what is the most compelling news event that has ocurred in your lifetime?

i had to do the same. i choose gaming addiction. its a relatively over looked problem but it affects millions.

 

The Tsunami that killed about 30 times as many people as 9/11.

The striking down of Habeas Corpus by an American President.

The failure of the war in Iraq.

The Mars Rover

The Supreme Court deciding a Presidential election

The drafting of Yao Ming

 

The fall of the Berlin wall was the most significant world news event in my lifetime, at least symbolically. It was symbolic of the demise of the Soviet Union, which touched off a re-alignment of world powers that is still going.

 

the election of G W Bush....twice

 

this and 9/11 get my vote. because the implications of those events changed the world. or at least changed the way we view the world.

 

The Presidential election of 2000 is an easy paper.

1. polarized electorate, Rovian campaign strategies
2. popular vote vs. electoral college
3. the vote count in FL, Katheryn Harris and the Supreme Court
4. The peacefull transfer of power contrasted against other contested races in other democracies like Mexico 2006

It's really a huge story about a big shift in the political direction of the world's strongest nation.

And the information resources are easy research, you could probably do the whole thing from newspaper articles. That's a lot less reading than pulling from books.

 

I'm not sure how old you are but if you were alive then, you may want to think about the collapse of the Soviet Union as well.

 

My vote.

 

Watching the Berlin Wall fall, and then the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. If you are 30 or older, I don't see how this couldn't have been the most compelling.

 

The most compelling stories of my lifetime are:

1. The assasination of JFK. I was 10 and Walter Cronkite plugged me in to every second of the event. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald live.

2.Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. I had to explain to my grandmother that the pictures were real, from the moon.

3. 9/11

4. The Challenger explosion

5. The Tet Offensive, real war, on TV.
(edited on) I was a gung-ho kid but even though we won, I pretty much decided then and there I wouldn't be going to Viet Nam.

I'm judging from the emotional impact the events had on me. Shock registers stronger than elation for me. The Wall coming down was definitely great, but the dissoultion of the Soviet Union had been ongoing for a while and they has long since been reduced as a world wide adversary. It had been a very long long time since I had worried about a Soviet/US confrontation (and I'm from the "Duck and Cover" generation.

I was about equally pleased and shocked when Bill Clinton was elected over Bush Sr. I did not believe the American people would fail to re-elect a president that won a war. I would have bet my house.

 

i'm with you. it's the shock of the event that registers with me strongest. that's why i'd have to say 9/11. there was the moment of chaos on an otherwise beautiful day...and then there were the following days when you thought about where it was coming from next.

 

I say that about shock but I still put the Moon Landing #2. For a teenager at that time it seemed like a scientific utopia was just around the corner. I couldn't wait to have my nucleared powered flying car.

Again, a lot of the impact was due to Walter Cronkite and the immediacy of and the involvement in, the story made possible by television coverage. We take it for granted now because of the 24 hour news services but I don't think they do it better now; certainly the networks today don't have the gravitas of the early networks. Maybe everything just looks more serious in black and white.

 

i think the gravitas is lacking because we're inundated with 24 hour coverage, now.

 

Civil war and genocide in Rwanda. That was one of the things when i was a kid i had no idea how bad it was. But that is also something that is overlooked by many.

 

The Wall Fall was almost an anti-climax for me... Solidarity's struggle in the Lenin Shipyards and then onto the world stage and Gorbachev's Glasnost were the big movers... I remember how exciting it was to watch Solidarity and Lech Walesa go up against the Polish government and how we sat there waiting for the Soviets to come in and brutally put down the movement... but it didn't happen. That was the beginning of the end for the Soviets and Glasnost sealed the deal... the wall was a symbol of all the events in that time period.

Another symbol was the release of Nelson Mandela.

Watergate was also big... very big. "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."

Civil Rights movement, school integration, busing.

My memory of the MLK (my idiot Uncle: "no more Martin Luther Coon") and RFK assassinations (I think I remember the name Sirhan Sirhan and what he did before I clearly understood what important man he shot) are murky, but I definitely remember watching MNF my freshman year in college when Howard Cosell announced the death of John Lennon.

The Who come out with Quadrophenia.

The Rockets move from California to Houston.

 

Same here. The Tsunami is/was the scariest thing I have ever seen. Basically Katrina x 100.

 

Without a doubt it was the Brad/Jen breakup.

 

May not have that flying car, but a scientific utopia was around the corner. As I walk around checking emails on my blackbery, sometimes I think we really are a lot closer to Star Trek than to Leave it to Beaver.

May not be one major news event related to this yet, and it may not be disastarous today, but Global Warming is a pretty newsworthy item, that could have some pretty serious long-term implications.

 

Brad/Jen or Ben/Jen (aka - Benifer)...?