By the time I was born, mankind had gone to the moon. Gone, come back, gone again, and then some. In fact by the time I was born, mankind had left the moon for the last time, and by the time I was old enough to know about it, more than a decade had passed and the great adventure of manned space exploration was already becoming consigned to the history books. It was probably a book from which I first learnt about space travel. If it was, I remember it well. It was small, maybe twelve by eight centimetres. I think it was about the Apollo 17 mission but that wasn't important. From that book, I saw pictures of men on the moon; of spacecraft and lunar rovers. I doubt I could read at the time but that didn't matter. Somehow, maybe my father told me, I knew it was in the past; but aside from a mild confusion as to why it was all over, that little book with its collection of photos provided the spark for my fascination with space. Little did I know how far that spark would take me... For Jamira - June 2016
Aaahhhhhh the space. TV's sci fi series like the early Dr. Who and Blakes Seven on SkyChannel made me become interested into space. I woke up at 6, switched on SkyChannel and didnt understand anything. But it was awesome ! It would be cool if all of those great space game devs from around the world would join forces abd create 1 universe, with different planets, diversity, races...oh wait...Entropia is...nevermind...
Thank you so much for the dedication. I can tell you the prequel to your story from my side wich lead to the same result for me ... At July 20th 1969 we sat in front of the b/w-TV in the evening since hours. Finally at 9 pm (UTC+1 for Germany) it became serious and at 9:17 pm Neil Armstrong (Commander of the Apollo 11 mission) radioed: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!”. The first time mankind landed at another planet ... okay, moon. And we were live present when it happened. We jubilated and this was the first time ever I was allowed to drink a cognac (at the age of 15). We stayed with it during all night - pretty boring btw ;-) - until Neil Armstrong set his foot onto Moon's surface - around 4 am. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!” he said. > Yes, this was truly one of the most important and impressive nights of my life. Later someone of our friends from West Germany (I lived in East Germany and it was forbidden to bring print media from west to east by our government during times of cold war) smuggeld a part of a Reader's Digest Book through East Germany's border controls with colour photos and the story of the complete mission Apollo 11. It was 3 mm thick only but it became my bible for the following years. I made a sticker for myself of the mission sign by painting over an official propaganda-sticker: Again later I got a Revell modelkit of the lunar lander from our friends in West Germany. Still pretty amazing to remember this night! Nowadays Elon Musk announced that SpaceX will send the first Dragon-transporter within two years to Mars. An interesting step - nearly 50 years after the Apollo program and 120 years after Constantin Ziolkovsky published his thoughts about flying to space.
Wow the east west divide... I can't imagine what that might have been like - for some reason I never imagined I would know someone who lived through it. One of my first "world event/news" memories was the Berlin wall coming down. I was barely old enough to understand really. I wonder if there were any other events before that which I may have remembered. About the space thing, a few years ago the BBC ran the whole tape as it was live back in the day for many hours. I watched the whole thing. It was awesome!
Hmm I had a look at stuff that happened from here: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe70s/worldevents_01.html I only have memory of these things: The first cases of AIDS are identified. (vaguely - was probably stuff from later - but I seem to have a vague recollection of AIDS being "new") Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer. (we had a street party) Scientists announce the discovery of hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. The space shuttle Challenger explodes after launch from Cape Canaveral killing all seven aboard. Nintendo introduces the hand-held Game Boy Geroge Bush elected U.S. President. A terrorist bomb destroys a Pan-Am 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground.
Well, if one of your first world events you can remember was the fall of the Berlin Wall ... you are damn young from my point of view ;-) To show you why: One of MY first world events I can remember was the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 ;-)
