Christopher ByrneandAndre Guirardboth wrote about the first step on the moon, 40 years ago today.
When that happened, i was just 3 1/2 months old, since I was born in March 1969. So I have no memories of that event, or even the other Apollo missions. However, in 1977 or so, I did read a book about the Apollo 11 mission. It was a thick book, several hundred pages (I was an early reader), and in July 1979 I re-read that book, following along pretty much in real time. We were on a family vacation to southern Sweden and Germany that week, I remember.
Then in 1981 I was all excited about the Space Shuttle. The launch was delayed several times, I remember following the countdown at the school library (they had a TV there) and I was even allowed to leave the class a few minutes early. The launch was delayed several times, and finally me and my best friend ran home to me, since I lived 10 minutes from school. After waiting for over an hour, the launch was postponed several days/weeks.
The day of the actual launch, we were driving down to southern Sweden again. I followed the countdown on the radio, and as the launch was a minute or so away, we came to a small roadside restaurant. I basically forced my dad to pull over and ran in, just in time to see the engines firing up on the TV there. My sister wondered what all the excitement was about, she was about 9 or so at that time…