Walking on the Moon!

Forty-two years ago on July 20, 1969, mankind accomplished a wondrous thing: "we" walked on the moon. When Neil Armstrong took those first moon steps, we walked with him.

Click this link to see a video of that first moonwalk:

Neil Armstrong walking on the moon (Photo: NASA)

Facts about the moon walk...
Sources: nationalgeographic.com and nasa.gov

1. The Apollo 11 trip to the moon took 3.5 days.
It included 3 astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Collins was the only one who did not walk on the moon; he managed the controls from inside the command module, the Columbia.

2. When Armstrong and Aldrin landed the landing ship, the Eagle, on the moon, they landed with only 20 seconds left of fuel.

3. The American flag is not the only thing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left on the moon: The astronauts also left "mementos for fallen peers."

4. The landing was highlighted with alarm bells going off in Apollo 11's command module because of the intense stream of data the on-board computers were receiving. It was "just distracting," said Aldrin.

5. The astronauts spent 21 hours on the moon and 3 weeks in quarantine upon their return.

6. The command module, the Columbia, is on display in Washington, DC at the Air and Space Museum. Part of the Eagle, the lunar lander, was jettisoned into space and part crashed into the moon.

7. Though the United States was the first country to put men on the moon, the Soviet Union was the first to send a satellite into space (the Sputnik, October, 1957), the first to send animals into space, and the first to send a man into space.

8. The very first animal in space was Laika, a dog. (Laika did not survive.)

9. In April, 1961, the Soviets sent the first man into space. In May, 1961, the United States sent the first American into space: Alan Shepherd. The race to the moon had begun.

10. The last person to walk on the moon was Eugene Cernan of the Apollo 17, the last manned space craft to travel to the moon. Cernan's colleague, pilot Ronald Evans, also walked on the moon. The Apollo 17 landed on the moon in December, 1972.

Let It Fly!

To find find out how to fly the flag and other flag etiquette, see USFlagstore's  Flag Etiquette 101 and USFlagstore's How to Fly the Flag at Half-Staff.