Apollo 11's 40th anniversary
 

I wasn't alive for it but I can pretend I hunkered down in front of the TV to watch it happen. How awesome that must have been.

NASA is working on restoring the original broadcast footage. As you may know, the original transmissions were tragically lost. Can't effing believe that one, myself.

I was 8 months old, almost. Don't suppose anyone would believe me if I said I was on the edge of my seat watching.

I watched it on a TV in a game room at the Doral Hotel in Miami Beach.

I remember this like it was yesterday.


Interminable waiting with a group of 30 or so in front of a tv, but we had fun .... and, as you might imagine, this was beyond coolness for a 9-year-old boy.

Lani recounts that she was simply annoyed by it because it was the only thing on all of the channels.

I was 7, and I remember it very well.

At Grandma's house in La Canada.

yup. my brothers and I were allowed to stay up as long as we could stand it to watch it all develop. my whole family was glued to the set. everyone knew this was history in the making. the world truly changed that day

My parents corralled me, and sat me down in front of the black and white TV and said, "Watch This". I remember it well.

I remember it well, a fascinating event and very geeky cool. I also cannot believe the original tapes are gone.

That's silly, 'cause that would mean Lani's over 40.

I was minus three months or so. My parents told me everyone, but everyone, was sitting around TVs watching it.

At a Private Christian school then....we all gathered in the church with a tiny TV to watch....still remember the amazement of watching men walk on the moon!

I hear it was so riveting that planes fell out of the skies because the pilots were at home watching TV.

all true! but fortunately, all the passengers were as well

I'm sorry young folks missed it. It was the last piece of American History that was good news instead of bad.

I know, it is amazing we haven't all just slit our wrists in despair.

I already did. I've been a zombie in disguise for years now.

Only if iSm slits his for missing things that happened before he was alive. ;)

No, but before I was alive, major moments in American History were both good and bad. I'm talking MAJOR moments.

So, post 1969, the only pivotal moments in American History that come to mind are the the first resignation of any American president and the foreign terrorist attacks on American soil in September 2001.

Am I missing something? Because 40 years without any good news in American History is unfortunate, though I'm not suicidal about it.

Not so. The moon landing was a nice warmup for the Mets winning the World Series that year.

I was in a church classroom with a bunch of other people watching it. It was riveting - which says a lot since I was a 7 year old with a limited attention span.

There are certain moments where you just can feel everything that was surrounding you when they happened.

The Columbia blowing up - I was ironing my shirt for work and was home alone.

9/11 - got to work early then heard the news.

Desert Storm - at the Nissan Dealer buying Chris a car.

Election 1972 - Marching around my living room with a hand-made Nixon for President sign attached to a wooden yardstick while my parents watched the news.

Kennedy's Funeral - my very first memory. I didn't understand what was really going on but was fascinated with JohnJohn on the TV.

Yep, I have all those same "remember exactly where I was and what was happening" effects for everything on N.A.'s list ... plus, the subject of this thread, the moon walk.

Of them all, the moon walk was the only happy one. The rest filled me with incredible sadness.

:(

I'm trying to think of any other pre-moon landing one that would count as a "good" one. As far as I can come up with, the moon landing stands alone in ALL of US history, either pre or post-iSm, as the only positive "everyone remembers where they were" moment.

Fall of the Berlin Wall perhaps?

Lou Gehrig's speech (if that can be considered "good")?

I Have a Dream. Good, but only necessary for a bad reason, so that's kind of mixed.

Just not quite the same impact as, say, JFK getting shot.

iSm, care to provide some examples of these incredible good moments that everyone stopped in their collective tracks to witness that we youngin's had the temerity to be born to late for/

Clinton/Gore Election - and blasting Fleetwood Mac on the turntable.

The first day of MTV broadcast

Buying our first CD


Positives are more personal where tragedies are a collective conscious thing.

I cried on October 20, 1964, the day we lost Herbert Hoover. (I was only two, so that's a fair assumption.)

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that my mother remembers the end of WWII with some measure of unalloyed happiness.

Um... January 20th of this year springs to mind for some reason....

Yup, I think electing America's first black president is a moment of pride for everyone. Even peole I know that weren't fans were saying how cool a moment in American history that was.

Otherwise, I agree, the uber-memorable moments are tragic ones.

Well, I have no idea where or when I heard the of the Berlin Wall falling, so that wasn't a biggie to me. YMMV.

Lou Gehrig's speech. Um, what speech? If you think I have anything to do with any sports in my memory, you are much mistaken. I remember some Olympic moments, but not my surroundings or anything like that. Nothing in the sporting world has that kind of "imprint" effect on me.

I Have a Dream? That might have qualified ... If I'd been on the Washington Mall that day. As it was, I'm certain I saw it after-the-fact, and it didn't imprint on me at the time. I was 7 or 8 years old.

I suspect tragedies have the imprint effect more obviously. But the moon-landing (to be specific, the first step on the moon) were one of those rare good imprints.


So only the JFK assassination and the moon thing were events most people of "my" time remember where and what and everything about those moments they experienced.

From what I understand, going back, the next things were perhaps D-Day, and certainly the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.


Prior to that, I'm not even sure "everyone" remembers the 1929 stock market crash. Radio was around then, but perhaps not pervasive enough. I'm not sure.


But I'm pretty sure prior to that, there were no such shared imprints ... as there was no media to bring that kind of news to a large audience simultaneously.

See, that's kinda my point though. You've defined "good news" as only news that happens to be the kind of shared imprint news that the moon landing was. But that happens to be the singular example in the whole of history that qualifies. Sure, that's largely due to the short window that the media has existed to allow for it (although radio and television existed before 1969). But with nearly 100 years of television under our belt and exactly 1 instance, I think that speaks to the fact that the media isn't particularly suited to instant good new imprinting rather than a lack of good news.

The moon landing was an anomaly uniquely suited among good news to simultaneous national attention, not some sort of good news high water mark.

Well, I typoed something. I meant VE-Day when I typed D-Day. From what I understand, everyone remembers where they were when they learned the war was over in Europe. That was, to most people, good news. My bad.


I don't think it's a matter of media not being able to "imprint" good news, but rather that things on the scale of imprint are usually not good at all.


Which makes the moon walk so much more fantastic. And I wish something else good on a similar scale would happen again during my lifetime.

I think more than the memories of watching the launch, landing, or splashdown - all of which I did - was the moment of wonder that spanned those events, being able to gaze into the night sky, look upon the face of the moon and think, someone is there - someday it could be me gazing back.

I think that's why I like the beginning of the movie Apollo 13 so much ... Jim Lovell looking at the moon while someone is there walking on it. I did that, too (as did millions). It was such a wonderment feeling. And I wasn't even headed there any time soon, like he was (or so he thought).


But the day of the first steps was imprinted very specifically. I remember almost everything I did that entire day. 40 freaking years ago. Wow.