Man on the Moon, July 20, 1969 – Where were you?
I was at summer camp. The counselors gathered us all in the rec hall in front of a black and white TV. They told us we would remember this forever. I do.
On July 20, 1969, for the first time a man set foot on the moon.
"The Eagle has landed."
On July 20, 1969 — 55 years ago today — #Apollo11 touched down on the Moon. pic.twitter.com/rLoZP5vWuS
— NASA (@NASA) July 20, 2024
I was at summer camp. The counselors gathered us all in the rec hall in front of a black and white TV. They told us we would remember this forever. I do.
Here was the timeline in Eastern time:
July 20, 1969 – At 1:47 p.m. EDT Armstrong and Aldrin, in the lunar module Eagle, separate from the command module. Collins remains onboard the Columbia orbiting the moon.
– 4:17 p.m. EDT – The Eagle lands.
– 4:18 p.m. EDT – “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong reports. When the lunar module lands on the moon’s surface at the Sea of Tranquility, it has less than 40 seconds of fuel left.
– 10:56 p.m. EDT – Armstrong says, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he becomes the first human to set foot on the moon.
– 11:15 p.m. EDT (approx.) – Buzz Aldrin joins Armstrong on the moon. The men read from a plaque signed by the three crew members and the president, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
– 11:48 p.m. EDT – President Nixon speaks to Armstrong and Aldrin via radio from the Oval Office, “(it) certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made.” They speak for two minutes and the call is televised on both ends.
– Armstrong and Aldrin spend over two hours collecting moon rock samples and data, and spend the night on board the Eagle.
My memory is that we were brought in late in the evening, so it must have been for the exit from the capsule and first step on the moon.
Despite all the turmoil in the nation at the time, we were able to accomplish great things.
Maybe we can make America accomplish great things, again?
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I was 13 years old and sitting in our family living room. My parents, pretty strict when it came to bedtimes, let us all sit up and watch. Still remember.
LOL! Same Here! But my dad was happy to let us stay up till the station went off the air.
Brand new Zenith 19″ B/W TV.
I truly miss those days, days of wonder and only one satellite circling the planet at the time.
Good night Chet, Good Night David…
We still went to bed at the normal time (7pm!), but my father came in, woke us up, and dragged us out to the TV to watch Armstrong take the first step onto the moon’s surface, and told us we’d probably remember it forever. He was right.
Same here! I was just about to turn 5, but have the distinct memory of my dad getting me and my brother awake to watch.
Sitting in front of the black & white tv watching Walter Cronkite describe the event.
I was turning 16 the next day, when it was originally supposed to happen, and very disappointed my birthday was no longer going to be the date of one of mankind’s greatest achievements.
I was at a summer camp. The camp director invited us kids to the front yard of his house. He trotted out his black and white TV to his front yard, running the cord into his house. It was in the evening with a nice summer breeze.
I was at home watching it on TV. I however was one of the testing engineers on the Lunar Module (LM) primary guidance and control system (PGNS) for the Lunar Module at Kennedy Space Center which made it to the moon. As soon as the Saturn V cleared the tower control was turned over to Houston. That split in control was probably a political move by LBJ. I later went back to college for graduate school. If I had not been reading this post I would have not remember this date.
PS: Who remember Michael Collins?
Listen to Jethro Tull’s 1970 album “Benefit”…the track, “For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me”.
I was 11 years old and glued to our B&W TV with the flickering picture. Was in front of it that afternoon and all evening.
A most fitting ode to Collins..Benefit was Tull’s best album.
I was 13-years old. My parents’ best friend from university and his family were here watching the black-and-white TV with us. A magical and captivating experience.
Not born yet.
Same.
I was 20. In a campground in Linz Austria. There were two TVs set up in a picnic shelter (color!!!) and almost everyone was watching. I didn’t really care then. Still don’t, really. Call me any name you want.
Some bears just can’t look past the end of their snout. 😉
I wa ms at my bf’s lake house with his family, we were swimming, a bunch of us, just graduated HS
His parents had a little black and white tv out near the lake and yelled at us to come on in to watch
I was the only one who came in from the lake
And always so glad I did
I never doubted it was real, but just recently I watched a Joe Rogan interview with Bart Sibrel, and I got to tell you, it makes you question the validity of what we saw .
We haven’t been able to get back, over 60 years… hmmm
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2141-bart-sibrel/id360084272?i=1000653603657
Haven’t tried.
Musk has said about our moon voyages and inability to come close as
Aug 24, 2017 — How come we don’t have the technology to go to the moon anymore, as Elon Musk has saiD
Also said it was an anomaly
It’s not they we ‘haven’t been able’ to get back. It’s that they aren’t actually TRYING.
Oh sure, there’s vague nonsense about NASA ‘working on it’. They aren’t a serious organization and haven’t had the ability to do anything meaningful for decades at this point.
And there’s no interest in it because there’s zero reason to GO back. The only reason to go back to the moon, is to use it as a stepping stone to go somewhere else.
Musk, on the other hand, is very, VERY focused on actually getting to Mars, which is why SpaceX is actually doing the things that NASA claimed it wanted to do.
It’s not that hard, it just requires money, time, and actual interest in accomplishing the goal, instead of just sucking government money.
Not that hard lol
Just getting through the radiation barrier
With aluminum foil apparently
If you believe
They went 6 times. All of the OMG MOON LANDING WAS FAKED morons seem to want to ignore that inconvenient fact that hey went SIX DIFFERENT TIMES, and that Russia had an extreme interest in proving that it was fake, and they were forced to admit it was real.
Not to mention you can literally SEE the stuff left on the surface of the moon with a sufficiently powerful and focused telescope.
“Moon landings were fake” are some of the stupidest mouth breathers in existence, right up there with the flat earthers.
I use to think that and I’m not saying I believe not was fake, but there is compelling information, just like the murder of JFK and the magic bullet
Are you serious? You can see the items left behind with a good telescope?!?! Wowser!
So here is my thing. Watergate. Maybe 4 people knew Nixon was involved and they could not keep it secret. But the moon landings, the film crew, astronauts, that whole room full of people in Houston, All the US radar operators, all the Cuban and Russian radar operators, a good number of people in the ships in the Navy Flotilla that picked them up, so somewhere around 50 thousand people or more. And yet 55 yrs later none of them have offered proof it was fake. If you think the government can keep a secret that big for that long I got a bridge to sell you.
The Van Allen Belts are not “barriers” at all. Navigating through them turned out to be a fairly straightforward affair.
As to the “foil”. Keeping things lightweight was absolutely critical and they didn’t use any more protective coatings, coverings, and shielding than absolutely necessary. Specifically, In many places on the LEM lander, a thin mylar foil outer covering was all that was needed. Every pound counted.
These aren’t “beliefs”. They are well documented and understood facts.
Sibrel is an idiot who has been debunked so many times it’s not funny
Another reason the “faked moon landing” people are morons, is that the technology to fake it did not even exist, and inventing it would have been harder and more expensive than actually going.
I was 11 years in the making.
Lol! I love that was downvoted for posting I was born in 1980. LI is the best.
Down-tickers just have to down-tick.
To think, this was the end of an era of the nuclear family and the start of the left taking over the country. Feminism was on the rise. By left, I include half the GOP.
Thank God We Have Trump to Unwind the damage of decades, hopefully turning us into a smaller less intrusive govt.
my brother was home from college so all the children were back home–we were living in the big house my folks built on a sort of cul de sac in the older part of austin–watching on black & white tv as walter narrated the events–shortly after the landing itself we went outside and into the street–all the neighbors from about a block around were standing outside looking up at the moon–” can you believe it ? ” and “simply incredible !”
we (the USA) had made the trip mankind had dreamed of for over two million years–an achievement for the ages–humbled but proud at the same time
do you remember seeing the huge screens all over the world? england, france, spain, brazil, taiwan, hong kong and the ones all over our country in NY, LA, Boston, Chicago, Denver, everywhere–lord, what a moment for all of us
Think about slide rules being the primary method of putting us on the moon. A friend who was a chemist for Dow was issued a new on periodically, in 1963 he gave me a 10″,
T he next year a 20″ mahogany K&E. I used it to design a rocket made from steel tubing, 2.5″ x 60″ zinc-sulfur solid propellent & a transistor potted telemetry system. The rocket worked great, but my trying to use both amplitude modulation with FM did not work very well.
I was 19 at the time of the moon landing, and gun ho to work for NASA. Then they started laying off and lots of engineers were scraping by pumping gas.
So I started a business, only to be laid low by the 1972 recession.
Yeah, I told my Dad when I was 10, I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. This was in 1968. He advised me against it, because he said the business was too cyclical, the jobs came and went. So, I didn’t.
We were all in the den downstairs watching it on t.v. The whole family. Just amazing….
I learned that lesson during the recession, switched to medical instrumentation, but I hated the politics of the business. Wanting a recession prof job I went into automation. 6 years later into management.
I was really disappointed to see our space efforts stagnate. Please with what Musk is accomplishing, better late than never.
I was watching with Dad, but I wondered instead about Gram and Gramps.
Gramps in 1892 and Gram in 1894. Horses and carriages still ruled the roads yet they were to see cars, planes, two world wars, the Korean conflict, Vietnam and more.
Had to be astonishing for them.
I thought the same with my grandmother, can’t even wonder how they stayed sane with all the changes
AND the Great Depression.
Well I was born in the early 80’s, and in just my short 40 years they’ve gone from clunky giant computers to Elon Musk putting chips in people’s brains.
Didn’t really know my great grandfather as he was run over by a train but my great grandmother was born in 1892 and I remember her quite well. I often think about her when I hear people talk about how fast everything is moving today. Electricity (in our area), cars, telephones, TV, moon landing, refrigerator, penicillin and so on. I always wondered if she and my grandparents for that matter were baffled by the change or if it was like turning up the water temp on a frog. I know I still look at my cellphone and really can’t believe it.
I think of my mother. Born into silent movies. Cylinder phonographs and records were still being made. Her mother drove a Durant (ancestor to Pontiac). She lived in a section of NYC that had DC power. The household radio was run on batteries.
She lived long enough to own a 1080p big-screen TV, have a mobile phone, and – like me – “survived” the transition to all-digit phone dialing.
WOW! Edison was a proponent of DC power, which was impossible to transmit over distances.
Logan, Utah. I was a very young child.
My folks had an old 10” brass bell mounted on a post on the back porch. If we heard the bell ringing, we were to get home, and pronto.
Watching it on TV at home with my family.
I was 26 then, stopped by to join my dad in viewing the landing. He died soon thereafter. We had very little to agree on, but we were both enthralled by the landing. The Nixon conversation made it so official. My mom blamed any nasty weather thereafter on our messing with the moon.
I was a young lawyer with a law firm in Cleveland.. I remember being at home and watching it on our rec room TV.. It didn’t make as big an impression on me as seeing Al Gionfriddo make the greatest catch in baseball history, in the 6th game of the 1947 World Series.
Sad
Willie, game 1, 1954 catching Vic Wertz’s blast? Hell if you google “the catch” it’ll show up.
I was at our county fair
Dad left me in the camper
We stayed at the site went to a bar n watched it. So I missed it.
I was so traumatized I may never recover.
😀
I was 11. My grandfather and I were on our annual summer road trip. We were at the Wisconsin Dells. During the boat trip I had my transistor radio ear plug in my ear listening to Houston and Apollo communicate as the LM descended. I heard the voice of Neil Armstrong proclaim “Tranquilty base here, the Eagle has landed”. I was right behind the boat captain. He gave me the mike and an excited 11 year old keyed the mine and made the announcement! The whole boat cheered for what seemed
like forever. After the boat ride we were driving towards Minnesota and we stopped around 9pm at a motel on a back country road. We watched the first steps on a small DuMont BW tv. That memory is burned into my consciousness to this day. July 20, 1969.
DuMont. Wow, such memories. They built the absolute BEST consumer-oriented TVs available at the time. Amazing quality. They also devised some highly innovative TV cameras, including ElectroniCam. ElectroniCam was used for The Honeymooners and is why today’s reruns are so clear and crisp, unlike kinescopes.
DuMont. A brand from a time we actually made things, and had real research labs right here in the USA.
I had just been through my HS graduation and was enjoying my last “free” summer vacation. My best buddy from Woonsocket and I were “camping” in my (much older) sister’s outbuilding in Bristol, goofing around with an antique UV lamp that would earn you an armed visit from the FDA today. We migrated to the house just before zero hour to watch the moment live on her B&W TV with the rest of the family. The “live” video, especially the sound, was so awfully buzzy that we barely had a chance of hearing anything that originated on the moon. I had to wait for the cleaned-up replays to make out much of what went on at that end.
Wisconsin Dells was a blast in the 50-90’sn ow it’s so overdone and all the good places are gone, just mega structures
I loved taking my kids there every summer
There was a place that had a water park, carnival, raised and most importantly, go carts
All for $9 from noon till closing, about 11 pm
It was fantastic
In the living room with the family. I was young enough to not understand that this was different ; I asked Mom if she watched this when she was a little girl
No one understood what Armstrong said at the time.
What he meant to say was “That’s one small step for A man,,,”
DJ at the Honolulu radio station. Shall I say I had some long play selections to give better time to see the landing…. any…who would be listening to me anyway?
me
And me, but Linz Austria is out of reach for even a clear-channel station out of Hawaii.
Not yet born.
9 yrs old, sitting in front of my folks big old fuzzy black and white TV.
Fuzzy Saturday morning cartoons, just fun, no PC shit.
Sitting on the floor.
I was six, but I have no special recollections of the first moonwalk. We were probably on vacation up in Michigan’s “little finger.” I do remember watching the rocket launches on TV for the various Apollo missions, however.
10 years old. I remember being in the front yard, among the birch trees, when we were called in. Watched it on tv. At my parents’ house, which my brother took over after they both passed away.
So much water under the bridge since then.
I was 12 (wouldn’t be 13 until November). I was in my family’s second-floor tenement in Pawtucket, RI, watching Armstrong on live TV. After he set foot on the moon, I went to a front window, opened it, and shouted down to my friends playing kickball in the street, “A man just set foot on the moon!” They all looked up at me like stupid cattle, and went back to their game. I don’t think I thought of them ever again in the way I had before this incident. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t interested in watching history happen on TV, and seeing a human dream come true before their eyes.
I still look up whenever I hear an aircraft pass overhead. Don’t know that I trust or like people who don’t do the same. They’re still a marvel to me, even though I’ll never set foot in one again myself.
Correction. My memory was of the landing, not the first step.
I was 11 (wouldn’t be 12 until November) at summer camp in Pt. Judith, RI. The camp had a big console TV with a blown picture tube. They brought us all into the auditorium/gym and we sat on the floor and listened. And like my neighbor to the north, DaveGinOnly, it was the landing, not the first step.
My dad designed the rubber seal that joined the LEM to the Command Module, so later on I got to relive the highlights listening to an LP that had lots of the key radio transmissions on it. I sure wish I had that because I’m sure very few existed even then.
USA at its pinnacle of progress. Hopefully we can surpass it in the future but judging from what we see around us today I am not so sure.
I was planted in front of the b&w TV for all of it. However it unfolded, live or recorded. My memories are of Walter Cronkite just about in proud tears.
Getting ready to start Grade School. I remember watching that and also Nixon resigning but didn’t get the significance of either event.
As a 9-year-old in southern Ontario, Canada, I was legitimately “space crazy”. I loved everything about space, astronomy (as much as a 9-year old could), stars, galaxies… I had a big book about the US and Russian space programs, and I even knew Yuri Gagarin’s name. I had built plastic models of the Saturn V rocket on our kitchen table.
It was a warm summer night, but we weren’t outside: I remember being in our living room, watching our black-and-white TV. It seemed to take forever for Armstrong to come out of the LEM. And equally forever for Aldrin to join him. I knew it was momentous, because, holy crap, man had landed on the moon! And then it was time for bed.
But… I also remember being a bit underwhelmed: “That’s it? Some fuzzy picture of the leg of the LEM and some unintelligible garbled speech?” I was an eager consumer of science fiction at that point, and NASA’s production values were so much more amateur than Stanley Kubrick’s.
“2001 A Space Odyssey” had set my expectations a bit higher…
I was in my basement at 525 Orchard Way watching on a black and white TV
In a crowd standing around a no-doors-lobby TV in the Reef Hotel off Waikiki beach.
I was just a toddler in a small town on Long Island when the Apollo 11 mission took place, and I only have vague memories of the event. What I do remember clearly was later that year my father had to go on an unusually long deployment for his job.
My father was one of the first members of the then new US Sky Marshal Program and he was tasked with being Neil Armstrong’s primary bodyguard for the Apollo 11 world “goodwill” tour. He was with him for the entire 38 days traveling to 24 countries, and they became good friends.
I got to meet Neil a couple of times later in life at glider fly-ins, as he and my father were both avid glider pilots and stayed in touch over the years. Dad caught the glider bug from Neil, and I caught the glider bug from dad.
I had just graduated from SUNY Oswego, NY and was back home in the Bronx with my parents. It was an absolutely memorable and emotional experience watching the moon landing on TV, The fact that just in a few short years the United States could plan and implement getting to and landing on the moon was a true testament to our nation. We were truly proud of the United States of America.
In bed as all children should be at 3am
I think my mother tried to get me up but I wasn’t having it
My Dad led the operations of the Chrysler Corporation Space Division, where he manufactured, static tested, and launched the Saturn IB Boosters used on the Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz Programs. The Saturn IB was smaller than the Saturn V, used for launching payloads into low earth orbit. He launched Apollo Seven , the first manned flight, in October ’68. This was a test of the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM), including the separation, in-space navigation, and docking of the Lunar Excursion Module (Moon Lander) back with the CSM.
Nine months later Apollo 11 sent men to the lunar surface. Our family was watching it live on our massive Sears console TV. When Armstrong announced ““Houston, Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed” my Dad staring crying uncontrollably…His dream of the last fifteen years had been realized. Earlier in his career he was Chief of Quality for Chrysler Missile Division, who launched the first American Satellite, first Moon Probe, and our first three astronauts.
He told me before his death twenty years ago that his greatest career accomplishment was the orbiting of America’s first astronaut, Ham the Space Chimp. ‘Ham proved to us that man could safely venture into outer space…” The moon landing is the greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind. May all of the tens of thousands who made it happen RIP.
That’s awesome.
Thirteen years old watching it in a cottage while on vacation at Lake Chaubunagungamaug. Little did I know my future father-in-law was one of the electrical engineers who designed the navigation systems.
At Quantico, VA in the USMC Officer Training Program.
I was watching it being filmed in the sound studio in Burbank.
LUDITE TROLL
Do you realize what a special kind of ignoramuses it takes to misspell Luddite? The irony is thrilling.
Regardless of whether you’re kidding or serious, that was pretty funny. Made me laugh anyway.
5 years before I was born.
I was still in utero, a couple of months from being born.
I was 5 yo, in our living room in Troy, NY, watching on a small BW TV. Dad was at Rensselaer for his MS Physics, on to West Point to teach and earn his PhD. He brought me to his lab often enough that between the space program and him, I always wanted to become an astronaut but I went on to become a mechanical engineer working in aerospace. Near but less politics than NASA.
Side story – while I was living at west point (Kindergarten thru 2nd), so was my future wife. We met 38 years later in Santa Clarita, CA. Her Dad was also teaching there. We were in different classes in 1st grade, same school. Both our dads went to Ft Leavenworth for some command college two years later. Still didn’t meet, but we were on the same playground. We lived 3 miles apart in CA and worked about 3 miles apart near LAX, 43 miles away. First date was pretty crazy. “You lived where?”
I wasn’t old enough to remember.
However, I know right where I was when they launched the last Apollo mission (17) to the moon. Sitting next to my dad in the middle of the night, on the couch. We didn’t say much, just watched it for the last time.
My earliest memory: I was 2 1/2 years old. My father woke me up and brought my sister and downstairs to watch on TV.