Local - robbery and murder at Lloyds bank Durrington 1960. Apparently the robbers (later caught and one hanged) drove away close to our house.
National - General Election 1964 - I was allowed to stay up late to see the results.
International - Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 - remember discussing with mates where we could shelter if we were attacked - under the kitchen table or in the coal shed were best suggestions.
Local: Southdown bus blown from the Toll Bridge into the River Adur 1/1 49
National: Death of King George VI 1952
International: Sinking of the Flying Enterprise also 1952
Keith Lyons murder as it happened literally down the road. Asssination of JFK... playing on my front carpet and remembering the nose of my large family stop and the sombre tone that took over.
Local: Maria Colwell murder
National/international : SR-71 flying from New York to London in under 2 hours
International/interstellar : The Apollo moon landings
Local - Abba winning Eurovision @ the Dome
National - Jim Clark (Racing Driver) killed at Hockenheim
International - Neil, Buzz & Mike on (or near) the Moon
You're older than I am - how on earth can you not remember that? It dominated the news for days and adults seemed to talk about little else. KIds' TV shows were cancelled - Dr Who was repeated because it was feared so many people had missed it.
International - Vietnam war on the TV all the time in late 60s, that or Mexico Olympics in 68
National - Torre Canyon oil tanker disaster, 67
Local - When the handbrake failed on an unmanned parked car and it ran down a bank and across a packed playground at my primary school (Westdene), running over and injuring several young kids - sometime late 60s(?). Nobody killed mercifully, but it was gruesome enough to make the national TV news that night.
I used to pick-up international news from the Express (when it was a newspaper) to a greater extent than my parents realised. At the age of 9 I was well-up with the crisis in the Congo, but the Cuban missile crisis at about the same time was obviously something in a different league. The paper would have headlines like “Is this the end of the world?” and I’d be quite scared.
I remember the Profumo affair, but knew that there was something about it I didn’t quite understand. I loved the Giles cartoon in the Express except when it covered Profumo and I knew I wouldn’t get it.
Locally, it was being sent home from primary school because of the news that the sea-wall at Seaford had been breached yet again.