“One Giant Leap” Still Resonates Today
July 20, 1969, just before 11 p.m. EDT, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. On Earth, families huddled around the television, glued to the grainy image that transcended life as they knew it.
Joel Bregman, H.D. Curtis Professor of Astronomy at LSA, was 17. “Everyone had been focused on the space race for years. They’d stop school and stream video or audio of every milestone,” he says. “Landing on the Moon seemed like out of science fiction. We didn’t know if it could be done. That night, I watched with my family, including my grandmother, who was born in Ukraine in the last 1800s—she’d witnessed the first car, first airplane, and now the first Moon landing. It was absolutely astonishing. Like a dream.”