Where were you the morning of January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all 7 crew members, including teacher Christa McAuliffe?

The very cheap apartment I was living in (75.00 a month) had ice on the inside cinder block walls so a friend told me to come stay with her until the walls thawed.
So I was at her house watching TV when it happened. Neither of us said anything for a few moments because honestly, I really didn’t know what I was seeing. I think we realized it at the same time and just looked at each other with our mouths open.
Such a horrible tragedy.

on a nearby mountain, holding the detonator.

I was working at a temp agency (corporate travel agency) in the Accounting Department.

I was a few years out of high school and going to college part time and working for temp agency part time. I think I got about 7 dollars an hour, give or take.

It was a big shock and we were all gathered around the radio, and it was on the radio on the way home and on the news that night. It sounds antiquated today but that’s how we got our news then.

I was standing in my kitchen. The babysitter had just arrived, and I was about to go to work. She’d heard it on her car radio on the way over.

It isn’t as big as the Kennedy assassination in my memory, nor 9/11, but it’s big enough for one of those snapshots.

I was celebrating my thirty-second day of life on this earth, situated in an attic apartment in a NYC borough, and was blissfully unaware of any disaster.

On my way to the hospital where my Dad had had emergency bypass surgery.

I was working in a manhole that was pretty close to an apartment I used to live in. When I heard on the radio what happened, I walked down to a local grocery that I knew had a television. I stood at the counter for about an hour watching the news coverage.
I watched it during lunch (another extended break), and all that nights coverage.
I have always been a NASA geek, and I was devastated.

I was on my way to work when it exploded and heard about it when I arrived.

I was on vacation at home, it was 1985 vacation that was extended to 1986. I just added cable two month before, watched it on CNN live.

At an afternoon lecture on medieval economics at the University of Lund, Sweden

6th grade English. Some classes watched it happen live.

At work, watching while working. I believe that what came out of my mouth was “Oh Shit.”.

I was in third grade, watched the launch in class if I remember right.

In the fourth grade. I do remember right and we watched it on a tv they wheeled into the classroom.

Yes. In the student break room at school.

@Seek just made me feel really really old.

I was in my senior year in high school, 17 years old. I had just sat down in my second period English Literature class when another student came in and told us the news. He had seen it on the TV in the teacher’s lounge. The teacher, Mr. Davis, was late. When we were all seated and he came in he confirmed what happened. Knowing him, I’m sure he had some wise and comforting words for us that probably ended on a uplifting and positive note, but I can’t really remember what he said. We were a bit upset, but had the day of classes to get through. It wasn’t until I saw the coverage on the news that night that it really hit me what happened. I was really worried about what the astronauts felt before they died, if they died instantly or if they suffered.

I have no recall, saw it on the news later is all I remember.

I was -8 years old.

Waiting for a doctor’s appointment at Bethesda Naval Hospital. A person sitting next to me knew one of the astronauts through a friend if I remember correctly.

My husband had missed class that day and slept through it. It happened during his trigonometry class. His teacher, Mr. LeCount, had been in the running to be on board. Jason was told that Mr LeCount just walked out of class.

I think it was lunch time in my fourth grade class. As I often did, I forgot my lunch box in my locker and had to run back for it. From the hall, I could hear that my teachers were in the class room, listening to the radio news. I knew something was strange. I came close to the door and saw them sitting very close together. Mrs. Hanchey was crying.

On my way to work, to substitute teach in a 4th grade classroom to a bunch of kids I’d never met before, heartbroken, wondering how I was going to deal with the questions to come.

I was also a NASA geek from the beginning. I was renting a room from a woman who happened to be a schoolteacher, and had more than a passing resemblance to Christa McAuliffe.

I wouldn’t be born for another seven years. I would grow up with things and places named after Challenger or its crew members, having no idea what had happened until early elementary school. One day I would ask why one of those places had its name, and receive the story. . . I remember feeling sickly, imagining the crew in the fire. I remember my stomach feeling heavy and stone-like. I remember looking around my little world and realizing the significance of all these names I had grown up thinking were only names. . . The event itself was always sort of obscure, though—hazy. Reading all these stories, so many people in so many different situations affected by the event, somehow makes it real.

That was my sophomore year in high school. I was in school, but I don’t remember the exact moment.

Outdoors looking east.

Shuttle launches were visible from my hometown of Sarasota FL.

I was in kindergarten. One of those who died was from my town (or had some other connection to it). Our class went outside and looked up at the sky and had a (very long) moment of silence.

I didn’t really understand much other than the emotional tone of the day, which was very sad.

I was working as a graphic artist, paste up, layout, and proofer for camera-ready advertising for covers of a business magazine and all it’s ads. I was under a deadline and concentrating so hard on the booth exposure cameras- to shrink print to fit a detailed ad. Any screw-ups – $$$.. One did not screw up.
One of my coworkers shouted down the hall for all to come into the boss’s office and see what was on his television. My friend opened the dark room door :| and had to drag me out to go see.
The clouds had not even dissipated from that caterpillar with antennas shape.
I remember on the way saying quietly that-No, there’s been a mistake, they must be speaking of the horrible Apollo fire with Gus Grissham. There’s no way.
The impact on me was stunning. These Shuttle missions were safer than the pure rockets of earlier flights! Then they kept showing the audience with the class of McAullife’s kids and her parents horrified looks. All I could think was that please let them have been lost in an instant. Please have made death instantaneous. No suffering.
I was trashed. I felt bad for Judith Resnick. Her second flight on a Shuttle- a brilliant person. She, Onizucca, and pilot Smith were the only ones who reallized what was happening. They activated their oxygen. They were the ones that were still alive for the descent and realized the deadliest part was moments away in descent.

I was in the pass-through of the nurses’ station in a family practice clinic when I heard.

@Yetanotheruser You mean she was Christa McAuliffe?

No, but she looked very much like her.

I was not alive.