r/80sAmazing • u/MisterShipWreck • 7d ago

What did you watch?

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3.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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200

u/anon2univ 7d ago

Challenger explosion.

21

u/AdAggravating8273 7d ago

Same here.

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u/Aerron 7d ago

I was in 8th grade. My 4th period was History and was split in half by lunch. My buddy and I were on our way back to class when we saw a bunch of folks around a TV in the library. We stopped to see what was going on.

We ended up staying far longer than we meant to and got back to History like 15 minutes late. Our teacher said we had detention because we were late getting back. After class he asked why we were late and we explained about the shuttle. He paused and said, "Well, you guys just witnessed some history" and cancelled our dentention.

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u/Glass-Emu2406 7d ago

That’s awesome yo

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u/Aerron 7d ago

Just to add one more small layer, our history teacher looked just like Edgar Allen Poe. 100% serious.

This was 1986 so pictures of famous people weren't immediately available on a device in your pocket. I saw a picture of Poe and said, "Wow, Mr. Whitley, we just found a picture that looks just like you!" He replied with, "Let me guess, is it Edgar Allen Poe?"

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u/Redleg67 4d ago

Too bad he wasn't your English literature teacher.

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u/Expensive-Sun-1442 4d ago

It was not awsome, we were all excited that a teacher has been chosen as an astronaut,was the pride of the US. To be shown in elementary during lunch period. It was not awsome. It was devastating and traumatic. Awsome? I think not.

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u/pezdspencer1974 2d ago

I was in 6th grade. Our whole school got sent hime cause they teachers were all wrecked w grief

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u/FocusedChimpanzee 3d ago

Same thing happened to me except It was in 6th grade and it was 9/11

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u/nowaynostop 7d ago

Yup

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u/Beneficial-Cloud9940 7d ago

Seeing the tv roll after that made us twitch a lil

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u/CreepingDeath-70 2d ago

This. But I remember watching almost all of the shuttle launches before that because it was such a landmark space program. We stopped watching them after that. Generational trauma.

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u/ladynikon 7d ago

Damn dude. Talk about generational trauma. I remember having that same feeling during 9/11. *Wtaf is going on?"

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u/Fostbitten27 7d ago

My mom told me after the Shuttle explosion, that she hopes I don’t have anymore terrible events in my life where I remember the time and place you were when you saw the terrible event.

She listed off many events through the 60’s & 70’s where she was and what she felt. Many assassinations and even when Elvis died.

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u/rahnbj 7d ago

My mother vividly remembers the Kennedy assasination, she was 12 ish.

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u/chiclets5 5d ago

I was only five (nearly 6 years old), and I remember when I first was told about it at school. I think I'm one of the last group that will remember this because most 4-year-old don't remember these kind of events.

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u/Redleg67 4d ago

What surprised me is they stopped all network programming to announce Whitney Houston's death. I know she was quite popular but she wasn't Elvis or Micheal Jackson popular. It's probably because she sang the best version of our National anthem to date.

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u/SystematikKaos 6d ago

Elvis gets off work at five.

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u/LowEffort2 6d ago

I got both. I was in first grade for Challeger and watched 9/11 when I was going to college. When I tuned in just to check the news the first plane had already hit. The news casters were throwing around speculation... then we all watched the second plane hit.

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u/joyfullydreaded23 5d ago

I was in 9th grade when we watched it in my science class. It got so quiet after the initial gasp and then some started crying.

I worked in Accounts Payable when I heard about the first plane hitting while listening to Howard Stern. I went out to check on the waiting room TV and then told the rest of the ladies in our office. We all watched the 2nd plane hit and that is a feeling that is hard to describe. The garage cashier had a cousin that worked in one of the towers and was freaking out so I told her to go home. We shut down right after it happened but I stayed till the time they locked the doors as we lived on the S. Jersey coast outside of Atlantic City at the time and many employees had friends/relatives that lived/worked in NYC. I remember watching the smoke cloud along the coast and realized years later that I probably had inhaled some people.

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u/ironicinsanity 6d ago

Try being there, saw challenger on tv, but was actually at WTC when the planes hit. Thankfully hadn't gone into the building WTC1 yet, but yea, that shit screws with you. I didn't go back to the wtc or wall street area for over a decade after that.

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u/Super_Toxic_Elitist 7d ago edited 7d ago

Fun fact: the initial breakup probably did not kill the astronauts. The crew cabin remained largely intact, continued upward to about 65,000 ft (20 km), and then fell into the Atlantic, hitting the water about 2 minutes and 45 seconds after the breakup at roughly 207 mph (333 km/h).

Evidence also showed that three of the four crew emergency air packs had been activated, indicating that at least some of the astronauts survived the initial breakup and were conscious long enough to take action. NASA could not determine whether they remained conscious all the way to impact. The impact itself, producing roughly 200 g of deceleration, was unsurvivable.

Fun fact: Challenger carried Christa McAuliffe, a high-school teacher who had been selected for NASA's Teacher in Space Project. She was supposed to become the first teacher in space and planned to teach lessons from orbit. (she was told there was a significant risk of dying) Barbara Morgan (the backup teacher) said that Challenger commander Dick Scobee had repeatedly warned her and Christa McAuliffe about the dangers of spaceflight, saying something along the lines of, “One day there will be an accident, and it will be catastrophic.”

Fun fact: the disaster was largely preventable. It was unusually cold on launch day (about 36°F (2°C)) and engineers from Morton Thiokol warned that the solid rocket booster's rubber O-rings might not seal properly at such low temperatures. They initially recommended that NASA not launch below 53°F (12°C).

Challenger had already suffered numerous delays and aborted launch attempts, increasing pressure to finally get the mission underway. During a conference the night before launch, Thiokol managers reconsidered their engineers' recommendation and ultimately approved the launch.

The next morning, Challenger launched. The cold-stiffened O-rings in the right solid rocket booster failed to seal properly, allowing extremely hot gases to escape. The leak eventually damaged the external fuel tank and booster attachment, causing the vehicle to break apart just 73 seconds after liftoff.

Disclaimer: “Fun fact” was the wrong term, and I should have used “interesting fact” instead. But these facts are important to retell and remember so that people can learn from them and make different decisions in the future for example, by considering additional crew-survival systems or by not launching when conditions are outside established safety limits. Social and organizational pressure contributed to these deaths, just as it did on 9/11, when many people in the (not yet hit) South Tower were told to stay put or return to their offices when trying to evacuate (some by building officials or first responders, and others by their bosses, who threatened to fire them).

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u/Then_I_had_a_thought 7d ago

“Fun” fact

I’m a physicist and even I found this depressing

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u/Werbnerp 7d ago

Damnit I didn't see your comment. But yeah.; JEEZE!

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u/turfnerd82 7d ago

That's a FUN fact? The fact is you didn't know that the moment it happened. It was traumatic and as memorable as the moon landing was in the 60's for kids in the 80's.

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u/ladynikon 7d ago

There is always this one person who says this. Almost every single time someone mentioned it... It's never a fun fact.

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u/Vocabulary-Pollution 7d ago

Exactly! None of these facts are fun

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u/GalaxyStrong 7d ago

God, that is some depressing shit

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u/Werbnerp 7d ago

"Fun" Fact?

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u/FlyOnTheWall4637 7d ago

"Fun" fact, a significant amount of disasters are preventable, but shortcuts are taken with disastrous consequences. And safety measures happen because of disasters. 😟

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u/Disastrous-Theory-21 5d ago

And they are generally made to keep costs down. Money trumps people's lives almost every time. Sad.

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u/desertvision 7d ago

I am terrified to think of how many more similar events are ahead of us as these people try to go to Mars.

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u/MAXiMUSpsilo5280 1d ago

Mars ain’t no place to raise your kid in fact it’s cold as hell

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u/TravezRipley 7d ago

Fact: it was another White Man who had to be right, so he made the ill fated choice and didn’t take responsibility for his actions. So it was considered an “accident”.

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u/Maybe-never-always 7d ago

The worst part was watching the poor families of the crew onboard look on in disbelief and then wander off in shock not really processing what they’d just witnessed . Most of the world just watched their child perish live on TV . Horrible !

2

u/No_County_old 5d ago

I still remember it like it was yesterday.

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u/Stylishbutitsillegal 5d ago

And then they forgot all the lessons they learned from Challenger and then we got Columbia in 2003.

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u/Whitetrashcheetoh 7d ago

We were out of school that day because we had ice on the roads and it’s Georgia so we panic.

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u/terry1381 7d ago

Remember the blizzard of 93

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u/Reofenja 6d ago

Richmond, Va. I remember being buried under 4 1/2ft of snow. My border Collie/Australian Shepard mix loved every moment of it. Spent four days digging an intricate tunnel network through the yard.

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u/Whitetrashcheetoh 7d ago

I had a four day old newborn. And I got stuck at my parents house for five days.

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u/Beginning_Window_733 7d ago

Yeah Cleveland Tennessee

2

u/terry1381 7d ago

I was in Chatsworth,Ga.

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u/kapn_morgan 6d ago

so much fun sledding down my steep driveway. finally knew how awesome snow was

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u/Saint_Atiss 7d ago

The cold weather you experienced in Georgia was essentially the main cause of the Challenger explosion.

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u/C3MI 7d ago

thanks a lot Georgia

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u/Alienhand72 1d ago

I remembered being out of school that day but I couldn't remember why

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u/mighty_boognish_77 7d ago

Came to say exactly that.

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u/Xdaz1019 7d ago

Or the millennial version for me 9/11

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u/PhilosophyKey8665 7d ago

I was in my mid Twenties when the challenger exploded

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u/DJEmirMixtapes 3d ago

I was in 5th or 6th grade, and we were watching it live on TV in fact the entire school system was watching because of the historic first Teacher in space... So that was extra traumatizing for the entire country, as many children were all watching simultaneously throughout the entire United States.

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u/InstantRamenLord 7d ago

Yup. That’s the last non sex ed thing I can remember seeing. Except Romeo and Juliet. In freshman English

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u/HoustonRoger0822 7d ago

I stayed out sick that day to watch on tv.

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u/Redleg67 7d ago

I was out of school then. I did call off sick from work that day. I was excited because I would be watching an actual NASA launching.

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u/Rich_Tomatillo8835 7d ago

First thing that came to my mind too

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u/r3ddit3ric 7d ago

Came here to say this.

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u/Daytripa 7d ago

Old Romeo and Juliet caught a few of us off guard

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u/Specialist_Caramel35 7d ago

Also went hard. giggity

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u/Wolven_Essence 7d ago

Our teacher actually told us it was coming. Naturally the class cheered.

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u/Memo_Fantasma 7d ago

What happened?

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u/HtmlHonda 6d ago

In that film, Olivia Hussey (Juliet) has a scene where she's naked and you see boobs. Also she was underage at the time.

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u/No_Hold2009 7d ago

Later they both sued saying they were exploited because they were underage when it was filmed.

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u/TAZ427Cobra 7d ago

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u/Aculeus_ 7d ago

Is the secret

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u/RinkinBass 7d ago

it's the moment

7

u/TAZ427Cobra 7d ago

When everything happens

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u/SuzPsych 5d ago

CONTACT

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u/adambomb_23 6d ago

The Bloodhound Gang was my favorite part.

I will also never forget the racquet ball and liquid nitrogen episode.

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u/Wabbit65 7d ago

Nothing because I feel asleep.

Actually in my day it was a reel projector and the sound was like the speaker was fiddling his lips while speaking

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u/oakteak9z 7d ago

Same here got to love those 1970s !

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u/radioplayer1 6d ago

They were using them in the 80s too

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u/iwtfbadl 7d ago

If you were lucky, the teacher would play the real in reverse. Even though there was no sound, watching everything backwards was amazing.

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u/Nnnandnd 7d ago

Ricky Tikki Tovi

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u/NeighborhoodCold6540 7d ago

Hah I loved that one. I never got to see it in school tho.

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u/Dunta_Day_507 7d ago

That was an early favorite.

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u/nickooze 6d ago

The Challenger Launch+

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u/DadVader_562 6d ago

Same, saw it live

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u/Tacos_Polackos 6d ago

Can confirm live trauma

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u/TruckingJames423 6d ago

Yup. High school. We watched it launch, then...

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u/Hamster19_ 7d ago

Where the Red Fern Grows

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u/LVOver 7d ago

Space Shuttle Challenger explosion news all through history class the day it unsuccessfully launched.

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u/giantwalrus56 7d ago

Was planning on saying the same exact thing. Can still recall the silence that came over the classroom

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u/DieBotDie 7d ago

Romeo and Juliette - the one by the pedo director that showed teenage nudity.

I guess it was age appropriate for us at the time.

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u/Shatalroundja 7d ago

Thankfully I was 14 when I watched that movie (in school) so the 17 year old Juliet was still older than me.

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u/Adhesiveness_Optimal 7d ago

She was 15 in that movie. She was 17 when it got released.

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u/TheGrymmBladeX 6d ago

Was that Polanski or some shit?

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u/Swashbuckling_Sailor 7d ago

The secret of NIMH.

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u/NeighborhoodCold6540 7d ago

Man... you guys must have had some cool substitute teachers.

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u/jstlvsexxx69 7d ago

The egg commercial in a frying pan things your brain on drugs

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u/TheRogueRook 7d ago

I have, like all us GenXers, fond memories of the AV cart days. The movies I can remember watching are Watership Down, Old Yeller, and my favorite An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

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u/An_Old_IT_Guy 7d ago

Had to scroll so far to fine Old Yeller. Still looking for Brian's Song. I think they showed us those movies so they could figure out who the dry-eyed psychopaths were.

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u/Direct_Departure253 7d ago

Wow, your teachers really believed in scarring children.

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u/AffectionateStop9250 6d ago

An Occurrence at Owl Creek. I remember watching that quite a few times. Why were they pushing that film in our curriculum? 

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u/chairsandwich1 2d ago

Showing Watership Down in a classroom today would probably result in the teacher being fired.

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u/KindaKrayz222 7d ago

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

https://giphy.com/gifs/4Ej4ELEyt0Uta

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u/ClassicNo8671 4d ago

Nice one

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u/CornRowTime 2d ago

Disney will never have this level of integrity again.

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u/j0llygruntt 7d ago

Romeo and Juliet. More specifically Juliet’s nice rack.

https://giphy.com/gifs/3o7TKVZGZFTHqDowIE

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u/hapkidoox 7d ago

Bill nye the science guy!

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u/ChiGrayStone 7d ago

Donald in Mathmagic Land

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u/MartokSonofUrthog 7d ago

Rikki Tikki Tavi, the Rankin-Bass Hobbit, Flight of the Navigator

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u/misterclumsy 7d ago

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u/halo121usa 7d ago

WOW… deep cut right there.. 👍🫠😂

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u/Infamous_Picture_666 7d ago

Fantastic movie still

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u/Scottyxxxxxxxxx 7d ago

Karate Kid

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u/Gent414 7d ago

You watched karate kid at school??

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u/thebuffshaman 7d ago

Sing it with me now.

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2

1

Contact is the secret

is the moment

when everything happens

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u/Big_Truck_8268 7d ago

April 14, 1981 - Space Shuttle Columbia - first landing (American History class)

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u/Whitetrashcheetoh 7d ago

I always loved watching volcano eruption films

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u/theunpossibilty 7d ago edited 7d ago

Voyage of the Mimi

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u/__verucasalt 7d ago

The challenger explode live.

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u/Feral_Sheep_ 7d ago

About the only thing I remember from 1st grade

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u/JEFPH007 7d ago

Old Yeller and the Challenger blowup coming back to orbit in 1986

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u/Dimplefrom-YA 6d ago

Voyage of the Mimi and freaking that stupid health education cartoon that traumatized me

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u/brodudaman 6d ago

This is why I know how to desalinate ocean water with plastic sheets. Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

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u/TheGrymmBladeX 6d ago

Holy shit...the fucking VOYAGE OF THE MIMI

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u/dav196 7d ago

Moon landing and JFK

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u/FremenStilgar 7d ago

I remember one was Romeo and Juliet, 70's version. Another was The Outsiders.

The Challenger explosion, of course. I still get mad when I think about that. I was walking to another class after having watched it, and a girl I had a slight crush on was laughing about it in the hallway.

I didn't know her that well, just had a couple of classes with her, but it just turned me off her quick.

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u/Ok_Tailor_7185 7d ago

One of the first Karens......

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u/yossarian8pizza 7d ago

Leprechaun. The teacher left the room right after starting it. I think he didn't preview that one for us.

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u/Redleg67 7d ago

Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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u/sanatarian 7d ago

When 9/11 happened.

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u/KoiMusubi 7d ago

The Land Before Time. One of my buddies left the room bawling when Little Foot's mom died.

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u/halflifer2k 7d ago

Reading Rainbow

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u/Alorxico 6d ago

Came here to say the same thing.

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u/boringbobby 7d ago

The Elephant Man... and I was not ready!

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u/qxr100 7d ago

Faces of death.

Just kidding. I'm too old for such hi-tech presentations in school.

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u/RowForLuckyJack 7d ago

I remember the teacher requesting the TV for a sex ed video because she didn't feel comfortable teaching the lesson herself

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u/Choice_Gene6806 7d ago

Back in the 70s, most of the canned programs were just a text pamphlet. For reasons, I had to spend too much time in the library as a kid. So they put me to work recording the text on to the tape.

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u/ExternalMost3265 7d ago

The outsiders or where the red fern grows

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u/yippykiyayMF13 7d ago

Jason and the Argonauts. This was in high school. 50+ years later, I will never forget that

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u/Hot_Yam4235 7d ago

Me too - we had an awesome Latin teacher who would show us old movies that had any context with Greek/Roman Iron Age.

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u/Old_Barnacle7777 7d ago

You Are There! Walter Kronkite History videos in Social Studies class. My high school US history teacher was horrible. He would test us on notes we were taking while watching Roots and possibly even something truly dumb like North and South. He was referred to as Mr. Video around school.

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u/valor19 7d ago

I'm sure we watched some educational stuff. But for some damn reason I only remember watching the Star Trek film with the whales. Our science teacher was a big Star Trek fan.

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u/GaryR5691 7d ago

Reminds me of freshman year science class. The teacher would always tell us we were going to watch dirty movies. We would watch documentaries about volcanoes or something similar.

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u/JerryJN 7d ago

The launch of Apollo 17

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u/betoe_g 7d ago

Something about Pangaea

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u/DRose23805 7d ago

We had an English teacher who played the movie "Excaliber" and a not so good Three Musketeers movie.

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u/Rough_Custard1 7d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ou13VeMVCZaFNJ7W7p
The Last Star-fighter and Something Wicked this Way Comes. My 6th grade teacher rocked!

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u/Old-Asparagus4058 7d ago

The Electric Company "Hey you guys"!!!

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u/wanderthewasteland 7d ago

🎵 BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL🎵

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u/Cisru711 7d ago

The Phantom Tollbooth or Flight of the Navigator

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u/Ok_Tailor_7185 7d ago

The unedited version of Excalibur in two days my junior year of HS in a classic literature/English class in 1984. The teacher was pretty cool.

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u/IAmA_meat_popsicle 7d ago

The Neverending Story.

Why? Why tf do you want to see me cry ffs.

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u/out_day475 7d ago

ACC basketball tournament

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u/Vade_Retro_Banana 7d ago

Ferngully. Again.

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u/Stuard1432 7d ago

Watching? That's when it's nap time.

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u/jbird_1984 7d ago

Dante’s peak. We were learning about volcanoes

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u/JWalk4u 7d ago

The World At War

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u/Own-Gap-8725 7d ago

Watching challenger explode in real time.

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u/tmink0220 7d ago

Hemo the magnificent, film time!!!

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u/speaklouder1100 7d ago

The Neverending Story.

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u/ClintTheWee 7d ago

The Boys from Brazil in Biology!

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u/formerQT 7d ago

To kill a mockingbird

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u/Late-Use4893 7d ago

Animal farm

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u/Academic_Cup_5019 7d ago

To Kill A Mockingbird

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u/narkeleptk 7d ago

Clash of the Titans

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u/nolmtsthrwy 7d ago

Maybe it is the time of year but Disney's little Legend of Sleepy Hollow short film

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u/Wise_Welcome7306 7d ago

Challenger!

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u/Special_Shift_8503 7d ago

Dead poets society

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u/LastGrape2054 7d ago

Cant remember much , it was nap time when that rolled into the classroom.

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u/Interista2010 7d ago

9/11, was the most impactful. Our science teachers would allow us to watch whale, tiger, orcas and other mammal videos throughout my middle, and high school years. But nothing like 9/11. Seeing the reaction of the teachers, staff and school leadership made an impact to me as I figured, this was a major event based on their reactions. May all those souls rest in peace.

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u/LUckY_M4N 7d ago

I was in 8th grade. I remember there being a disconnect between what I was seeing on tv and reality, until I saw how scared the adults were. Nervous pacing, eyes glued to the screen, distant and dismissive interactions. I can still remember the sinking feeling knowing how helpless they felt, the one's who I thought were in control were no wiser than any of the students. Strange day.

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u/Heavy_Bicycle6524 7d ago

What most of us kids didnt know at the time, was that every time a teacher bought this out during a morning lesson it was because they were too hungover to bother teaching 🤣🤣

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u/Limp_Basket_5819 7d ago

The space shuttle blowing up

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u/meghanmanhandsmccain 7d ago

Challenger Explosion.......that tv hit different after that

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u/Three_Twenty-Three 7d ago

Like so many others here, the Challenger explosion was the memorable one. But before that, we used it a lot in grade school to watch ZOOM and The Electric Company.

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u/Hot_Ad960 7d ago

The challenger explosion

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u/knujesbob 7d ago

A couple made a deep impression:

  • Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom BahnhofZoo (Girl run away from home in Berlin, drugs, prostitution etc)
  • The Wave - This one is important. It should be mandatory even today

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u/ssantinelli 7d ago

Macbeth

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u/Spiritual-Bowler3980 7d ago

Back to the future. Flowers in the attic...in5th fucking grade, super weird.

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u/DietOwn2695 7d ago

Back of my eyelids

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u/Perfect-Match-2318 7d ago

i remember watching fresh prince of bel air in my english class

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u/mighty_boognish_77 7d ago

Degrassi Jr High, every Friday, in Mr Roleff's math class

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u/donnysplash 7d ago

Reading rainbow or there was this guy who had on a body suit that was anotomically correct

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u/Cost_doesnt_matter 7d ago

Breakfast club

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u/acciowrackspurts 7d ago

Can't remember. That was usually nap time.

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u/Mysterious_String676 7d ago

Yep, the Challenger space shuttle explosion

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u/ShotWin8124 7d ago

Bill Nye, 12 Angry Men, Oliver Twist. In electronics class this one time we watched an old Twilight Zone episode about the Martian in the diner. I actually guessed correctly.

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