Stormy weather had plans for Eagle’s landing

During the recent coverage of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing on July 20, 1969, it was widely reported that an estimated 500 million people had watched the event live on television.
Well, the number of Virginia viewers was somewhat reduced, because of stormy weather. The strong thunderstorms that came roiling through the state that Sunday afternoon coincided with some of the most anxious minutes of the monumental event.

Once in a lifetime ... or not

Edge-of-the-chair drama was playing out on television screens in real time as the lunar lander, Eagle, inched ever closer to the surface of the moon. The final descend was actually a lot dicer than viewers were aware of at the time.
It was only after the three astronauts on the historic Apollo 11 mission had returned safely to Earth, that the general public learned that the lander had come perilously close to crashing. When the craft was 42,000 feet above the moon’s surface the onboard computers started overloading with information.
As that nerve-rattling problem was being dealt with, another warning signal went off. The preselected landing area the computers were taking the craft to was littered with huge boulders.
Flight commander, Neil A. Armstrong, had to take control from the computers and find a safe area to land. This additional maneuvering used up fuel that had been calculated down to the minute.
Less than 30 seconds of landing fuel remained when Eagle touched down at 4:17:40 EST. Armstrong’s heart was pounding at 160 beats per minute.
Back in Virginia a lot of people were doing more cussing than cheering. Just as the tension was building toward a crescendo, a lot of folks lost electricity and their televisions went blank.
As aggravating as that had to have been, most power had been restored by the time Armstrong became the first human to step foot on a celestial body other than Earth. The moment came at 10:56:15 p.m. EST.

A ‘most interesting’ day

President Nixon had declared the next day, Monday, a holiday. Nonetheless, all but one store along Charlottesville’s Main Street was found open for business.
Back then The Daily Progress was delivered in the afternoon. This gave reporters the opportunity to gather remarks from several people regarding their impressions of the moon landing.
The one thing that seemed to impress people the most was the fact that live pictures and sound had been transmitted more than 200,000 miles into their living rooms. They all agreed it made for riveting television.

J. S. Rush Jr., said he had been up to 1:30 that morning watching the coverage.
“It was just the most interesting thing I’ve seen on TV,” Rush said. “We did the things we set out to do. Everything has gone right.”
Thomas W. Orr was walking along Main Street when he stopped to talk with a Progress reporter. The recent University of Virginia graduate said he was “Psyched about the whole thing.”
Orr said what impressed him the most were the words Armstrong spoke when he first stepped foot on the moon surface — “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
“I didn’t think he would say anything worthwhile,” Orr said.

Armstrong’s simple, yet eloquent words, have become one of the most famous sentences ever uttered. What makes his words all the more meaningful, is that they were his own and didn’t come from a speechwriter.
Shortly before the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, Armstrong was asked about the statement. When had the sentence come to him?
“Well, it was…it was a statement that was natural in the sense of the time,” Armstrong said. “It was a step and a step, and I thought about it really after we got there.”

The bold headline on the front page of the July 21, 1969, edition of The Daily Progress declared “The Greatest Odyssey Of All Time.” On the dateline of each page “Moon-Day” was substituted for Monday.
July 20, 1969, had been one of those special days when people remember exactly where they were, and what they were doing. Some Virginians will remember it as the day an often repeated saying was born.
“Yeah, they can send a man to the moon, but they can’t keep my electricity from going out during a #%!& thunderstorm,” is one version.