1. Landing on the moon, Apollo 11, 1969 (mom)
She was already in bed, and her parents got her and her brother up to watch the landing. She didn't really think it was a big deal at the time, but looking back realizing it was really big. It served as a benchmark for how old somebody was. This was an example of the United States solidifying ourselves as a world superpower. Looking back on the kind of technology it is kind of scary to think about how basic it really was back then.
2. September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (mom)
She was at a college counselor breakfast. She didn't know anything had happened until she heard it on the radio driving back to school. She thought about how it was going to change the school day and school week. The school administrators spent time discussing about to talk about it with the students from different grade levels. The older kids understood what had happened, but most of the younger students didn't really understand what actually happened. They thought that the people would all walk out of the building and the planes and be okay. She thinks that this really showed that we really aren't as safe as we think that we are, and we aren't isolated from the rest of the world.
3. Fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc/End of the Cold War, 1990 (dad)
He remembers sitting at work, and listening to the radio and being so surprised as all of these countries left the Soviet Union. He also remembers going home at watching all of the news stories about it. It was most newsworthy to him because it was people taking control of their own destiny, and it was a shock that the West outlived the East. It was more of international event than a natural disaster and it was greater than the 9/11 attacks. It was bigger than the moon landing to him because the moon landing was like uniting the earth, but the fall of the Soviet Union affected more of day to day life. It took tension away from the world because people weren't afraid of nuclear fallout and bombings everyday.
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