Most impactful/shocking/surprising national event in your life?

9/11 for me, by far (wasn't around for Reagan's inauguration or earlier.)

9/11 changed the mood and mindset of the entire country. It was by far the biggest, most impactful event I've lived through.

pot kettle wrote:

9/11 for me, by far (wasn't around for Reagan's inauguration or earlier.)

9/11 changed the mood and mindset of the entire country. It was by far the biggest, most impactful event I've lived through.

Agreed 911.

I would say lehmann brothers and 911 were the biggest in my lifetime.

I don't think Reagans election was that much more significant than any other presidential election. Obama's was slightly more, but not that significant either. Their policies may have made impact positive or negative, but their election wasn't that impactful.

Likewise desert storm was that impactful either. It wasn't likely significant in the fall of the ussr and the current war in the middle east has erased any direct impacts it had. Our current situation likely wouldn't be much different if we hadn't rescued kuwait.

Shuttle explosion 1986

Half Century Man wrote:

Shuttle explosion 1986

I thought about mentioning this. At the time it was an enormous story.

Trump winning the election isn't that shocking. He's much more like most of the men to occupy the presidency than was Obama. Obama's victory represented a catalytic shift in Western politics. Trump seeks to reinstate a global power structure that aligns the U.S. with all of Europe in economic dominance over all of Asia and the rest of the globe.

Yours is a good question. 9/11 was quite shocking for me, but Bobby Dylan taking the Nobel Prize for Literature, egads.

The Circus closing

9/11 is overrated. It's like the Pearl Jam of national occurances.

Though not a single day event, I'd say the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and subsequent impeachment trials were it for me. I think that for people born after 1965, this is where we kind of lost our innocence.

As a fallout from that, the democratic base was turned off, leading to Bush defeating Gore in 2000, which in turn opened the door for the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror, etc.

And also it humanized the office of the president so much that as a country we actually elected entertainer and businessman, Donald Trump.

I believe it is the one thing that happened that, had it not, the country would be the most different.

lehman brothers? that's not significant at least for someone older than 20. the JFK assassination by far followed by 9/11 and the whole Vietnam war fiasco.

Coach wrote:

lehman brothers? that's not significant at least for someone older than 20. the JFK assassination by far followed by 9/11 and the whole Vietnam war fiasco.

I'm 38, and Lehman was huge for me. Not that I knew it would lead to 10,000 suicides, but I knew it was some seriously bad sh/t. Maybe I'm different, but I remember that day almost as vividly as 9/11 and the Challenger.

Newtown school shooting now, but prior to that it was definitely 9/11.

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

Newtown school shooting now, but prior to that it was definitely 9/11.

An unfortunate good suggestion.

First moon landing, 1969

Lots of build-up and hope; unified marvel and sense of proud accomplishment seeing it on our small screens (some, still black-and-white images). [waiting for people to reply it was a staged hoax....]

Only 5 years thereafter--

Nixon resigning under cloud of Watergate. I couldn't believe our president could do such a thing and that the country could just turn nasty on its leaders and institutions. (the other riots and protests of the '60s occurred when I was really young and/or in places in my safe rural-north enclave)

Old Daze wrote:

First moon landing, 1969

Watching this on live TV would have been mind blowing. Probably as shocking as seeing a jet fly into the World Trade, but obviously on the other end of the spectrum.

911 by far

Financial crisis -those few days of total uncertainty

Douglas knocks out Tyson