[Misc] I was there

[Trufflehound]

I have a habit of just missing momentous occasions.

Arrived at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium in 1991 about 30 minutes after an unknown band called Nirvana played what turned out to be their only ever festival show on the European mainland.

I left Maumere on the island of Flores in Indonesia in 1992, just a few days before a tsunami wiped out the town and 2,000 of its inhabitants.*

I was drunk in Hove and slept right through the October storm in 1987, even though a tree came down about 10m from my bedroom window.

I arrived in Hong Kong in June 1989, on my way to Beijing, only to discover I could no longer go there as the tanks had just rolled into Tiananmen Square.

I was however at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium in 2011 when a freak storm wiped out the festival site, helping to hold up a badly damaged tent whilst five other people around the site were being killed by flying debris.




*My father kept up the family tradition on that one by leaving Thailand a couple of days before the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami wiped out the resort he'd been staying in...

 

[Seagull85]

I was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was captured

 

[papajaff]

Another close one.
Was asleep in my car round the back of the Grand Hotel when the bomb went off. A few of us had been in Busby's for the evening.

Still can't remember why I had my car as I lived in Hove at the time. Maybe Footie training as it was a Thursday. My mate was in his car next to me. We walked past the Grand around 2.30am.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

I was one of those who tried to wake you with the sirens as we left Preston Circus.
Enough people had a lousy night then (and a for a few days after) - glad we didn't spoil your evening

Reckon you must have been on shift with my best man - he was one of the fire-fighters carrying the Norman Tebbit stretcher - aka SW

 

[PTC Gull]

The "Hurricane", sleeping downstairs in a new house in Seaford with a 2 week old baby when the gable end of the roof blew in.
And Hillsborough.
My ex Father in Law was a Forest STH and when me and the ex lived in Derby I used to go with him for Forest games, and we got tickets to semi. We were in the stand behind the dugouts and I still remember watching dead bodies going past on advertising boards being used as stretchers. Recall us discussing how the Lepping Lane end looked full at least 45 mins before kick off.

 

[Happy Exile]

Not historic here but grimly so for the region I took the advice of armed men in Mexico in the mid 90s and left a town a few hours before a massacre took place nearby. Haunts me still sometimes and knocked a lot of the adventurous backpacker travelling without a guidebook out of me. A few years later I worked in IT support and took a call from a journalist trying to file a story having found a mass grave in Kosovo, I remember the shock and think it was possibly the first time it was reported. Awful and took me back to the sweltering rushed exit from that place in Mexico.
I was also close to a 7/7 bomb, like some others here.

In happier times I was also at Nirvana in 1991 at Reading, saw Radiohead in a London pub same kind of time playing to a handful of people, and lots of other bands in their early days playing pubs locally like Oasis, Keane etc. Oh, and I saw Skid Row get banned from Wembley Stadium. Not at all historic but felt it at the time in my metal/goth circle!

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I’m still waiting for [MENTION=14132]Two Professors[/MENTION] to tell us he was on the moon at the time of the first moon landing.

 

[Tim Over Whelmed]

Back in '91 I worked in the MoD in Whitehall and we had a young lady who worked with us and she was due to go home on leave after work and had managed to blag a parking space in the square opposite, Horse Guards Parade. It was snowing and she arrived moaning about the weather. During our initial chat I asked her if she'd remembered to display her pass so as not to cause a bomb scare, she hadn't.

There then followed one of those very short Army conversations which made it clear she needed to go back over the road and sort it out, promptly!

As she left I looked out of the window making sure she was doing as politely asked, which was leg it back as fast as your legs will carry you, she was. Just then I noticed a white transit pull up, I didn't take much notice and a few seconds later said van acted as the launcher for several mortar bombs dispatched to the gardens of Downing Street.

Due to the security cordon promptly set in place we didn't see her again that day but she did spend the first two days of her leave looking at photos and imagery a Cannon Row nick, she wasn't happy with me!