Earth Shattering Events

Crucial

I was pretty young for Munich but I do remember all the adults talking about it and how big a deal it was.
 
The prospect of nuclear war in general was probably the biggie though. Kids today can't understand how that was a very real and very scary prospect.

Gary

Not a "world" shattering event but the start of something in NZ for me as a young guy at primary school was the Land March and Bastion Point.

booboo

I do mean it is stuff that rocked your world.

taniwharugby

Rainbow Warrioir, springbok tour in 81 (was 7) 
For some reason Muldoons snap election....also still recall for some reason the moment I heard on the radio that Diana had been killed...9/11 as I was in the UK and my boss told us about the first plane and I thought he was joking (notorious joker) even though it woulda been a daft joke. 
Recall the AB v Italy game in 1987 better than the final.
 
My first shag, although surely it was more earth shattering for her, surely?

Crazy Horse

Mum getting rid of my pram. I had to fucking walk everywhere after that.
 
Being forced to go to school at the age of five. Why couldn't I stay at home and play with my toys? Why did I have to play with other kids?

dogmeat

Robert Kennedy Assassination
 
Apollo 11 Moon Landings piped live over radio at school
 
This photo
<img src="http://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/TrangBang-800x430.jpg" alt="TrangBang-800x430.jpg">
 
Remember picking up a paper in Brighton that was folded in half top half of page headline reads PLANE CRASHES IN ANTARCTIC. Turn paper over and see the photo of the tail in the snow. Felt very alone. Didn't know anyone in the northern hemisphere to talk about how I felt.
 
Russian invasion of Afghanistan - was living in eastern Netherlands. There was a lot of fear. Jets being scrambled constantly. Tank traps on motorway
 
Biafran Civil War - for about a year calling a kid at school a biafran was the biggest insult. TV was new and scenes of malnourished kids with flies crawling all over them shocked NZ
 
Norm Kirk dying
 
Listening to Munich 8 win gold on a "trannie" in Coromandel
 
Watergate
 
Nadia Comaneci
 
The phenomenon that was the Muppets
 
The Soweto riots / 1976 AB Tour / African boycott at Montreal / Walkers gold
 
The fall of Saigon
 
Calculators!!!!!
 
Thatcher and the Winter of Discontent
 
and that's just up to 1980!!!

rotated

I'm a bit younger than most of you being born in the mid 80s, but I remember being told about Erebus constantly as a young kid - it seemed more recent and still very raw in the NZ public even at that time (early 90s).
 
For my generation Princess Diana seemed like a big deal, 9/11 for sure, in a sporting sense I don't think anything has ever come close to holding the national psyche hostage like the '95 America's Cup challenge.

mariner4life

The first day i found out how much fun getting on the piss was.
The first day i found out how much fun getting with ladies was.
 
I spent the rest of my life in pursuit of both of those things, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Definitely life-shaping.
 
 
I really wanted to write a serious answer to what is a pretty good question, but i found i couldn't, and be sincere. While i have watched those events unfold (i was unemployed on 9/11, so watched the day unfold), i can't honestly say they have affected my view of the world. While i can be shocked or moved by events, i have found that they don't really shape my thinking in any way (on a tangible or noticeable level anyway). I find myself to be very micro in my thinking, focused on stuff immediate to me, and that i have some ability to control. 
 
However, in the spirit of the thread, i guess on that resonates in my family is the Ranui disaster at Mt Maunganui, as my grandmother's first husband, the therefore the father of half of my uncles was the skipper. I stop at that memorial every time i walk around the Mount

Chris B.

Wahine disaster.
 
Moon landing.
 
Munich Olympics.
 
Norm Kirk dying - "The Press" headline was "Death of a Statesman".
 
Christchurch Commonwealth Games - after Dick Taylor's run I went down to the local rugby ground and ran laps until I'd done 10,000 meters - or an approximation of - started my running "career" .
 
French nuclear testing at Mururoa.
 
Springbok tour.

booboo

The Falklands

Nepia

I remember the 81 tour only because the old man and my granddad wouldn't take me to the Maori v Boks game in Napier, and then my Dad came home with a massive scratch on his head where some dude through a tomato can at him.
 
Snap election, remember at the time but likely my memory has been augmented by reading about it.
 
Rainbow Warrior was a biggy too.
 
Edinburgh Commonwealth Games as we split into teams for school and I got Jersey. I was hoping for Canada, or Jamaica, or even Wales and I got frikkin Jersey.
 
Halley's Comet was huge, I think my whole school year in 1986 was devoted to Halley's Comet.
 
1987 WC, yeah we won, where'd that Jones fella come from, that guy Zinny has a cool name, Gingas play rugby, same as Jegga - first of many, yay MJ and that skinny white fellow with the paedo mo brought the WC to school.
 
Princess Di was actually one of those remember when moments - in a car driving down Peachgrove Rd heading towards Chartwell to go to the food court. It was announced she was in an accident, all the tane said yep she's dead, all the wahine said nah she's fine.

antipodean

There are big moments I clearly recall, but I was so far removed from them that despite an element of shock I let the moment pass; big three being Challenger disaster, Berlin Wall coming down and the death of the Princess of Wales.
 
But 9/11 was the earth shattering moment. I was living in the mess and someone said a plane had crashed into the WTC so I went down to the TV room to have a look. There was a bunch of us in the room and after a while I was about to go outside to have a smoke when the second plane hit and the realisation of it all hit me like a 10 foot wave. I turned to everyone else in the room who had various expressions of shock and simply said; "the world has changed men, we're going to be busy from now on". Nothing else has had such an impact.

reprobate

boxing day tsunami.

dogmeat

Faoir call M4L. The event that probably defined who I am more than any other was when I was at Uni and the Engineers got smacked around by black power for their "harmless fun" hakas during orientation.
 
It mobilised the campus like nothing else in my years there mainly because the President of the Student Union whilst not supporting the violence, said she could understand why after 30 years of asking the engineering guys not to do it some people had taken matters into their own hands.
 
Fucking hell. The debate raged in the quad for days. Mainly because of shameless politicking by the person who had finished second in the presidential vote.
 
6,000 students voted that the pres be thrown out of office coz the engineering students were only having a bit of fun dressing up in grass skirts and painting penises and obscenities on their bodies. Bloody horis can't take a joke eh.
 
50 voted that she should stay.
 
Really opened my eyes to the unthinking racism of the day. I was already planning to take off overseas. That made me confident I was making the right decision.
 
Chris can't believe I forgot the wahine and mururoa

RoninWC

As someone said earlier, Mount St. Helens was just remarkable. At the time we were living in Calgary and Washing State isnâ€™t that far away plus some of the ash made its way to Calgary. And a couple of years previously we had been holidaying in that very area as my family would travel and go camping every school holidays into the Pacific North West of the US.
 
Like many, the Challenger disaster as we were watching it live at Uni. The big deal pre-flight was all about Christa McAuliffe, being a woman and first school teacher in space. Watching that blow up and slowly break apart and then watching all those bits falling back to earth still resonates with me to this day.
 
Princess Diana, I donâ€™t know why hearing of her death shocked me so much but I can imagine it is similar for those who say that they remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard JKF was shot. I have the clearest memory of that very day and that very moment when I heard the news on the radio and I the shock that followed.
 
But the two most powerful moments have been:
 
9/11 â€“ I was watching SBS news that night when the very first reports of the first plane crashing into the tower were just hitting the airwaves. The SBS news then took the feed from one of the American broadcasters of the smoking tower only to show a few minutes later the second plane hitting tower two live on TV.
 
I didnâ€™t go into work that day and I was glued to the TV for hours and watched both towers come down live on TV. To say this was shocking is simply a huge understatement.
 
The Boxing Day Tsunami â€“ Getting up hung over on Boxing Day morning at the in-laws place and turning on the TV to see the first reports of the tsunami. Again, just as with 9/11 we all spent the day just glued to the TV as the extent of the absolute horror and loss of life unfolded.
 
Honourable mention goes to the Japan Tsunami which had some of the most amazing footage of a disaster occurring live that Iâ€™ve ever witnessed.

booboo

What is sobering is that Nice this morning is not really registering on the shock and awe scale.

antipodean

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="booboo" data-cid="596727" data-time="1468556643">
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What is sobering is that Nice this morning is not really registering on the shock and awe scale.
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Compassion fatigue. Much like car bombings in Iraq or mass shootings in the USA, you're starting to expect it.

jegga

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Chris B." data-cid="596636" data-time="1468539988">
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Wahine disaster.
 
Moon landing.
 
Munich Olympics.
 
Norm Kirk dying - "The Press" headline was "Death of a Statesman".
 
Christchurch Commonwealth Games - after Dick Taylor's run I went down to the local rugby ground and ran laps until I'd done 10,000 meters - or an approximation of - started my running "career" .
 
French nuclear testing at Mururoa.
 
Springbok tour.
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While not earth shattering for me because it happened five years before I was born my father was on it when it sank and understandably I don't think he ever got over it .

Chris B.

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="dogmeat" data-cid="596714" data-time="1468553803">
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Chris can't believe I forgot the wahine and mururoa
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Wahine is the first news item I can remember seeing on TV.
 
Not surprised Jegga - I've watched some of those big storms in Wellington and imagined jumping into the harbour.

MN5

Hilary Barry's last appearance on 3 news.

The Silver Fern

Earth Shattering Events