I have a childhood memory of my parents and grandparents huddled around the TV watching coverage of the how the USSR was dissolving, so I guess it was around Christmas 1991. I kept trying to get my dad to look at a toy or something, then he said something like "not now, this is important." I asked "what is it?"

He said something like "This means there's not gonna be fighting in the world anymore. All the Russians are dying." And for years I literally thought America had stopped an alien invasion or something (I was a dumb kid and had no idea what the USSR was until I was like 10)