The first five news events I actually remember (and my corresponding ages) were:

  1. 1986-01-28: Challenger explosion (6 years, 1 month)
  2. 1986-02-09: Halley's Comet passes Earth (6 years, 2 months)
  3. 1986-10-27: Mets win the World Series (6 years, 10 months)
  4. 1987-10-19: Stock market crash on Black Monday (7 years, 10 months)
  5. 1988-11-08: Bush defeats Dukakis (8 years, 10 months)

One of the most interesting things I learned while looking up these events is how close together the Challenger disaster and the Halley’s Comet perihelion were. In fact, the Shuttle mission (STS-51-L) and the following scheduled mission (STS-61-E) had apparently been scheduled to observe the comet up close. In my mind, those two events were far apart. Along the same lines, the Mets won the World Series just a couple of months after my family moved to Connecticut, but somehow I suddenly became a Mets fan.