This Day in American History: The Eagle Has Landed
- ForAmerica
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
"The Eagle has landed." On this day in 1969, those five words told the world America had just won the greatest race in human history.
At 4:17 p.m. Eastern on July 20, 1969, the lunar module Eagle, guided by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, touched down in the Sea of Tranquility as Armstrong radioed back to Houston: "The Eagle has landed." Michael Collins remained in orbit aboard the command module Columbia, the crucial third leg of a mission eight years in the making, launched by President Kennedy's 1961 promise to land a man on the Moon before the decade was out.
Nearly seven hours later, at 10:56 p.m., Armstrong climbed down the ladder and became the first human being to set foot on another world, telling the hundreds of millions watching on television that it was "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin joined him a few minutes later. Together they spent about two and a half hours outside the spacecraft, planting the American flag, collecting lunar samples, and running scientific experiments before rejoining Collins and heading home.
The Space Race had been one of the defining contests of the Cold War, and with Apollo 11, the United States settled it decisively. It remains, more than half a century later, the high-water mark of what American ambition, engineering, and sheer national will can accomplish when this country decides it's not going to lose.
Also on this day:
1881 -- Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army five years after the Battle of Little Bighorn.
1944 -- German officers fail in their assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
1948 -- President Truman signs the Selective Service Act, establishing the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.
1969 -- President Nixon watches the moon landing from the White House and later calls it an "interplanetary conversation."
1976 -- The Viking 1 lander touches down safely on Mars, the first U.S. spacecraft to do so.
One giant leap, and a flag that still stands on the Moon today. Nobody does impossible quite like America.
Source: NASA, HISTORY.com
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