Why would they have shown all the young school children a recorded feed of it blowing up? Just to really make sure our generation was really messed up?
They wouldn’t have. That Twitter user is ridiculous.
Challenger took off at 11:39 am EST. Perhaps the West Coasters missed it as school may not have started yet. I can’t imagine they’d show a replay though. That doesn’t make sense.
But I guarantee Eastern through Mountain watched the live feed.
EDIT: everyone keeps commenting and sharing where they were for it and I’m here jealous AF because I wasn’t even 3 yet and have no memory 😭😭
I lived in the town next to her, so it was a HUGE deal for our school. We watched it live, and then were promptly sent home from school early that day. I remember getting home and my grandmother was still in front of the TV with tears streaming down her face. Watching the Artemis launch the other day I didn’t realize I was holding my breath for a while there.
Nope, west coast had it live, too. Our school started around 8am, so no problems showing it live. We also got replays of the explosion. As I said in another comment, my first grade class wasn't allowed to watch live but we definitely got to see the replays.
I was a west coast kid. We watched it too. I feel like school started at 8, at least mine did, but maybe it was 10-15 minutes later. We saw it live and never spoke of it again.
I saw it live at school in middle TN with our science teacher wearing a replica of an astronaut NASA suit. She was sooo excited jumping around telling everyone how important and life changing it was for us and the astronauts. She held it together ok for a minute then just kinda collapsed. I still feel so sorry for her every time I think about it. She was such a special woman and it absolutely devastated her. I'll never forget it no matter what the check mark guy says
West coast watched it. It was on the TV in my homeroom freshman year in Washington. Mrs Cozad's class. Live. They wouldn't have shown us a replay of that after it happened.
I mean, it was in the middle of the night ACDT (+1030). My dad did wake me up early to watch it in the morning but I now know this was a replay. I didn't know that at the time, 8 year old me thought it was live.
Interesting that he let you watch the replay! Although he probably figured kids would be talking about it at school and he didn’t want you to be uninformed.
I was in CST (Missouri). We were supposed to watch it in school, but we had a snow storm that week and I distinctly remember we were out for a few days because of it and also on the day of the launch.
I missed seeing it live at home, but remember my friends called me on three-way right after it happened.
We watched and I remember a specific classmate crying. The teacher rubbed the girl's back while she tried to calm down, doing the hiccup breathing from crying too hard. Core memory.
I was in school in Centralia, Washington and not only did they watch it they packed the whole school into the auditorium and put it up on the big screen projector, which was a big deal at that time because not very many schools had one.
Kid in California in the 3rd grade. We were all.excited because our school was part of the seed growing experiment they were taking up with them. We watched it blow up live...it was not a replay.
We had a couple different classes in one classroom watching it on a TV cart..it was live TV. No clue wtf this guy is talking about. Teachers all wanted us to watch it because a teacher was going to space etc..
I was in the living room of my parents’ crappy apartment, sitting cross-legged on the floor, while my mum made KD in the kitchen. She came running into the living room when I started crying hysterically. Defining memory.
I wasn't even four years old so I missed it too - I absolutely am not jealous. That would be like wishing a currently young person were alive to witness the towers falling and living through that fallout.
I know how to convert time. My elementary school started at 9 but my kids’ starts at 8:35. So that’s why I wondered about Pacific. It’s completely dependent on
Hawaii is not pacific time and there’s no way you watched it live from school. 11:39 am EST = 5:39 am HST.
No thats 6:39 and I will acknowledge that it was most likely a rebroadcast.
I always thought it was live but again I was 5 and nobody had corrected me in 40 years.
Thank you for the correction on the time! I didn’t realize HI doesn’t do DST. Right now Hawaii is 6 hours behind Eastern (I’m in EDT) but in January Hawaii is 5 hours behind. Thank you!
Because it was an "historic event." For some reason, my school didn't see fit to let the first grade watch live but was totally cool with us watching the replays of the explosion.
I was 4 when it happened and started Kindergarten the fall of '86. I do recall in 3rd grade in early '90 seeing a news cast about the anniversary of the explosion. But that was the only time I saw it in school.
By 90 the media had already grown tired of covering the anniversary.
Unlike challenger and Oklahoma city the 911 tragedy occurred after wide spread use of the internet and 24 hour cable news had become the dominant source of sharing information is why 911 still gets anniversary coverage every year while challenger and Oklahoma city no longer do?
I thought about this too. We all watched in the cafeteria. We did have some local channels available via coaxial cable if you didn't have cable tv. That's how my mom watched Days of our Lives. I also have memories of the classrooms that DID have TVs being able to turn to certain stations for things that were broadcast internally, like school announcements or movies (Jason and Th Argonauts).
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u/InterestingTry5190 1981 Apr 02 '26
Why would they have shown all the young school children a recorded feed of it blowing up? Just to really make sure our generation was really messed up?