"Sit down and watch" ....
my father told this to me in 1963. I asked "why?"
He said, "Because this is history."
Dad and Mom where watching the televised funeral of our recently assassinated President, J.F. Kennedy.
I sat and watched for a short time, looking for my escape from something I could never understand, being a very young age. I do remember the procession down Pennsylvania Ave.
Mrs. Kennedy instructed chief usher J.B. West to follow the protocol and details of Lincoln's 1865 state funeral for her husband. Kennedy's remains were taken to the center of the East Room and set upon the same catafalque used at Lincoln's funeral. On the twenty-third various officials and heads of state were received and viewed the flag-draped coffin. The public was not admitted. The following day the coffin was taken to the Capitol rotunda. More than 250,000 people filed past Kennedy's flag-draped coffin. On November 25, the day of the funeral, a horse-drawn caisson carried the casket down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. There Mrs. Kennedy and the mourners, official and personal, waited. They walked with the procession—military escort, band, and the symbolic rider less horse with boots reversed in the stirrups—eight blocks to St. Matthew's Cathedral, where the funeral service was held. After the service, the caisson carried the president's remains to their final resting place in Arlington Memorial Cemetery.
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/john-f-kennedy-funeral
In 1969 my father again said ... "Sit down and watch history being made."
I did watch and was totally captivated. It was summer. We kids ran out to look at the Moon to see if we could see the astronauts.
It is only seven months since NASA's made a bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the way to the moon on the first manned flight of the massive Saturn V rocket.
Now, on the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sit atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The three-stage 363-foot rocket will use its 7.5 million pounds of thrust to propel them into space and into history.
At 9:32 a.m. EDT, the engines fire and Apollo 11 clears the tower. About 12 minutes later, the crew is in Earth orbit. (› Play Audio)
After one and a half orbits, Apollo 11 gets a "go" for what mission controllers call "Translunar Injection" - in other words, it's time to head for the moon. Three days later the crew is in lunar orbit. A day after that, Armstrong and Aldrin climb into the lunar module Eagle and begin the descent, while Collins orbits in the command module Columbia. (› View Flash Feature)
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html
Never give up on the young. Inspire them, educate them, let them experience life.
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