Aug 25
“Man on the moon! Whew! Boy.”
That’s all that Walter Cronkite could think of to say on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, who died on Saturday, first touched down on the surface of the moon. The CBS anchor was, like everyone else in the world, rendered speechless by the scale of what he had just witnessed. He clapsed his hands together and grinned boyishly, and then sat back to watch.
Armstrong’s feat was, to put it mildly, a big deal, and the historic nature of the event was reflected in the way the media covered it at the time. The New York Times, for instance, has only used 96-point type on four occasions in its history: the resignation of President Nixon, the 9/11 attacks, the election of President Obama, and the moon landing.
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