Who remembers the first moon landing?

[jpak]

[tblue37]

1. I do. I was 19. nt

[rurallib]

28. Me too! Working at a gas station on the interstate

when people came in that day I got their gas for a while and then we all just watched the 13 inch tv I brought in.

[zipplewrath]

2. Me?

On a black and white TV. It was hard to see what was going on.

[regnaD kciN]

12. Same, although the image from the moon was in black-and-white anyway...

As I mentioned below, I watched the event from Paris, where not only was practically every set black-and-white (color television had only been introduced in France earlier that year), but it meant that we were hearing simultaneous French translation taking place over the U.S. feed. If you tried really hard, you could make out some of the English in the background. The translation wasn't all that accurate; Armstrong's "one small step" line was rendered as, essentially, "my boot is brushing the surface."

[hlthe2b]

3. I do...

I was out in the desert when the movie crew set up.














Come on now, I k'eed, I k'eed.

[Ahpook]

32. Was Stanley Kubrick there?

I see quite a few idiots trying to explain Kubrick was part of a conspiracy to film the landings in a studio.

No doubt the same dorks that think pizzagate is a thing and vote Trump.

[VMA131Marine]

4. Not the first one ...

I was only 5. But I remember the last two, Apollo 16 and 17 with the Lunar rover

[leftieNanner]

5. I do!

I was between my junior and senior years in high school and went on a student trip to France. That day, we were not in class and were taken out to a restaurant. There was a TV in the bar and all of us in the group were crowded around watching. The bartender turned off the TV!!! and we all howled. It was a very proud moment.

[regnaD kciN]

16. You were there too...

What part? I'm amazed at the bartender's actions. That evening, at the time of the actual landing but before the moonwalk, we walked down the Champs-Elysées, and practically every store had a television set in the window, with the door open so the broadcast could be heard. People who noticed us speaking English with an American accent were coming up and congratulating us -- it was probably one of the rare times post-WWII when being American in France made one popular.

[leftieNanner]

20. I was in Southern France

at the University in Aix en Provence. I don't remember the name of the place they took us that weekend.

It was a year or two ago.

It was a very exciting time.

[qazplm135]

6. I was a three month old fetus...

but I remember it well.

[regnaD kciN]

7. I was an early teen...

...who watched the first moonwalk in the early morning hours in the television room of our hotel in Paris.

Which leads me to one point I'm extremely pedantic about: since it was decided, early in the exploration of space, that all events that took place away from earth would be dated as of Greenwich Mean Time, the first steps on the moon did not take place on July 20th, as everyone here claims, but in the pre-dawn hours of July 21st, which was when I was watching it.

[unc70]

8. Was doing rocket science for White Sands

My boss was a "paperclip" German scientist now working for the US. He had been the highest ranking civilian among them at the end of the war. Really interesting summer.

[exboyfil]

9. It wasn't the first

but I remember watching one (probably Apollo 12) on a television at school (1st grade). No way did I process how monumental it was. I don't remember it on tv at home (when I would have seen the first moon landing if I had seen it then).

[Alacritous Crier]

10. yep!

My father being an aerospace engineer, it was big doings in our house.

[Cirque du So-What]

11. I was 14

I remember feelings of surreality and a good amount of time gazing at the waxing crescent moon.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. I do. 1969.

[Walleye]

14. I remember quite well.

It was during my first job at my hometown newspaper. We had a party at a house near the office. Sometimes I think of the tragic irony. JFK Made it possible, but it was coming home from a moon landing party, that Ted Kennedy made that fateful wrong turn off that bridge. Thus we were deprived of another Kennedy presidency.

[Lochloosa]

15. Yep. I was 12 and glued to the TV. My Father worked on both Gemini and Apollo.

[Brother Buzz]

17. I have ZERO memory of that event

If You Remember the ’60s, You Really Weren’t There

[ProfessorGAC]

18. Raising Hand!

Literally, everybody I know was glued to the TV for it.
I was going into 8th grade. I'm the science loving kid who became a scientist.
There was nothing that was going to keep me from seeing that event!

[ironflange]

19. Sure, I was eleven, remember it very clearly

[wcmagumba]

21. I remember it well...

I was 12 (like a previous poster) and distinctly remember seeing it on our small B & W tv. Amazing...One of my favorite movies (partially a fictional account) called "The Dish". Starring Sam Neill is the story of the Australian radio dish that was used to handle communications with Apollo 11 during the moon landing. Very warm and entertaining film with some footage of the landing... review/trailer at link...free on vudu...

[Fla Dem]

22. Sure do, remember. Watching that lunar module break away from the command module.

them diving for the moon surface. Holding our breath waiting for the retro rockets to kick in to slow the descent. Finally the landing and hearing Neil Armstrong say "the Eagle has landed." I was concerned for Michael Collins, orbiting the moon all by himself while Armstrong and Aldrin were jumping around the moon surface.

Some things you just don't forget.

[LastDemocratInSC]

23. I remember it well. I was also 19.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. Me!

One of those things you just don't forget.

[yonder]

25. Yup, I do. A very hot afternoon at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, Nevada,

the whole family sitting in front of a swamp cooler, watching a black and white TV and trying to make sense of what we were seeing. Funny thing is that after all of these years I misremembered the first step as being that afternoon but it was actually just the landing with the first step taking place a few hours later in the evening. I didn't discover that loss of brain cells until reading the account for last years 50th.

[sarge43]

27. I do. One of my most vivid memories. n/t

[Phoenix61]

29. I do. I was at my grandparents.

Used to spend a lot of time at their house on a lake. They always went to bed early and so did I cause I was just a little kid. I couldn’t understand why they were staying up so late to watch something on tv. Looking back, my grandfather was born in 1901 and my grandmother in 1907. He lived on a farm outside New York City and took a horse and wagon into the city. I guess going from that to seeing a man walk on the moon was pretty amazing.

[Kaleva]

31. Most of my grandparents grew up in horse and buggy days and lived to see the landing

[Kaleva]

30. I was in Ann Arbor visiting relatives and I fell asleep and missed it.

[AwakeAtLast]

33. I was 6 months old

So no. I'm just able to say I'm older than the Moon Landing.

[electric_blue68]

34. Yup! ....

I was 15, my sis 11. B&W TV , mom & dad.

We were excited! Also giddy from staying up extra late!
It was really thrilling, history shimmering in the air!

We'd been following since the Mercury launches, when they'd roll in the ?6 ft high B&W TV stand into our classrooms. 😁 👍

[TomSlick]

35. I do. I was not quite 10 years old.

I never convinced my grandmother it was all real.

[ThoughtCriminal]

36. I remember looking at the Moon

before the landing and thinking that it would never quite be seen the same way again. Afterward, it became a "Place".

[MiniMe]

37. I was 11. Remember it well

[Pobeka]

38. I was 9. I had models of the lunar lander, the command and service modules.

I was SO into it.

I watched on a small black and white TV in my room while my relatives were having a family gathering. The landing was the only thing in the world that mattered to me at that moment.

[Skittles]

39. I do

I was overseas, and so very proud of my country

[csziggy]

40. I do - they took off on my birthday!

Back then the Apollo rockets were loud enough we could hear them from a hundred miles away. We could watch the launches on TV, then run outside and see the light from the rockets over a certain spot in our yard. With the early morning launches, we could hear the roar of the launch - the sound arrived just about the time we went outside.

Dad did the calculations on how long between the launch and when the sound would arrive, plus the exact direction to look to see the rockets. It was pretty cool.

I was such a nerd, I refused a birthday party that year so I could watch the moon rocket launch without a crowd around.

[Rhiannon12866]

41. I do, I was at summer camp.

There was obviously no TV at camp, but it turned out that on that particular night my friend Nancy and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We were near the camp nurse's cabin when she saw us and told us to come in really quickly since she was watching on her TV. She probably had the only TV in the entire place, a small black & white one, and it wasn't very clear, but we actually got to see history that night and I'm grateful. I'm still in touch with Nancy and I should remind her since it was a big enough deal back then that I'm sure she remembers, too.

[mnhtnbb]

42. I do. I watched it on the TV in the family waiting area on one of the medical units

in the hospital where I was working the summer after I graduated high school and before I started college.

[NoPasaran]

43. I do I was 13

Watched it all on black and white TV with my parents and brother in Fort Lee, Virginia. With our good friend Walter Cronkite of course.

[sl8]

44. Buzz Aldrin?

Educated guess.

I bet Michael Collins remembers it, too.

[zanana1]

45. I was eleven.

They showed the astronauts stepping on the moon ground and I was so amazed. I thought that soon we'd be landing on other planets!

[RobinA]

46. I Do

I was 11 and my parents woke me up to watch. I wasn't overly thrilled. I had been watching rocket launches and splash downs most of my life. I hated and was very upset by the fire and the three deaths. Grissom, White, Chaffee. To me, landing on the moon was a needless risk and then waste of husbands and fathers. I did begrudgingly watch and remember it well. I preferred to watch splashdowns, because it meant the guys were alright.

I did appreciate it more when I got older. Even had an Earthrise poster on my wall the entire time I was in college. More recently I learned from a flat earther that the picture was all CGI effects.

[jpak]

47. If you really think about it it is a major WTF

Thrown into space into space on a giant explosive device.

Traveling there in tin cans and have to make in flight maneuvers to do it.

And land on manual

And to take off on manual

And burn up in the atmosphere to get home.

And hope you didn't drown in the ocean.

And hope the Moon Cooties didn't get you.

Sal-fucking-lute

[edhopper]

48. I was 15 and obsessed with it

I collected all the Life magazines about Apollo.
I watched every minute of Apollo 11, from take off to splash down.
I was fully aware how historic it was at the time.
It pains me that we are not so very much further in space exploration now. We should have had a base on the moon.