There’s no doubt that since the advent of television, certain events in American history have been burned into the nation's collective memory because of their mass availability, their tragic results, and the fact that they unfolded live right before our eyes.
If you were a school-aged kid on January 28, 1986, chances are you remember exactly where you were and what you felt that day.
It was supposed to be a revitalizing triumph for NASA to make people excited about space exploration again after over a decade of fading interest and diminishing publicity with each subsequent shuttle launch.
Among the seven astronauts slated for a trip to space about the Challenger space shuttle was a regular citizen, a schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe, who was supposed to lead a groundbreaking educational experiment and teach lessons from space.
Which is why classrooms across the country had their students gather around a television set to watch the shuttle blast out of Earth’s atmosphere and into the great beyond. And that’s why an entire generation of kids bore witness to absolute tragedy.
The Challenger never made it to space because it exploded shortly after launch, killing all seven people aboard, including McAuliffe, right in front of millions of American schoolchildren. American astronauts were killed in flight for the first time since manned missions began in 1961.
“The Challenger disaster seems fated for a place beside the Kennedy assassination in the nation’s memory. People will always remember where they were and what they were doing, and the catastrophe will shape the thoughts and lives of the millions watching,” wrote USA Today the day after the explosion, and for the kids who watched it live that January morning, that statement has sadly more than likely held true.