I’m fine with “occurred”. Because of causality the event had absolutely no impact on our local spacetime until those gravitational waves and photons showed up, regardless of how far back in time the event originated.

Another way to think about it: Because the photons and gravitational waves have no mass, no time occurred from their perspective between their origination point and arriving at earth.

I have no qualifications BTW. I just like physics. There’s a decent chance I’m wrong.

> On August 17, 2017, the signal from an event that occurred 130 million light-years away finally arrived here on Earth.