9/11 & Death Of Diana UK's Most Memorable Events

A groundbreaking national survey for BBC Radio 4, has found that the most common "flashbulb" memory among those polled are the events of 9/11. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales polled second and the assassination of JFK, third.

Radio 4 launched the largest ever national survey into the nation's personal memories in July 2006. The general public were asked to contribute three different types of memories: Earliest memories, self-defining memories and flashbulb memories.

Flashbulb memories are memories of public events that also have strong personal resonance, where the date and place can be named as well as where a person was and what they were doing at the time.

Over 10,000 were posted on bbc.co.uk/memory and Professor Martin Conway has been analysing the findings with his team at the University of Leeds.

Dr Mark Porter – one of the presenters who launched the survey last summer – announces the results today (Wednesday January 24) on BBC Radio 4 at 9am.

Throughout the day, on Radio 4, are a number of programmes exploring the fascinating subject of memory and discussing the survey results in more detail.

The survey also suggested women have earlier memories than men. One hypothesis for this is that the female brain may develop earlier than that of the male; another, that women and their mothers may be more likely to have conversations together in which they revisit and rehearse such memories.

Of the 10,000 memories received, 6672 were childhood memories and 1800 of these dated to before the age of two, with 700 before the age of one.

These 1800 preverbal memories are a fascinating finding, as scientific literature argues that it is not possible for adults to remember an episode from a time when they do not have language.

Mariella Frostrup will speak to many of the listeners who are adamant that they have memories from before they were 2-years-old (In My Pram I Remember at 11am). And she will be hearing the scientific arguments as to why preverbal memories are not believed to be possible.