Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge The most chilling news broadcast you ever heard...

The 'Tragedy' post got me thinking .........about the most chilling thing people heard on a news broadcast ?

Mine was early one morning in 1996 when I was returning to Birmingham from an overnight business trip to Wales.

The 9 o'clock news came on the Radio and the headline was " ten people taken to hospital with stab wounds as knife-man rampages through a Birmingham supermarket. Police are at the Netto Supermarket in Bordesley Green and have detained a suspect. Ten people have been injured and taken to hospital, three are said to be in a serious condition with life threatening injuries".

My Nephew was the Supermarket Manager....

It then went on interview a shopper who was in the store at the time and she said " the first I knew was when I heard screams from the office and saw a man in a supermarket uniform covered in blood and carrying a knife coming over to the checkout. He then stabbed the girl at the desk and started attacking the customers in the queue. He then chased another employee down between the isles and stabbed him, and then went out onto the carpark". Another witness outside the store said she saw him stab a man who tried to stop him getting away". I think he also stabbed another man waiting at a bus stop.

The guy was a disgruntled employee who had been on duty at 5 in the morning helping my nephew to open up for deliveries. He had come prepared, carrying a knife with the intention of killing people.

My nephew said the guy was a quiet person who had an exemplary work record at the store having been there some time, whom he employed to 'give him a chance' as he seemed 'vulnerable' and was not very confident.

He came face to face with my nephew who said he could have easily stabbed him, but paused for a second, turned and walked out without saying a word.

The guy who was stabbed outside on the car park died a short while later but all of the others recovered.

'Britney Spears Pregnant Again' - Updates at 11

Thats just crazy and hits even closer to home than what happened here. You had a family member involved and in danger. We are hoping this girl in my tragedy thread isn't anyone we may know. (don't know why my thread was locked no one said anything wrong that I know of and it wasn't political)

Seriously, it was JFK's murder. Not personal directly, but personal nationally. I was 12 and got a little emotional as it played out while we were in school. The kid two rows over called me a cry baby, so I got up, walked over to him before he could stand up, and hit him square in the face. I knocked a couple teeth out and broke his jaw with one shot. He spent a couple months with his mouth wired shut. The teacher didn't eject me or anything. It felt great, but I was still bummed.

JFK's assassination. The news hit the east as I was walking
out of 2nd grade. Kennedy was a very big deal in an Irish Catholic household.

If the same happened in these times,
a celebrity news story would bump it.

911...hand's down! I think enough's said there.

(and...I DON'T WANT ANYBODY TO GET STARTED HERE...YA GOT ME???!!!)

Yup, I'll agree with you on that, Dwight. In fact, it was SO shocking, that it didn't really affect me emotionally until I was driving home and saw all the flags in front of all the churches, and the marquees saying 'God Bless America' and the like. As I was almost home, it hit me hard how the world - not just the USA - had turned a corner to a completely new world; A darker place in which to live. That's when the tears came just as they came when JFK died. Only no one was calling me a cry baby then, because most of the rest of us were tearful as well.

The whole world was populated by 'New Yorkers' that day.

Funny enough I remember exactly what I was doing at the time. JFK I was building a plastic construction kit and ran out of cement.

Just after the news broadcast I went to the local convience store to get some more. As I came out of the shop the local bully and his 'gang' gave me a good beating. He was 5 years older and a lot bigger than me.

A few years later he was jailed for throwing a 5 year old girl from a play frame which left her a paraplegic.

911, I was waiting in for the Cable TV guy to replace the decoder and watched the plane strike the second tower live. I remember trying to think of a small football stadium crowd (30,000) as that was the potential death toll from the towers alone.

Quote:

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JFK's assassination

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I was in 5th grade--sent us home early--my mom cried all night.
seems everything changed after that---locking doors, being home before dark.
and we still don't know how [magic bullet,crap]

Britney getting preggers again is a close third, though. SOME people should have compulsery, compulsary, comp... MANDATORY sterilization just to keep the gene pool at a higher level.

1. 9/11
2. The bombing of the Oklahoma Fed. Building
3. Waco shooting
4. JFK
5. Kent State Massacre
6. Bobby Kennedy
7. Martin Luther King
8. Olympic assassinations
9. Sinking of the Thresher
10. The outcome of the last presidential race

911 - phew! My new boss works right there at ground zero, and may well have had a front row seat. I'm reluctant to ask.
We had no TV at work, just a very overstressed internet feed from CNN.
When the first tower collapsed, I was in denial. I could not wrap my little brain around that possibility. I thought for sure the talking heads got that wrong.

The other big one that blew me away - the bombing of the federal building in OKC. Another jaw dropper. I was working with a retired state police master sergeant at the time, and called him in to see it on TV. Even with the dregs of humanity grit & gruel he's likely seen over the years, he was as blown away as I was.

911 the most chilling no doubt. A few 20ish year olds ran into my office and we put on msnbc. They asked what this meant, I immediately stated this is an act of war and we are under attack. A lot of Americans knew someone somehow connected. My wife works with a mother of a stock broker lost that day. She is a school teacher. A tree and plaque have been erected in his name. Sad day for sure.
JFK is probably the most shocking. I was in first grade, we were let out early and was not told why. I remember seeing the flag at half mast as I waled home and wondered what it meant.
I'll have to say the killing a John Lennon hit me pretty hard. I still struggle to understand the killing of a musician to impress an actress! Strange indeed.

Tie between 9/11 and the Challenger explosion.

I was laying on the couch the morning of 911. Had Bob and Tom onthe radio when all of a sidden they said something hit the south tower. Maybe a little plane or soemthing. then all of a sudden it got real serious.

About 10 min later my pager wen t off (work made us carry one) everyone was to report to work at once. Air planes were lined up to land here. Roads were almost empty.. Was a messed up errie feeling day.

For me 9-11, I was working for Turner at the time (Cartoon Network) and was watching CNN as it all happened. The moment I saw it I knew it was a terrorist attack, while CNN was trying to figure out if it was an accident or not. I lost a cousin that day, he was a fire fighter in NY, he is a hero.

The Atlanta Olympics bombing was also very chilling.

Has to be the Sunday afternoon when they broke into one of my favorite songs on the radio to announce that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I was too young at the time to fully comprehend what was to come but, by the time it was all over, my life had been altered beyond recognition.

Mine was back in 1993, I was drawing money out of an ATM while on my dinner break. Just around the corner I heard 2 large explosions...followed by a stream of running people. The IRA? had planted hand grenades in some of the metal bins down a busy street. The child that died who was closest to the blast was only young and I attended a French night school class with his father. Work was called of due to the MFI car park being used as the nerve centre for all the emergency services, army etc.

911, I'd just woke after a nightshift and thought it was some special effects on the TV... picture of seeing those people jumping still haunt me.. that was a sad sad day!

9/11 for me. remember everything about that day. Was living in MD outside of DC then. Remember going to a friends house in Baltimore that evening, and the big message signs over the freeway said "major incident in NYC, avoid area" Same was said about DC on my way home in the other direction. Remember getting chills after seeing that.

I was sitting in the office of my friends shop and watched the plane hit the tower. We couldn't believe it and didn't think it was real at first.

Guess I'm a bit young for this thread...the earliest news event I remember was watching Reagan getting shot - wait no I take that back...the capture of the embassy in Iran.
Challenger was bad, 9/11 was worst.
I was at work, just after lunchtime in Germany - it was on the radio and we thought it was a horrid joke (like when the April Fools headline was the Seattle Space Needle collapsing). Work pretty much stopped and we all started watching CNN streaming on the computers. We all went home and starting packing for deployment, without anybody being told to pack...it just seemed like the thing to do. Course we didn't go anywhere for two years. It was just strange how we all just did that.

911, I remember for sure. I was in the mess room watching CNN I think it was, I thought the camera had swung upwards rather than the tower collapsed at first, but not for long.
Like meny I knew it was no accident from the start.

911 definately! I was in the middle of a nursing lab when someone came in and said that one of the towers was hit. I said "Osama Bin Ladin!!, that son of a ******!" No one took me seriously and everyone was trying to figure out if it was an accident. I knew NO pilot would make that mistake they'd go nose first to the ground before they let that happen. I was the only one in class who had served in the military and I knew I'd be getting the call to go. THEN the 2nd plane hit.... everyone turned to me at the same time and said "who did you say did this..." It was so eery... everyone left for the student center and noone could speak.

2) challenger disaster
3) VT masacre
4) (tie) dc sniper & columbia

I was in Iraq during Katrina and almost coming home, it didn't feel real at all otherwise that may have made the list.

..........anyone remember the Cuban Missile Crisis ?

I remember sitting in class at school and the teacher telling us that if the Russian ships didn't turn back that day, we probably wouldn't have have a home to go to back to......

Scary stuff......

Wow-The missle Crisis - How'd we miss that one? That was a frightful situation, especially at school age. I think that after the fact, when all the details came to light in the following years, it became even more frightening. I suspect we nearly bought the farm with that one. Its amazing how we little folk in all countries depend on the powerful for protection - when indeed, its the powerful that often pose the most danger.

Watching the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11 and watching the Challenger erupt are the two that seared themselves into my brain as the worst. I think watching Wlater Cronkite cry when he announced Kennedy was dead may have been the most disquieting. Hugo, Katrina and the Northridge earthquake rank up there in the "natural" disaster ranks.
Whoa, what a dreary thread...

JFK was before i was born, as was the Cubun Missile Crisis, but i have read a few books about that and that must go down as one of the scariest moments since WWII.

911 was truly horrifying, and even now when the tv shows the planes hitting the building it still sends shivers up my spine.

But, for me the worst news report i ever heard (or in this case) read. Was the storey of a little toddler being abducted by two 10 year olds (i think they were 10) and then the toddler being tortured and then killed. If i remember rightly this was in Liverpool England back in the eary 90's. Some of the reports from the court case will make any caring human cry.

Sometimes i dont think it is the act that makes that scares us as much as the storeys we here afterwards.

Recently i was in Oklahoma City. I paid a visit to the bomb site and they still have part of the tribute/merorial fence standing. Reading some of the tributes was extreemily sad and seeing the area where the children were killed in the day care center brought a tear to my eye.

Certainly watching the 2nd Plane hit the Towers on 9/11. My wife called about the first plane, but I wrote it off to a small plane, but then when I surfed the CNN site and saw it was a passenger jet, and then went into the Cantina at work to watch the second one hit... The rest of the day was pretty well shot, work-wise, and most everyone I know was glued to the internet or the TV watching the story unfold.

After that, the Columbia breakup (home watching the expected re-entry), the Challenger explosion (standing in line in the chow hall at Great Lakes Naval Station after boot camp)... But 9/11, unsurprisingly, sticks out the most in my mind.

911 played out over several hours, and I remember thinking when the first plane hit that it was probably a terrible accident (it has happened before). I was saddened but not shocked. I was listening on the radio when the announcers where were watching TV said the second plane had hit. Then I was shocked.

By the time the towers collapsed, I was emotionally spent and just numb about the whole thing.

The earthquake in Bam, Iran and the Tsunami in Thailand stand out because of the shear numbers of the dead and the scope of the destruction. You have to picture an entire football (whichever kind) stadium full of lives lost at once and even then the scale of it escapes you.

Here's the "b-list":

The OJ Simpson verdict.
The Waco standoff.
Heaven's Gate cult.

The Bradford Football Stadium disaster. If you havent seen the video footage of that....DON'T. It is horrible.

It is used a lot know by Fire Fighters in training seminars, and i think also in stadium design sessions on how not to design things.

How about this one !!!!!!


Pilot 'breakdown' diverts flight

An Air Canada flight made an emergency landing in Ireland after a pilot apparently suffered a mental breakdown.
A passenger said the pilot was carried from the plane shouting and swearing, saying he wanted to talk "to God".


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7217977.stm

Speaking of the JFK news...I was in the fifth grade and I'll never forget when another teacher ran into our classroom and walked up in front of the classroom where our teacher was conducting lessons and whispered into her ear this news. She gave out a yelp, and then ran over to the little AM radio sitting on this one desk against the wall, and as she turned it on said to our class with tears in her eyes, "Children, our President is dead. You unfortunately will remember this day for the rest of your lives." And then we all listened to the news reports coming over that radio.

(and, I was the "flag-monitor" that week in November, and so it was my duty to go lower the school's Stars and Stripes to half-staff)

Now, at the risk of being shot for treachery or something, so please excuse my complete ignorance here.

Was the shock of JFK assasination so overwhelming because JFK had been shot and killed or because the "President of the United States" had been shot.

What gives here. Was he a truly great man, or would you feel the same if Ronald Regan or Jimmy Carter or any previous President for that matter had been assasinated.

Again, excuse my ignorance if i am meant to know this, but i really dont get why JFK was held in such high esteem.

Well, besides the fact that he was the President, it was probably more the idea that a reasonably young man with a lot of promise(and an exceptional amount of that hard to define stuff called "Charisma") was who was gunned down.

(that's my take anyway...I mean look at all the press that Heath Ledger's death has received recently for some reason, and I can only surmise that it was basically for the same reason...his relative youth)