Editing 2174: First News Memory

The following is a breakdown of the memories given by the characters, in typical xkcd fashion:

Four people are standing around: [[Ponytail]], [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], and [[Hairy]].

[[Ponytail]] gets the ball rolling by posing the question.

[[Cueball]] recalls the election coverage from the year 1988. As Randall lives in the US, this is probably the {{w|1988 United States presidential election|1988 US presidential election}} in which George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. [[Megan]] recalls {{w|Berlin_Wall#Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall|the removal of the Berlin wall}}, which began in 1989.

Four people are standing around: [[Megan]], [[Hairy]], [[White Hat]], and [[Black Hat]].

[[Hairy]] recalls the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster|''Challenger'' explosion}}, which occurred in 1986. Many schools allowed teachers to bring a television to the classroom to show their students the launch, sadly unaware of the impending disaster the children would witness. However, Hairy remembers watching the footage in 1995, so Hairy's teacher was knowingly showing the students recorded footage of a disaster. Presumably, showing a number of young schoolchildren a traumatizing event led to the teacher's dismissal.

[[White Hat]] says that his first news memory was about the 2016 election (presumably the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|2016 US presidential election}}), which is only three years prior to the publication date of this comic. As he is in his thirties, this implies that he spent most of his life not paying attention to the news or has amnesia.

[[Black Hat]]'s first sentence is normal in the context of the question, albeit making him older than the others. Given only the sentence 'we landed on the moon,' the 'we' is inferred to be 'the United States of America' or 'the human race.' The first {{w|moon landing}} occurred on July 20, 1969.

However, Black Hat goes on to say that 'my second memory is my mom telling us we were moving to Earth instead, to blend in with the humans.' This gives a completely different meaning to his first memory, as it is now implied that Black Hat is a humanoid alien who moved to the Moon, but whose mother then decided to move to Earth. Whether any news coverage resulted is unclear. [[Hairbun]] then remarks that this revelation explains Black Hat's odd (and usually disruptive) behavior. It is unclear whether Black Hat is telling the truth, but knowing Black Hat, and considering the fact that this would be unlikely to receive news coverage, he is likely intentionally trying to unnerve others.  Another possibility is that Black Hat was the youthful victim of a prank by his own mother, with Hairbun's comment implying that such an upbringing accounts for the trollish aspects of Black Hat's character in the present day.

The title text gives [http://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-of-dramatic-events-arent-as-accurate-as-believed-64838 the claim] that {{w|Flashbulb memory|flashbulb memories}} of big events can be unreliable. Randall (or another character in the comic, possibly Hairbun) denies this claim, claiming to remember watching on CNN as the ''Challenger'' spacecraft crashed into the Berlin Wall. This is an inaccurate memory of these two events, as the ''Challenger'' explosion occurred in 1986 over the Atlantic Ocean, just east of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and did not occur near the Berlin Wall (in Berlin, Germany). Also, the Berlin Wall was intentionally demolished starting in 1989; it was not damaged by a space shuttle. It is possible that this memory also conflates those events with those of the {{w|September 11 attacks}} since the latter ''did'' involve three winged craft crashing into and destroying landmark structures.