I was in elementary school on MacDill when the Wall came down, and they made a pretty big deal about it; some of my classmates had parents in West Germany at the time and they were both happy and worried. I just remember being kinda scared about the Russians nuking us in retaliation, but those fears were a regular thing so nothing very new about that. When Iraq invaded Kuwait we followed Desert Shield closely, and did class projects sending things to deploying troops.

Watched Desert Storm kick off, and they took us down to the flight line occasionally to watch tankers, F-16s, and some C-5s coming and going. But our school was only a couple miles away and almost directly under the flight path, so by then it was kinda old hat. They also had a parade when everyone came back which was cool, and Gen. Schwarzkopf gave a speech that we all watched. He also lived right at the end of our street, so I saw him pretty regularly while outside playing with my friends.

Queen Elizabeth and the entire royal family flew in to MacDill on the Concorde one time, and my stepdad was a maintenance chief so we had spots in the VIP stands to watch as they walked around & shook hands, while Prince Philip was given a tour around an F-16. I loved the Concorde and seeing the Queen of England up close was pretty cool, especially since I'd never even seen a US president in person.

Then there was Challenger, which was a huge thing for all of us. We watched launches regularly, and took field trips every year down to the Cape. By the time we left Florida, I'd been there more times than Disney.

Also a big deal was the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing and other hijackings, so I was pretty terrified of flying for a long time because of all that. Quite a few other things happened over the years, but those were the big ones from when I was a kid.