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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 March 2010
Some more or less ordinary memories
On the evening of March 1, 1986, I was sitting at my portable computer just before going to bed. I was entering the following brief description into a database, adhering to a daily routine I had started on January 1 of that year:
(1) When: 01.03.1986
What: Prime Minister murdered
Who: Olof Palme
Where: Stockholm
DetailQ: How many shots hit him?
DetailA: Two
Source: Radio news, later “Politiken” (newspaper), TV, other papers
ContextQ: What effects did it have for me?
ContextA: I skipped breakfast and was 15 min late to pick up Pia.
I was in the middle of the peaceful but tedious task of performing an experiment on my own memory. This terse record of a violent and quite upsetting event was part of the material that I would be probed about some months later by the computer and try to remember. Notice particularly that I included information on both the news itself and my personal circumstances, or context, when I first heard the news.
There were other, equally upsetting, events in the database that I recorded during the 6 months of this diary keeping. Just 2 months later, this was entered:
(2) When: 28.04.1986
What: Big nuclear accident, indicated by extremely radioactive cloud
Who: Soviet power plant
Where: Close to Kiev
DetailQ: Where was the cloud first registered?
DetailA: Sweden, 100 km north of Stockholm
Source: Radio news, later TV evening news
ContextQ: Where and when did I hear it first?
ContextA: At Pia's place just after work; she was home, ill.
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