago (edited)
I was studying abroad in Japan during the Fukushima quake and tsunami. I was in Nagoya, thankfully, but we still got hit and there was damage in the port areas. I ended up having to leave early because my program sorta descended into chaos and it was safer to just finish out the year back home. We saw them scanning our luggage for radiation on the tarmac when we boarded in Tokyo and again when we landed in LA. A few years later I went back to Nagoya for a university study abroad, and a volcano in the next prefecture erupted (Mt. Ontake). Ngl I'm a little worried what catastrophe will happen next if I go back.
Pittsburgh rare 1 year ago
I was about to leave my building in Barcelona when a family of American tourists barged through the door and the mum proceeded to have a nervous breakdown right then and there. We gave her water and tended for the teen children too. We later decided it was smart not to go out and blocked the doors while a helicopter hoovered right over our rooftop. It was August 2017 and the helicopter was looking for the terrorist that had driven over 16 people shortly before. We left 4 hours later.
Jessica Bertram 1 year ago
Well, this was a walk down trauma lane for most of the Gen Xers and Boomers on this site. Remind me why we do this to ourselves?
Pferdchen 1 year ago
I was visiting my old hometown, Washington, DC, and went to the capitol to pay my respects while George H.W. Bush was lying in state. So, while our segment of the line is in the rotunda, they close the doors and leave us standing there. That's when they wheeled in Bob Dole so he could pay his respects. Fun fact: Bob Dole was wearing very colorful Christmas-themed socks. But anyway, all the news outlets covered this event. I've resisted the temptation, but I always thought it would be funny to include "As seen on FOX, CNN, MS/NBC & BBC" on my business cards. For the record: I voted against both Bush's and Dole's presidential candidacies, but I'd trade my right arm if they were representative of today's Republican party. Typically, I would have had a minute or two in the rotunda but ended up being in there for twenty minutes or so, which gave me a long time to solemnly contemplate the state of our nation. For me, the event was like a requiem for America :-(
Pferdchen 1 year ago
p.s. - I REALLY had to bite my tongue about the guy wearing his MAGA hat inside the Rotunda with a former president of the United States lying in state. I doubt that the look of disgust on my face went unnoticed.
Load More Replies...
Auntriarch 1 year ago
I haven't witnessed anything exciting. I've narrowly missed things. I'm just lucky
Rae Rory 1 year ago
I don't know if this count as me, personally witnessing it, but I was with my parents in Sears in the Hollywood Mall when Adam Walsh was taken. For those too young, Adam was kidnapped and killed from that Sears in 1981. His case launched not only the Adam Alert, but his father, John Walsh started the show America's Most Wanted.
Carlos Moreno 1 year ago
1992 Venezuela, Chavez tried to overthrown the government by force. I lived in a military residence since my dad was the first lady's bodyguard. As a kid saw a plane being shot down and bullets flying. All without my father around because he had to protect the presidents family.
Amy Smith 1 year ago (edited)
Small thing compared to some of these! Wow... I was on my way home from work while the London 2011 riots were going on. I lived in Lewisham at the time and was on my way back from Streatham where I'd been covering a branch of the company I worked for (my home branch was on Lewisham High Street). I remember all the roads being closed off, riot police everywhere and not being allowed anywhere near the High Street. If someone hadn't of called in sick in Streatham that day I'd have been right near it all.
LooseSeal's $10 Banana 1 year ago
Not in person and not at all historically significant, but I remember vividly cutting on the TV after school one day and seeing Balloon Boy. No text at all on the screen, just video of a fast moving metallic saucer. Naturally I thought it was a UFO.
Bryn 1 year ago
(1. the March on Wall Street. I remember being in college, & my English professor said that if we brought in proof that we had been to one of the marches, we would get extra credit. So I have video footage on my old clunker iPad.) (2. Death of Steeve jobs - I remember seeing Apple stores covered in post-it notes.) (3. the aftermath of 9/11 - I remember traveling to NY soon after it happened & seeing the memorials all around the building.)
Honcho Chorcoran (who/cares) 1 year ago
I started a new contract job at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington DC on 9/11. (This is where Air Force One is based out of.) Listened to the news cast of a plane hitting the WTC on the radio on the way to work, arrived to the base to find out another plane had hit. Was shown to my desk the person assigned to me left me there. Internet was so slow it was unusable so impossible to get any information from it. Heard from a friend on the phone that the Pentagon had been hit. At that point the base was locked down and all civilians were told to leave for the day. On my way home the news was saying that car bombs were detonated outside the State Department and that there were more hijacked planes in the air. Driving home to Virginia from Andrews I could see the black smoke from the Pentagon. I called my bf at the time (now husband) and told him to lock the doors and be prepared for stuff to get worse just in case.
Trisec Tebeakesse 1 year ago
I work in the building where the Biogen conference took place. (Marriott Long Wharf, Boston MA). That kicked COVID into high gear across the United States.
John Dilligaf 1 year ago
Operation Desert Storm - our forward base was under the flight path of some of the first bombing runs of the opening salvo of the air campaign.
KombatBunni 1 year ago
Was shaken awake by that big a*s earthquake in Australia back in May of this year. Immediately started messaging friends and family to make sure they were okay. My poor birds started acting weird about five seconds before the quake hit. Spend the next hour or so hugging them and making sure I was okay!
Huddo's sister 1 year ago
I felt some windows rattle and that was it- my sister slept through it (and mot quakes)
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Steve Kenney 1 year ago
I got caught in absolutely nothing. I sat home eating food and drinking soda as well as beer while it happened. I'm OK though thanks for asking.
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
It's probably mostly forgotten these days, even in Canberra itself, but I was there to witness the disastrous demolition of the old Canberra Hospital. It was supposed to be a nice safe implosion, to the point that people were encouraged to come and watch, but something went horribly wrong and it exploded instead, throwing shrapnel clear across the lake where we were all standing. I was one of two little girls named Katie to be present that day, and I was the Katie who made it home. The other was struck in the head and killed. There's a memorial to her by the lakeshore to this day. I was born in that hospital, and it still strikes me as bizarre that the same damn building could easily have taken me out again.
Doctor Strange 1 year ago
I watched the Towers fall. I went to school in Newark and you could see them from the top of our parking garage. A bunch of us where up there and saw it happen. I'll never forget that.
Corvus 1 year ago
My grandma was in Ukraine when Chernobyl happened. She noticed there was an unusual amount of street cleaning going on, but no one had any idea why (authorities tried to keep the accident a secret for as long as possible... the bastards!). As for me - I witnessed the fall of the communist regime in my country, but memories are vague (I was only 4-5 years old at the time).
Ariom Dahl 1 year ago
In Australia in 1957 my brothers and I went outside at night to see Sputnik One bee-beeping its way across the sky. Now, when the sky is clear and it passes overhead, I can see the ISS. (well, technically, the light reflected from it). I also watched the final orbit of Mir before it fell into the ocean.
Ariom Dahl 1 year ago
After writing this I realised it wasn't really a painful memory, just an old one!
Load More Replies... David Paterson 1 year ago
I was present in the audience when the Higgs particle was announced. Earlier, I was in the audience when the immortal words "consider a spherical cow" were first spoken.
Floeckchen 1 year ago
I lived in the center of Hamburg during the G20-Summit in 2017 and it's affiliated riots... pretty much in the vicinity of the Messehallen and the Schanze. It were several days of absolute mayhem.
Bowtechie 1 year ago (edited)
I was studying abroad in Japan during the Fukushima quake and tsunami. I was in Nagoya, thankfully, but we still got hit and there was damage in the port areas. I ended up having to leave early because my program sorta descended into chaos and it was safer to just finish out the year back home. We saw them scanning our luggage for radiation on the tarmac when we boarded in Tokyo and again when we landed in LA. A few years later I went back to Nagoya for a university study abroad, and a volcano in the next prefecture erupted (Mt. Ontake). Ngl I'm a little worried what catastrophe will happen next if I go back.
Pittsburgh rare 1 year ago
I was about to leave my building in Barcelona when a family of American tourists barged through the door and the mum proceeded to have a nervous breakdown right then and there. We gave her water and tended for the teen children too. We later decided it was smart not to go out and blocked the doors while a helicopter hoovered right over our rooftop. It was August 2017 and the helicopter was looking for the terrorist that had driven over 16 people shortly before. We left 4 hours later.
Jessica Bertram 1 year ago
Well, this was a walk down trauma lane for most of the Gen Xers and Boomers on this site. Remind me why we do this to ourselves?
Pferdchen 1 year ago
I was visiting my old hometown, Washington, DC, and went to the capitol to pay my respects while George H.W. Bush was lying in state. So, while our segment of the line is in the rotunda, they close the doors and leave us standing there. That's when they wheeled in Bob Dole so he could pay his respects. Fun fact: Bob Dole was wearing very colorful Christmas-themed socks. But anyway, all the news outlets covered this event. I've resisted the temptation, but I always thought it would be funny to include "As seen on FOX, CNN, MS/NBC & BBC" on my business cards. For the record: I voted against both Bush's and Dole's presidential candidacies, but I'd trade my right arm if they were representative of today's Republican party. Typically, I would have had a minute or two in the rotunda but ended up being in there for twenty minutes or so, which gave me a long time to solemnly contemplate the state of our nation. For me, the event was like a requiem for America :-(
Pferdchen 1 year ago
p.s. - I REALLY had to bite my tongue about the guy wearing his MAGA hat inside the Rotunda with a former president of the United States lying in state. I doubt that the look of disgust on my face went unnoticed.
Load More Replies... Auntriarch 1 year ago
I haven't witnessed anything exciting. I've narrowly missed things. I'm just lucky
Rae Rory 1 year ago
I don't know if this count as me, personally witnessing it, but I was with my parents in Sears in the Hollywood Mall when Adam Walsh was taken. For those too young, Adam was kidnapped and killed from that Sears in 1981. His case launched not only the Adam Alert, but his father, John Walsh started the show America's Most Wanted.
Carlos Moreno 1 year ago
1992 Venezuela, Chavez tried to overthrown the government by force. I lived in a military residence since my dad was the first lady's bodyguard. As a kid saw a plane being shot down and bullets flying. All without my father around because he had to protect the presidents family.
Amy Smith 1 year ago (edited)
Small thing compared to some of these! Wow... I was on my way home from work while the London 2011 riots were going on. I lived in Lewisham at the time and was on my way back from Streatham where I'd been covering a branch of the company I worked for (my home branch was on Lewisham High Street). I remember all the roads being closed off, riot police everywhere and not being allowed anywhere near the High Street. If someone hadn't of called in sick in Streatham that day I'd have been right near it all.
LooseSeal's $10 Banana 1 year ago
Not in person and not at all historically significant, but I remember vividly cutting on the TV after school one day and seeing Balloon Boy. No text at all on the screen, just video of a fast moving metallic saucer. Naturally I thought it was a UFO.
Bryn 1 year ago
(1. the March on Wall Street. I remember being in college, & my English professor said that if we brought in proof that we had been to one of the marches, we would get extra credit. So I have video footage on my old clunker iPad.) (2. Death of Steeve jobs - I remember seeing Apple stores covered in post-it notes.) (3. the aftermath of 9/11 - I remember traveling to NY soon after it happened & seeing the memorials all around the building.)
Honcho Chorcoran (who/cares) 1 year ago
I started a new contract job at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington DC on 9/11. (This is where Air Force One is based out of.) Listened to the news cast of a plane hitting the WTC on the radio on the way to work, arrived to the base to find out another plane had hit. Was shown to my desk the person assigned to me left me there. Internet was so slow it was unusable so impossible to get any information from it. Heard from a friend on the phone that the Pentagon had been hit. At that point the base was locked down and all civilians were told to leave for the day. On my way home the news was saying that car bombs were detonated outside the State Department and that there were more hijacked planes in the air. Driving home to Virginia from Andrews I could see the black smoke from the Pentagon. I called my bf at the time (now husband) and told him to lock the doors and be prepared for stuff to get worse just in case.
Trisec Tebeakesse 1 year ago
I work in the building where the Biogen conference took place. (Marriott Long Wharf, Boston MA). That kicked COVID into high gear across the United States.
John Dilligaf 1 year ago
Operation Desert Storm - our forward base was under the flight path of some of the first bombing runs of the opening salvo of the air campaign.
KombatBunni 1 year ago
Was shaken awake by that big a*s earthquake in Australia back in May of this year. Immediately started messaging friends and family to make sure they were okay. My poor birds started acting weird about five seconds before the quake hit. Spend the next hour or so hugging them and making sure I was okay!
Huddo's sister 1 year ago
I felt some windows rattle and that was it- my sister slept through it (and mot quakes)
Load More Replies... Steve Kenney 1 year ago
I got caught in absolutely nothing. I sat home eating food and drinking soda as well as beer while it happened. I'm OK though thanks for asking.
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