Forty years ago, man walked on the moon.

For some of you, this is only the stuff of history books. Others of my friends remember this event for themselves.

Charming was at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. Along with twenty thousand others, he lay on the ground while looking up at the moon. He still has the Jamboree Newspaper with the article.

I m'self was sick on the couch, watching the event with Walter Cronkhite narrating (rest in peace, Walter!). My father made me get up off the couch, go outside, and look at the moon. "You will never forget this day," he told me.

And of course, I didn't. These events that are part of our collective consciousness are imprinted forever. Everybody knows where you were when you found out about Pearl Harbor (well, not *me,* I wasn't born yet) or when Kennedy was shot, or, more recently, September 11th.

For those of you young folks out there, here's a little "setting" for Today's History Fact. In the 60's, the Cold War was raging (well, not exactly raging, as, by definition, a cold war is not a hot war...) and the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were in a space race. Russia had won the first round, getting a man-made satellite as well as the first human into space. But then we tied the score, having John Glenn go into orbit around the earth. And so on, and so on, through the Mercury (one manned) and Gemini (two-manned) missions. By the Apollo series (three manned) we were On The Way. Every flight was leading up to Apollo 11. You know the rest of the story. After the several moon landings, the manned space program shifted to the space station and the shuttle flights.

Maybe you didn't know that when the astronauts came back from the moon, they were quarantined for three weeks, just in case there was some dread germ that would invade the earth, a la Twilight Zone.

Forty years. Just can't get my head around that. And, of course, so many, many other big things have happened since then. Personal computers. Cell phones. Cable tv. Things we take for granted, all thanks to the space program. They used to pound that into our brains, how the research needed and the data gathered from the space program brought you Modern Science, with all of its goodies trailing behind.

Thanks for letting me share my memories of that day. It may not mean a lot for many of you out there, but it sure was a Big Thing back-in-the-day.

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