We Asked People of All Ages About the First News Story They Can Remember

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

The news recently has felt like a never-ending dumpster fire, renewed and fuelled by each week's fresh horrors. For people in the UK, what journalists usually term summer's "silly season" just hasn't happened. They had Brexit, Cameron's resignation, the scare of almost-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Michael Gove thought he could lead the Tory party for about three days before unelected Theresa May strode into Number 10 as PM on Wednesday.

Globally, a ticker tape of massacres – from the Orlando LGBT club shooting to Boko Haram setting killing at least 18 women in north-eastern Nigeria and Thursday night's lorry attack in France – has seemed to fill our feeds. So many of these events feel like the sort that will end up in history books, ones that will shape people's memories of just where they were when they first heard each story. In light of trying to process it all, I've spoken to different people from around the UK, from adolescence to post-retirement age, to hear about the first major news story they remember living through.

The day of the London 7/7 bombings, I remember being in a classroom because it was a weekday. I must have been seven or eight. A teacher came into the room in a rush, and she was going, "it's been bombed, it's been bombed" and I thought, "what's she on about?" We all looked to our teacher to explain, and she told us there'd been a bombing on the Tube and people had been killed because some people called terrorists had attacked London. I thought, "oh my god, my mum got on the train this morning – what train did she get on?" and hoped she wasn't in London. I didn't really know how big of a deal it was though, because the teachers were trying not to panic us.

I remember going home and being so relieved to see my mum. By the next day I knew all my friends were okay, but I kept hearing stories about people who had been blown up or seriously hurt, and I remember seeing all the scarring pictures of death. I understand the full extent of it now, but at the time my mum was the only thing on my mind. Once I realised she was fine, I moved on because that's just what kids do. When these sorts of things happen now, I find myself thinking back to that day and imagining all the different ways the whole thing could have played out.

Hands down, the first thing I remember is Princess Diana's death. I was eight, and at my aunt's house with my cousins while my aunt made us food. She put the TV on to entertain us and Princess Diana was all over it. It was such a weird feeling because I just burst into tears; I was completely inconsolable. I think it was the first time I really understood the finality of death, which is why it hit me so hard.

Diana had visited a school near the estate where I grew up in north London not long before that, and I remember the crowd absolutely loved her. When she died, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was so sad to know a lovely person had gone. And then I started thinking about how it was so awful that she had sons, which made me think about my mother, and so I just burst into tears. It was almost like a relief to cry actually, because at that age you have very little understanding of death and the only way you can understand it is if you relate it back to your life in some way.

It was all so sudden – there was no time where we knew she was going to die, it just happened. She was dead and that was it. The emotions are still really clear in my mind, even though I never directly interacted with Diana, and I do feel the same about it now as I did then. There will always be that bit of sorrow in me.

I know I should remember something earlier but I was honestly the biggest stoner in my early teens so a lot of stuff has been wiped from my brain. But at around 16 I remember going to bed one night and everything being fine, then waking up early the next morning to find my dad up – that was strange, because he loved a good lie-in. When I went to ask him something, he seemed really sad and told me the Queen Mother had died.

I didn't really get what the big deal was, but he told me he'd been up the whole night watching the BBC news reports. It was the first time I'd seen my dad genuinely upset. He'd been crying – and to put that in perspective, the only other time I've seen him like that was when my uncle died. We watched the telly together for the rest of the day.

When I think about it now, in a weird way I almost feel glad that I could be alive at that point, because it felt like this huge, defining moment in history that changed the world. I feel like the news is a lot worse these days. It's not just old people dying. I don't know if I didn't pay attention to it back then, but it definitely feels like there's more horrible stuff happening. In a way, it's nice to be able to remember what it was like before.

I remember hearing about President Kennedy dying, and that thought has always stuck in my mind because he was assassinated and it was so sad for everybody. The whole of the UK was in mourning when it happened, out of solidarity for America. I think I was around eight years old when he died, and it made me feel sad because they kept cutting to his children, who were around my age. The fact that he died in a bulletproof, open-backed car kept playing over and over again.

My whole family was sat around the TV in the front room when it happened, because we couldn't afford to heat more than one room. In those times we only had two channels, BBC1 and ITV, so it dominated the news and there was nothing else for us to watch on the telly.

My parents just kept saying that he was a nice man – he liked black people, that's what my mum said, and she told me he was very friendly. Everybody liked him, and I think in their eyes, he worked hard to make people happy. After all these years I still feel the same about it, and it will always be in my brain. I didn't know much about him, but to me he was like royalty; his kids would always be wearing trousers and long socks and those coats Prince William and Prince Harry used to wear. It's an odd detail, but I'll never forget it, and it will always make me sad.

The first news story I remember living through is post-war soap rationing in the early 1950s. My mum was overjoyed by it all because that was one of the things she'd hated the most about the war; having three dirty boys because there wasn't enough soap to go around. I was happy it was over mostly, even though a few things were still rationed at that point. I didn't realise it at the time because post-war England was all I knew, but it was almost the end of everything feeling grey, and the point when we started to rebuild everything we'd lost.

So it was good in that sense, but I actually hated the end of soap rationing because I liked being dirty. Playing in the dirt outside was one of my favourite pastimes because I got a kick out of annoying my mother. My home was that house you have on every street where everyone likes to play at after school, and when I found out about the end of soap rationing I was outside doing just that with all my friends.

My mum shouted at me to come in because she'd already picked up a bar of soap, so she pulled me away and scrubbed me clean. I despised that, but there was also an exciting element to the end of rationing – I started to realise things existed that I'd never seen before. Most of the children my age had never seen a banana because we were so used to wartime restrictions – so I always associate bananas with soap and the end of everything being grim.

I thought about those times a lot when I was in my thirties or so, but I've mostly made peace with it now. Making the shift to capitalism again was very bizarre as someone born a couple of years before the war began, and I think I'll carry that sense of wanting to scrimp and save for the rest of my life.

Some of the names in this article have been changed to suit the person's low-key lifestyle.

@YasminAJeffery / @alexgamsujenkins

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