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To mark our 175th anniversary year, we feature a different front page each week from past editions of the Ottawa Citizen. Today, July 21, 1969.
A grainy image showing astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin planting the U.S. flag on the surface of the moon, under the headline “A happy Moonday, world!” greeted Citizen readers on July 21, 1969, just hours after Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind made history.
The Apollo 11 astronauts, the newspaper reported, first set foot on the lunar surface “like children hesitatingly approaching the water at the ocean shore.”
An estimated 650 million people – almost one-fifth of the world’s population – watched on their TV sets as Armstrong took those momentous first steps, a record audience at the time.
“It was man’s greatest, boldest adventure,” announced the Citizen, “and as he became the first human to stand on another planet, the whole world was looking over his shoulder.”
