Left to right: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, the crew of Apollo 11. Photo: NASA.

On this day in 1969, humans walked on the moon for the first time. The Apollo 11 spaceflight brought Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC.

Michael Collins, the mission's third member, remained in lunar orbit. All three men returned safely to Earth after an 8-day mission that began with a Saturn V rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida on July 16.

This was the fifth manned mission of NASA's Apollo program, which ran from 1963 to 1972 and included 6 missions that landed on the moon. These were the first and last times human beings set foot on another world.

NASA has a collection of restored HD videos well worth watching on this historic day.

Above: Side by side view of Apollo 11's descent on July 20, 1969, showing the view out of the lunar module's window side by side with the broader panorama reconstructed from LRO data. (via NASA.gov, Courtesy of GoneToPlaid)

And below, restored footage of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface.

Also worth visiting today: Google Moon.

(thanks, Miles O'Brien!)

LIFE.com has a beautiful gallery of Michael Rougier photographs from Japan in 1964: runaways, rock and rollers, biker gangs, "pill kids" and other Japanese teens. LIFE Magazine published some of these in September, 1964, but some have never before been published.

Above, the original caption from 1964: "Kako, languid from sleeping pills she takes, is lost in a world of her own in a jazz shop in Tokyo."]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/09/pill-popping-jazz-loving-japa.html/feed 8 http://boingboing.net/2012/05/04/psychedelic-ad-for-peace-corps.html http://boingboing.net/2012/05/04/psychedelic-ad-for-peace-corps.html#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 23:43:48 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=158738

Image Link. Boing Boing reader MewDeep, who has an awesome Flickr stream of '60s-'70s ad scans, points to this YouTube clip of a notable television commercial from 1968: it's a promo for the Peace Corps, set to "Age of Aquarius." As MewDeep excerpts here, the ad is mentioned in The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, by Thomas Frank.

Image Link. Boing Boing reader MewDeep, who has an awesome Flickr stream of '60s-'70s ad scans, points to this YouTube clip of a notable television commercial from 1968: it's a promo for the Peace Corps, set to "Age of Aquarius." As MewDeep excerpts here, the ad is mentioned in The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, by Thomas Frank.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/04/psychedelic-ad-for-peace-corps.html/feed 0 http://boingboing.net/2011/10/26/celebrate-the-birth-of-the-internet.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/26/celebrate-the-birth-of-the-internet.html#comments Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:17:13 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=126107 a grand-opening party this Saturday at the Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site on the UCLA campus. The site is like Colonial Williamsburg for nerds (or is that redundant?), with a historical reconstruction of the lab where the Internet was born in 1969.]]> a grand-opening party this Saturday at the Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site on the UCLA campus. The site is like Colonial Williamsburg for nerds (or is that redundant?), with a historical reconstruction of the lab where the Internet was born in 1969. The party starts at 1:00 pm. There will be drinks, snacks, and Internet pioneers to gawk at. They are not joking about the period costumes. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/10/26/celebrate-the-birth-of-the-internet.html/feed 0