posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mitchy at 07:56pm on 14/11/2004
mitchy at 07:56pm on 14/11/2004....that I will remember for the rest of my life. Images used are the closest to the ones used on the front pages I can find.
1) The Space Shuttle Columbia landing safely back at base after its first flight, 14th April 1981. It was the most awesome photo of the shuttle gliding down to the runway, the wheels reaching down towards the earth. Beautiful shot. I kept that picture for years but lost it and I've failed to find a good pic since :(
2) Tiananmen Square Massacre 4th June 1989. One lone student defying a tank.
3) The Dunblane massacre, 13th March 1996. One huge front page picture that was clearly a school photo - teacher and infants in smiling rows. And the headline "DEAD". Brrrr. 16 children and one teacher was killed.
4) The Berlin Wall falls. 10th November 1989. 'Nuff said.
5) The Hillsborough Disaster 15th April 1989. Being a football fan, this one resonated with me then but I think it struck everyone. Young and old, just wanting to watch their team play a football match, crushed up against a fence, struggling to breathe, dying. The worst pictures of this tragedy are no longer used, and rightly so, so this pic is simply a tribute to the 96 people who died.
6) Space Shuttle Challenger explodes on liftoff. 28th January 1986. Damn. I saw the memorial at Arlington Cemetary a few years back and I'm not ashamed to admit I got misty eyed. You didn't have to be American to feel that loss anymore than you had to be a Brit to understand Diana's loss.
7) The Horseguards Parade bomb. 29th July 1982. Two bombs planted by the Provisional IRA go off at Knightsbridge and Regent's Park, London, killing eight soldiers. As a mounted detachment travels through Hyde Park on its way to change the guard at Horse Guards Parade the first bomb goes off killing two guardsmen and injuring seventeen civilians onlookers. Seven army horses are also killed. Two hours later a bomb explodes under the band stand in Regent's Park killing six bandsmen and injuring twenty four. The pictures of the carnage and the descriptions of the nail bombs made me as angry as I've ever been.
8) "And the soldiers fired into the air" - 19th March 1988, two British soldiers g0t lost and blundered into the middle of an IRA funeral cortège. They were dragged from their cars, beaten by an lynch mob and subsequently killed. Although armed, they fired over the heads of the crowd, not wanting to kill civilians. The real horror is this was seen on camera as the funeral was being covered but the army and authorities didn't dare mount a rescue for fear it would start a massacre. So they had to stand and watch as the soldiers were stripped, beaten, shot and left in the dirt. There's an associated image, one I tried to find and couldn't, of a priest kneeling by the body, desperately trying to give the man CPR. He was Irish and had been leading the service, but he didn't care, he tried to save the soldier's life. Futile but at least he did something.
9) "This was the day someone didn't want me to see." Margaret Thatcher, October 1984, at a church service after the Brighton bombing. Love her or loathe her, you would have to be inhuman not to have felt for her after the bombing. The picture was a close up head shot and a single tear was visible on her face. The words and the picture really moved me then and it's stayed with me ever since.
10) PC Yvonne Fletcher's hat - 17th April 1984. The policewoman was shot and killed outside the Libyan embassy. Her hat lying on the pavement in mute testimony to her loss enraged the entire country.
Criteria for choice: Something that gave me chills or goosebumps or both. The image had to have been seared into my eyeballs.
Lots of exceptions here - 9/11 being the most obvious, but that was a TV event for me, not a newspaper one. Princess Diana's death/funeral is another major omission but frankly, there are too many images to choose from and, again, it was more of a TV event for me.
Boy, I had to work hard for this one :)
1) The Space Shuttle Columbia landing safely back at base after its first flight, 14th April 1981. It was the most awesome photo of the shuttle gliding down to the runway, the wheels reaching down towards the earth. Beautiful shot. I kept that picture for years but lost it and I've failed to find a good pic since :(
2) Tiananmen Square Massacre 4th June 1989. One lone student defying a tank.
3) The Dunblane massacre, 13th March 1996. One huge front page picture that was clearly a school photo - teacher and infants in smiling rows. And the headline "DEAD". Brrrr. 16 children and one teacher was killed.
4) The Berlin Wall falls. 10th November 1989. 'Nuff said.
5) The Hillsborough Disaster 15th April 1989. Being a football fan, this one resonated with me then but I think it struck everyone. Young and old, just wanting to watch their team play a football match, crushed up against a fence, struggling to breathe, dying. The worst pictures of this tragedy are no longer used, and rightly so, so this pic is simply a tribute to the 96 people who died.
6) Space Shuttle Challenger explodes on liftoff. 28th January 1986. Damn. I saw the memorial at Arlington Cemetary a few years back and I'm not ashamed to admit I got misty eyed. You didn't have to be American to feel that loss anymore than you had to be a Brit to understand Diana's loss.
7) The Horseguards Parade bomb. 29th July 1982. Two bombs planted by the Provisional IRA go off at Knightsbridge and Regent's Park, London, killing eight soldiers. As a mounted detachment travels through Hyde Park on its way to change the guard at Horse Guards Parade the first bomb goes off killing two guardsmen and injuring seventeen civilians onlookers. Seven army horses are also killed. Two hours later a bomb explodes under the band stand in Regent's Park killing six bandsmen and injuring twenty four. The pictures of the carnage and the descriptions of the nail bombs made me as angry as I've ever been.
8) "And the soldiers fired into the air" - 19th March 1988, two British soldiers g0t lost and blundered into the middle of an IRA funeral cortège. They were dragged from their cars, beaten by an lynch mob and subsequently killed. Although armed, they fired over the heads of the crowd, not wanting to kill civilians. The real horror is this was seen on camera as the funeral was being covered but the army and authorities didn't dare mount a rescue for fear it would start a massacre. So they had to stand and watch as the soldiers were stripped, beaten, shot and left in the dirt. There's an associated image, one I tried to find and couldn't, of a priest kneeling by the body, desperately trying to give the man CPR. He was Irish and had been leading the service, but he didn't care, he tried to save the soldier's life. Futile but at least he did something.
9) "This was the day someone didn't want me to see." Margaret Thatcher, October 1984, at a church service after the Brighton bombing. Love her or loathe her, you would have to be inhuman not to have felt for her after the bombing. The picture was a close up head shot and a single tear was visible on her face. The words and the picture really moved me then and it's stayed with me ever since.
10) PC Yvonne Fletcher's hat - 17th April 1984. The policewoman was shot and killed outside the Libyan embassy. Her hat lying on the pavement in mute testimony to her loss enraged the entire country.
Criteria for choice: Something that gave me chills or goosebumps or both. The image had to have been seared into my eyeballs.
Lots of exceptions here - 9/11 being the most obvious, but that was a TV event for me, not a newspaper one. Princess Diana's death/funeral is another major omission but frankly, there are too many images to choose from and, again, it was more of a TV event for me.
Boy, I had to work hard for this one :)
contemplative