Skip to main content

Where Were You When Neil Armstrong First Set Foot On The Moon?


The date was July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon at 20:17:40 UTC according to NASA. (For those who like precision, Neil stepped onto the Sea of Tranquility0°40′26.69″N 23°28′22.69″E / 0.6740806°N 23.4729694°E / 0.6740806; 23.4729694 based on the IAU Mean Earth Polar Axis coordinate system.) I will never forget that date and time because I witnessed this historic event at 3:17 pm in the induction center at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri. It was a very odd moment in my life. I had left my wife early that morning in a very frightened and emotional state by herself in Milwaukee; travelled all day by busses without airconditioning in 100+ degree heat; met up along the way in various little towns with what seemed to me at the time to be a very ragtag and slightly dangerous bunch of fellow draftees; and then arrived at Leonard Wood to the welcome of a bunch of screaming Drill Sargents just 30 minutes before Neil's famous landing. Mostly because the Drill Sargents wanted to watch the Apollo landing themselves, our induction class was spared quite a lot of the normal torture of a first night in boot camp and allowed to stay in the company mess hall and watch that historic event for several hours. I was thankful for the chance to see that historic event and came to appreciate & respect all those fellows in my company very much.
One last thing. Many people forget that Apollo 11 took off from Earth during the Woodstock concert in New York. I wasn't a hippie, and I wouldn't normally have even been aware that Woodstock was taking place except for one other small detail on that odd day in July 1969. It turned out that one of my fellow draftee's had gone AWOL in a previous boot camp and decided to try to make it to Canada via New York. He heard about Woodstock, decided to stop and see it, got stopped by the police for speeding, was sent back to Leonard Wood and sat next to me in the mess hall watching Neil step on the moon. Then they sent him to Vietnam. I can't remember his name, and I have no idea if he made it back or not.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

John Malone on America and Obama

You just have to love Dr. John Malone. The guy's a certified genius but also a "what you see is what you get" straight-shooting kind of guy. His Ph.D. is from Johns Hopkins, BA is science from Yale, worth $2.3 billion (according to Forbes, but probably way low because they just couldn't find all of it). He ran TCI (America's largest Cable company) and sold it to ATT for $54 billion. He's the kind of person that you could just sit and listen to for hours. He's so logical, well informed and well spoken. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal here's a few nuggets from what he had to say... (I agree with him about Obama) WSJ: What are the biggest risks for Liberty right now? Mr. Malone: I think the biggest concern I have for the next year or two would be on the retail side, because of the consumer sentiment and the macro conditions. The concerns really tend to be much more macro: Is America going to make it, rather than are we going to make it?...
Post a Comment
Read more

Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice

MediaPost Publications - Americans Get More Channels, Watch Fewer Of Them, Especially Broadcast - 03/13/2006 Ironically, Barry Schwartz spoke at PC Forum last night about the Paradox of Choice, and what did I wake up to this morning. Another possible example of too much choice in the channels people have to choose from on television. I wonder whether the "a la carte" crowd has thought about this problem. I'll have to ask Prof. Schwartz about that today.
1 comment
Read more

The Evolving Internet: A look ahead to 2025 by Cisco and the Monitor Group's Global Business Network

My employer (Cisco) published its most recent forward looking study of the Internet today. It's called " The Evolving Internet: A look ahead to 2025 by Cisco and the Monitor Group's Global Business Network " and although I haven't studied it in detail yet, I scanned it this morning and I liked what I saw. Those who know me will not be surprised that I particularly liked the three dimensional evaluation criteria that they used to frame their analysis. Lately nearly everything I do ends up finding its way into some sort of analytical cube like this. I've been wondering whether there is something wrong with me that I can't seem to frame things simply in two dimensions. Glad to have company.
Post a Comment
Read more