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July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man from Earth to walk on the moon.<\/p>\n
This is one of those of-course-I-remember dates to people of a certain age. Ask an old fart where they were November 22 1963, or when we landed on the moon, it’s like “where were you on 9\/11?” Some days are just seared into the national consciousness.<\/p>\n
When it comes time to set Eagle<\/i> down in the Sea of Tranquility, Armstrong improvises, manually piloting the ship past an area littered with boulders. During the final seconds of descent, Eagle’s<\/i> computer is sounding alarms.<\/p>\n
It turns out to be a simple case of the computer trying to do too many things at once, but as Aldrin will later point out, “unfortunately it came up when we did not want to be trying to solve these particular problems.”<\/p>\n
When the lunar module lands at 4:17 p.m EDT, only 30 seconds of fuel remain. Armstrong radios “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Mission control erupts in celebration as the tension breaks, and a controller tells the crew “You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we’re breathing again.” (\u203a\u00a0Play Audio<\/a>)<\/p>\n
Armstrong will later confirm that landing was his biggest concern, saying “the unknowns were rampant,” and “there were just a thousand things to worry about.”<\/p>\n
At 10:56 p.m. EDT Armstrong is ready to plant the first human foot on another world. With more than half a billion people watching on television, he climbs down the ladder and proclaims: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” (\u203a\u00a0Play Audio<\/a>)<\/p>\n
Aldrin joins him shortly, and offers a simple but powerful description of the lunar surface: “magnificent desolation.” They explore the surface for two and a half hours, collecting samples and taking photographs.<\/p>\n
They leave behind an American flag, a patch honoring the fallen Apollo 1 crew, and a plaque<\/a> on one of Eagle’s<\/i> legs. It reads, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![plaque<\/a> on one of Eagle’s<\/i> legs. It reads, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\nNASA.gov<\/a><\/p>\nI won’t dignify the supposed controversy that it was all staged, that Buzz Aldrin supposedly admitted it – I’ll save that for another column on dumb-ass things that people believe in spite of the facts as soon as I cut it down from its current 47-volume length. However, I will also remember the greatest late-night host ever with a line Johnny used, I believe the year after, on his show. Don’t have a copy to hand, but I saw it live and remember it well:<\/p>\n“You want to know who I think should run for President? I’ll tell you who… Neil Armstrong. You want to know why? Integrity. I mean, here’s a guy who could have been the richest guy on the planet. Really. All he had to say was one thing and he would have been swimming in more money than you can imagine, but he didn’t. “One small step for Man, one giant leap for mankind. Man! I sure could use a Coke.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man from Earth to walk on the … 1969 Moon landing anniversary<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,442,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-america","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/62298main_plaque_link.jpg\"){kind=link}