just to clarify on my vague descrption, let's skip JFK and Sept 11 2001 they are worthy of their own threads
Challenger
JFK JR
Texas Tower
OJ car chase
John Lennon

JFK, RFK, MLK, 9/11, Katrina but not in any particular order
There are so many because I am 60 and a lot has happened
How about the tragedy of the USS Cole in Yemen? A dear friend lost her son.
The various earthquakes in California? I know...you said five. Sorry..

Martin Luther King assasination
Elvis' death
Challenger explosion
Diana's death
Katrina

Big national strategies that I can remember (in my lifetime) besides 9/11 -

Challenger explosion
Oklahoma City bombing
Princess Diana's death
Columbine shooting
Hurricane Katrina

I can remember the movie I had just finished watching when I heard about lady Diana, and the edginess everyone felt at school the day after Columbine.

a few more events-
Johnson doesn't run

Chicago riots

Apollo 13-christmas eve dark side of moon trip--moon landing/walk

Nixon's resignation

Vietnam POWs come home

Nixon being able to resign instead of being impeached shattering my sense of right and wrong.

The most difficult and heart wrenching events for me are the senselessness and tragedy of Princess Diana's death, all of the events about 9/11 and becoming aware of radical Muslim terrorism (even though it's a given as stated), the violence of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman and "The Dream Team"'s deplorable misuse of the justice system. School shootings. Then the death of Michael Jackson.
I remember others but these had the biggest emotional impact on me.
Can any of us forget Helter Skelter, the Manson Family? Patty Hearst? Or John List? At the time these kinds of things just didn't happen.

just remembered Bobby Kennedy's murder. woke up about 6 to go to high school and there it was on the news,, shocking, but by that time it was really getting crazy. these things weren't supposed to happen in America

RFK

MLK

KENT STATE

Watts Riots

Chicago Riots

Every major event and famous persons' passing from 1963 to present...so many!

As long as it was on TV, radio, and as I got older newspapers. I am still one of those weird people who enjoys reading a newspaper.

A better question might be:
How many "incidents" can you not only remember the incident but where you were and what you were doing?

JFK - I was in Geometry class when we first got the news.

9/11 - I was at work and we didn't have a TV, so the office had to listen to the news on the radio.

Kent State/Jackson State - I was in the Soviet Union. I had to read the news in Russian in Pravda, then field a lot of questions from Russian students. I wasn't surprised by Jackson State, it being Mississippi, but Kent State seemed so bizarre because I'd left Ohio State, its riots and tear gas only a week earlier.

Challenger - I was at work in Cincinnati when I heard the news. One person I talked to just described it as, "Bummer."

Apollo 11 landing - at home and watching it on TV. I thought the bad picture was the fault of being so far from the transmitting tower and our ten year-old B&W portable TV.

RFK: I was 7and helping my brother with his paper route.
MLK
Apollo Moon Landing
Manson Murders
Nixon Resigns
911

My responses should give a different perspective on the world....

1957 - Little Rock Central High School Integration
I was just starting kindergarten and it frightened me to think going to school would involve a screaming crowd and police protection.

8-23-63 - March on Washington
This was the first event that the whole community sat in front of the television and watched. My mother loved Marion Anderson, and I remember her crying as she sang.

9-15-63 - Birmingham Church Bombing (Sunday)
This was my thirteenth birthday and this event changed my memory of the day. One of the little girls shared my first name and was only a year older than me.

11-22-63 - JFK assassination
I was sitting in my 8th grade math class when we were told the news. This was the day I learned that hatred in America expanded beyond racial hatred.

4-4-68 - MLK assassination
It was my mother's birthday and the mood for her celebration was somber instead of happy.

2-21-85 - Malcolm X assassination
I concluded hatred in America was driven by fear and religious hatred, too.

@Maddicts: As possibly being the most senior chatter in this group, I remember all of the above plus (1) Pearl Harbor - vaguely as I was five y/o; (2) FDR's death, and (3) VE and VJ days.

Just thought of another one: When Truman vied for president vs. Thomas Dewey, the newspapers all read in big headlines the next day that Dewey one. He didn't and there were a lot of red faces and crow to eat.

WasThere: Could you go into some detail about what VE / VJ Days were like? Where did you live? How did you hear? What did you do next? How did your community react? I love that era - the '40s-- and would appreciate any memories you would be willing to share with us.

@LaurieB: Re VE and VJ days, I was living in Northern New Jersey, and those events were particularly of interest to my family as my father was in the Marines in Okinawa and we were eager to have him home. THE WAR WAS WON!! We heard about it via radio (no TV then, for us anyway) and everyone ran out into the streets where there were balloons and confetti eveywhere and stores were giving out free candy and ice cream to the kids When my dad finally came home, he didn't talk for a long time due to his war experiences (they called it shell shock then) plus he had a punctured ear drum. It was very hard for me to understand as a 9-year-old (Sally's age?).

@60's Child: I, too, LOVE READING NEWSPAPERS.

@maddicts: I think we should include the recent death of Michael Jackson.

.....Agreed about each and every one of these touchstone personalities, but no one has mentioned the sudden illness and death of Peter Jennings. With pretty much all the major anchors of that generation either retiring or dying within a period of a year or so, that one struck me particularly hard, for some reason.

This is silly, but no one mentioned Fred Rogers, either. For those who grew up looking to Mr. Rogers as a surrogate father, it WAS almost like losing a father, grandfather or favorite uncle. They broke the mould when they created him.....

RIP, Mary Travers.....willowy, bold and beautiful. I hope she was pleased that PP&M was featured so respectfully in MM Season 2.

I remember most of everyone's posted events, except for the (first-hand) WWII memories of yours, wasthere....wasn't born until the early 1950's...but, dad was a WWII vet and would speak (very rarely) of his wartime memories. He always said the only good thing about that war was the music. Pretty true....and the fact that he lived to come home and make both my brother (b. 1947) and me (b. 1951)!

I, being an Oklahoman, remember vividly and personally the federal building bombing in Oklahoma City. Then, of course, the World Trade Center tragedy (9/11) a few years later...could feel so personally the New Yorkers' misery/anger even though theirs was a much larger scale event.

Just reading through everyone's memories of events, I am struck by how much all of us have been through....we've seen a lot, both good and bad in our lives, haven't we?

These comments made me think of "When Harry Met Sally"... Harry is dating a much younger woman, Jess asks him about the age gap, and Harry says "When I asked her where she was when Kennedy was shot, she said 'Ted Kennedy was shot?' "

The one incident that I will never forget is the bombing at Centinnel Park during the 1996 Olympic Games here in Atlanta. I was there when it happened, in fact I had just walked by the area that was bombed 10 minutes earlier. I had never been that close to a disaster before and I still really haven't gotten over it because someone died.

Hi Hobocode52~ With all due respect, as a New Yorker, nothing can even come close to September 11th. Anyone who was here will most likely agree. But on the positive side, I think the moonlanding would be my next choice.