It was July 20, 1969. I was eight years old and, as I recall, I was supposed to be in bed. But my grandparents got me up and sat me down in front of our little black and white television. Watch this, they said. This is important.
Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, is dead at 82. On behalf of my colleagues here at Scholars & Rogues I’d like to take a second to remember a man who, perhaps more than any other, embodied an age when humanity’s gaze and its ambition turned skyward, infused with the hope that science could propel us to a better life.
Rest in peace…
I still remember this–I was stationed at Ft Bliss, Texas, at the time, in Vietnamese language school, and we used to go to drive-ins a lot, since there wasn’t a whole lot to do in El Paso. So that night that Armstrong walked on the moon we were at the drive-in watching 2001, with the moon hanging over the screen. True story.
Yeah, that beats the hell out of my memory. Wow.