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What Were You Doing 40 Years Ago Today?

Jim Burroway

July 16th, 2009

I was glued to the black-and-white Zenith. I don’t think I ever saw this in color until now:

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Emily K
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

Hmm.. not sure. Ask my parents. (They were kids.)

Richard W. Fitch
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

I was helping chaperon a HS church group at a lake retreat in northern Indiana. There was no TV but we did get to hear the coverage on radio.

Lindoro Almaviva
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

My parents were dating. I was born the year after.

By the way, the embedding is disabled.

EDDIE JR.
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

My family was visiting my Garndmother in Madison Wisconsin(we live in London Ontario) It was special because of the moon landing and more special for what we didn’t know. It was the last time we saw my father’s mother. She died two years later. Each event reminds me of the other.

Richard Rush
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

I certainly did follow the Apollo 11 story, but the bigger story for me personally was that I came out as gay that summer after graduating from college. The summer of ‘69 was a magical time for me.

hb
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

Woodstock!

Cooner
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

I wasn’t born yet.

However, I was born exactly one year after Neil Armstrong made his historic footprint. :)

Jim Burroway
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

Well who the heck posts a video on YouYube and inhibits embedding???

Anyway, found another version. Hope this wrks.

Lynn David
July 16th, 2009 | LINK

I WAS THERE! Yep, I’m 54. My family had gone down to Florida from Indiana just to see the launch and visit family in Tampa. It was amazing all the people who were on the first causeway south of the Space Center which was Cape Canavaral then. It was all over so fast though I got to see some of it go up through binoculars and some folks even had a TV out there with the CBS broadcast.

On the way off the causeway they were announcing the progress over the radio and it hit something like 1000 miles down-range and dad remarked something to the effect that ‘they’ve gone a thousand miles and we haven’t even gone a quarter mile getting off this causeway!’

Later on we were in a motel in Tampa and I even took a picture with my Kodak Instamatic Camera of the first astronauts on the moon off of the old B&W TV.

And that fall I first came out to a friend.

Lynn David
July 17th, 2009 | LINK

Well, I guess by then it was called Cape Kennedy, later to revert to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.

Alex Karan
July 17th, 2009 | LINK

I was kicking in my mother’s belly. I was to be born one month and 6 days later. Yes, I’m turning 40 next month.

Vancity
July 17th, 2009 | LINK

I was but a gleam in my parents’ eyes….

Gina9223
July 17th, 2009 | LINK

My dad had bought a color TV just for the Applo 11 mission. It cost $249.99 and was a huge 27 inch console Magnavox. The color was so vivid, the sounds slanted towards a deep bass…the rumbling of the take off and the rich colors were so beutiful.

The day they landed my dad drove like a luntic coming home and ran into the house and looked at the screen….

The picture was black and white. “Whats wrong with the TV?” He tried everything,but the problem was the Applo mission took a black and white camera to the moon. Nasa scientists had looked at the grey of the moon and had decided to send only a B&W camera because there were no colors on the moon to see.

My dad was so pissed at that.

Jim Burroway
July 17th, 2009 | LINK

Gina, that’s a great story.

I was eight at the time, and we wouldn’t get our first color television for another full year.

I do remember getting up very early in the morning to watch the Apollo 12 moonwalk. We still had the B&W set, but NASA that time decided to send a color camera. I guess a lot of people like your family were disappointed at the B&W pictures for Apollo 11. ;-) But I also remember that the color TV camera was very delicate, and when the astronauts moved it for a different shot, they accidentally pointed it at the sun which damaged the camera. That basically ended the broadcasting of live pictures of the moon for the rest of the mission. Boy was I mad!

I have very clear memories of the Apollo 11 moonwalk; I’ll have more on that later.

Jim Burroway
July 17th, 2009 | LINK

Lynn David, do you still have the photo you took with the Instamatic?

Lynn David
July 19th, 2009 | LINK

I’ve been looking Jim. After an illness last year I moved and some stuff ended up stored in a cousin’s semi-trailer. So I don’t knw what happened. Though come to think, it could be at my mother’s….

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