I watched the first moon landing at a bar in Paducah, Kentucky, a fact worth mentioning only because I still remember how suddenly silence descended on this raucous place when Neil Armstrong started coming down that ladder.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It hadn't really percolated through my brain that I was going to see real, live TV from the surface of the Moon, and boy, oh, boy, had that Saturn V launch been exciting! And then, there it was - late at night, sitting up, watching, and there was Neil Armstrong actually standing on the surface of the Moon.
I remember; I was 15 years old when Neil Armstrong put feet in the moon.
I remember it was hard to believe that I was taking a step onto the lunar surface.
One of my earliest recollections is being woken up at some ungodly hour in the morning by my parents and sat in front of the fairly new black and white television, watching a grainy image of a man in a white suit climbing down a ladder. It was the first moon landing, and I became a sort of spaceman, as many kids were.
I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot - which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong's landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.
The successful landing on the moon, very probably, is the best story.
In 2001, Katie Couric told 'Today Show' audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened - that it was staged in the Nevada desert.
Neil Armstrong, when he was out there landing on the moon, I was there first.
Of course, mankind would not have landed on the Moon in 1969, were it not for two things: conquered Nazi rocket technology and post-war anti-Communist paranoia in the United States.
I was watching a black and white television in Cairo, MI., at my grandparents' house, and I watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon. At that point, it set the bit for me to be an astronaut, and it was kind of like a dream, but it really wasn't reality.