In this July 20 , 1969 image made from television , Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong steps onto the surface of the moon . Millions on Earth who gathered around the TV and radio heard Armstrong say this : ‘ That ’ s one small step for man , one giant leap for mankind .’ But after returning from space , he immediately insisted that he had been misquoted . He said there was a lost word in his famous oneliner from the moon : ‘ That ’ s one small step for “ a ” man .’ It ’ s just that people just didn ’ t hear it .’
“ July 20 , 1969 , was my sixth birthday and we were having a party . Around 4 o ’ clock , everyone got called inside for cake and ice cream and to watch the astronauts land on the moon . After they landed , I thought they would just pop the door open and get out onto the moon . I watched and waited for hours until finally , I had to take a bath and go to bed . ( Later that night ), someone came and got me out of bed , and we watched the moon walk .” — Tony Watson
“ I was four years old , and our family was in Denver , Colo . My father worked for the National Cash Register company , and at the time , he was attending an engineering school NCR operated in Denver . As it was the weekend , there were no classes , a bunch of the NCR men played touch football on the campus lawn , and their families brought picnic lunches . ‘ And everybody brought a radio ,’ Dad said . The game was paused as the lunar lander began its descent to the moon ’ s surface . My great-grandmother , born in 1890 on a farm in north Florida with no power and no indoor plumbing , watched the moon landing on color television in her daughter ’ s air-conditioned house . She couldn ’ t believe it — it wasn ’ t that she was a conspiracy theorist or anything ; it was just so beyond anything she had experienced .” — Terry Richards
This July 20 , 1969 photo made available by NASA shows Buzz Aldrins boot and bootprint during a test of the lunar soil during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity .
22 Valdosta Scene | July 2022