I remember watching it live on television.
I saw it live in the reflected image of a neighbor’s television. I was at my great-uncle’s apartment and he wasn’t going to watch it. I had nowhere else to go, as he lived in Lugano, Switzerland. I discovered that if I stood in the right place and tilted my head the right way, the upstairs neighbor’s TV could be seen by the way their balcony door and my uncle’s balcony door bent the light. The way the TV picture was reflected, it appeared to hover in mid-air over the lake. So for me, it’s a particularly ghostly image without any sound, something I was able to see because a German family in Switzerland was watching.
I wasn’t born until '73. My only hope is that one day, next decade or the next after that, I’ll be able to witness mankind’s second foray to the moon.
I’ll raise a glass to the Apollo boys tonight.
You are so old.
It’s actually my very first memory (well, the first one that I still have). I was 2, I remember my mom sitting me in front of our big old RCA console TV and making me watch.
“One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind”
Yup. Still gives me goosebumps.
Me, too. I worked in the news department of the local TV station; our evening newscast was pre-empted by the first moonwalk. We all gathered in the control room to watch it on the monitors. It was the most eerie, other-worldly thing we had ever seen. And, to put it in perspective, we simply didn’t understand how we could put men on the moon but we couldn’t defeat the communists in Vietnam. We didn’t realize that that the phrase, “We can put a man on the moon but we can’t …” would become the mantra of frustration with the incomplete capabilities of technolotg.
My dad worked on the Apollo missions, for three summers, as a graduate student. Those were interesting days.
We were traveling in Germany that summer, and enjoyed seeing the event on German T.V. The Germans were extraordinarily interested in it, especially since many of their countrymen had been instrumental in making it happen.
I missed seeing it on live TV, because I was away at camp, so I only heard it live on the radio. It was a couple of years before I could actually see the footage, because, by the time I was home from camp, it wasn’t in the news anymore – and this was waaaayyyy before Youtube!
I remember it. It was mind-blowing then and still is today. What an accomplishment!
I was only days away from my second birthday. I assume my parents watched it, so maybe I did too.
I am told I was woken up to see the footage, even though it was only about two months after my first birthday. So I did see it. But I have no memory of it.
Today’s my birthday, so on my third birthday we were all watching it at my aunt and uncle’s house. I have no memory of it, though.
My mom tells me that she and my father got me to (finally) give up my pacifier that night by telling me that the moon landing required sacrifices of all Americans in order to be successful, and that I had to be willing to sacrifice something, too, so they thought my pacifier would be a good sacrifice. Apparently, I agreed with them because I stopped using it that night and never used it again.
I remember it. We got the afternoon off school and the nuns farmed us out to watch it at various families’ houses, because my school didn’t have a television. Unfortunately the house I went to had a trampoline, which was far more interesting to a group of five year olds. We kids had a brief look at what was going on, but our mothers were the ones who watched the moon landing while we mostly played on the trampoline and fought with each other.
I watched it in a darkened motel room in Bicknell, UT. We were on vacation, but my mother got a migraine and needed to lie down in a dark room. Otherwise we would have been on the road and missed it.
The six of us, parents and four kids, were sharing a cottage with my older brother and his wife and son in Kentucky, in a campground on the Lake. We all gathered in the living room to watch, on a grainy little TV with really bad reception. As I remember, we set the little portable on the top of the rollaway bed, so we could all see it. I think it might have been the only non-meal time we were all awake and inside at the same time. I don’t remember if I really caught the significance of it beforehand, but I sure got it while watching. I can still see it in my mind’s eye, fuzz and static and all.
Yes, it is the 39th anniversary…a very proud moment.
And it is a crying damn shame that we do not have an operational base on the moon today.
I was seven, and recall it reasonably well.
And on that same day, a couple in Minneapolis brought home their almost 2 month old daughter - after months and months of family studies, meetings, and a few days after signing adoption papers.
grin
My dad and I worked on our TV (a Marconi Canada) for a couple of days to get it working in time.