Years from now, those who are gathered around TV sets, computer screens, radios or big-screen projectors to watch today’s inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, will have a simple answer to a momentous question:

Where we you when this history was made?

In today's super-fragmented media environment, little beyond American Idol and the Super Bowl can draw us together around TV's electronic hearth. Once upon a time, everyone could remember where they were when news broke that President Kennedy was shot or Saigon had fallen. These days, when even the selection of a vice president is announced by text message, that memory is gone, swallowed by technology's new ability to bring us instant reporting from just about anywhere to wherever.

Like the first moon landing was for one generation, Obama's inauguration may revive that feeling that comes when you know you're witnessing history.

Here are five other seminal television moments for today’s generation of TV watchers, developed with sizable input from entertainment Web page guru and Stuck in the '80s mastermind Steve Spears.

Where were you when these happened?

1. Space Shuttle Challenger explodes: In a blink, seven astronauts are erased and news is given a new subject to chew on for days. I was in my college newspaper's newsroom when it went down in 1986. I eventually saw the footage often enough I could draw it in my sleep.

2. The O.J. Simpson verdict: The former football star's 1995 acquittal for the murder of his ex-wife and her lover capped a continuously televised trial that had become a national soap opera and birthed the modern-day cable TV news punditry industry. I watched it in a newsroom in New Jersey, where mostly white co-workers were too uncomfortable to ask if I supported the verdict (I didn't).

3. The 9/11 attacks: Made for TV by occurring in the the morning newscasts on the East Coast, the 2001 attacks sparked five days of continuous coverage and serious scapegoating of Arabs. I remember sitting down to my desk with a cup of coffee as NBC was showing the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

4. Princess Diana’s funeral: A day of mourning for a celebrity royal who seemed to be killed by our own ceaseless fascination with her. Watched this one in the Times office so i could crank out a 25-inch analysis of the TV coverage. (Those were the days!)

5. The  Persian Gulf War: The first U.S. war televised live, this 1991 conflict helped create viewers' expectation that they would see every nook and cranny of modern warfare. I watched this one in the apartment of a fellow journalist in Pittsburgh, gathered there with other young journalists who weren't in need for news coverage but still wanted to band together to do . . . something.

Eventually, we went home and went to sleep.

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