What were you doing when?

Thanks to Steve (I think!) for nominating me for this wee meme. Five events and the opportunity to record the impact they had on you:

Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997

I was at home in Belfast, woke up on the Sunday morning and turned on the radio beside the bed. Unusually for a weekend, even in Belfast at that stage before 'the peace', the Rev Ian Paisley was sermonising, so I snuggled back down under the covers, not paying too much attention. Slowly however, the reality that something REALLY big had happened started to dawn, so I paid more attention, but was unable to establish exactly what (at one stage I actually thought the Queen was dead). It took me to get up and turn on the TV to find out that Diana had been killed in an accident.

Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990

I am not, and never have been, a political being. Therefore, although I do remember Margaret Thatcher leaving No.10, in the political cauldron that was Northern Ireland at the time, it really didn't mean much to me. Just a new face on a new leader with new ideas on how to solve our age old problem. We'd still be shooting and bombing each other, ruining our economy, our image and our country, and driving our young people away no matter who held the reins.

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001

I was at a meeting in work when a colleague literally burst in and told us the world trade centres had been blown up. Naturally, we didn't believe him, until we huddled round a TV set in the office and saw it all for ourselves. That's when another colleague suddenly realised that her daughter was in New York at the time. Scary, very scary. At home, we had to turn the coverage off because my then 2 year old thought every rerun of the footage was a new plane crashing. We thought 30 odd years of terrorism had hardened us. It hadn't.

England's World Cup semi final v Germany - 4 July 1990

Really, I don't know because really, I wouldn't have cared. Football? England?? However, I can tell you EXACTLY where I was and what I was doing when Ireland beat England in the rugby Six Nations, Saturday 6th March 2004 :-)

President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963

Not to put too fine a point on it, I was a little ovum in a little ovary. I wasn't even a twinkle in anybody's eye, because it would be another year before my parents were even married. Having said that, I love a good conspiracy theory, and the release in 1991 of the film JFK starring Kevin Costner started me on an extended period of reading everything and anything to do with the assassination. The earliest 'celebrity' death I remember was Elvis, August 16 1977. I was 10. I cried.

I now nominate:

Wils
Cosmo
Judy
Dana
Pluto