Apollo 8 Launch

Forty Years ago today three astronauts did the unthinkable!

Apollo 8 was launched to orbit of the Moon and return. The year was 1968.
I was 14 years old at the time and remember and followed the whole mission, especially the live broadcast from the Moon on Christmas Eve and the reading of Genesis from the Bible as the pictures were shown. I have a DVD of the broadcast and brings back many memories of that Christmas in 1968!

After launching on December 21, 1968, the crew took three days to travel to the Moon. They orbited ten times over the course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first 10 verses from the Book of Genesis. The crew timed this reading to coincide with a full view of planet Earth hanging in the empty blackness of space while clearly showing the rich diversity of the living planet as indicated in Terran colors, seas, landforms, and weather patterns, rising over the dull gray horizon of the lifeless Moon. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.