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Monday, July 6, 2009

The 'Real' Moonwalk, forty years ago.


For the last few days, the media has been innundated with the sad news of the death of an all time Pop icon, Michael Jackson.The same man who made a dance step called the 'Moonwalk' a world wide phenomenon.

But if one was to go back to almost exactly forty years( 20th of July to be precise)a Moonwalk of a different kind,was taking place.This time on the moon itself....

As approximately 500 million people around the world people watched on their grainy television screens, Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11, alighted from his spaceship and walked onto the moon with the by now immortal words,"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Words that touched a deep chord in the hearts of one and all and reverberated all around the world.The second man on the moon,minutes after him was his very own teammate, Commander Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, who talked of the "magnificient desolation' of the Lunar landscape.

So as we wait for the Public Memorial to Michael Jackson, the 'moonwalker', tommorrow in Los Angeles, I thought it was an apt moment to talk about these two men and a total of only ten others since then, who have actually done the 'real' Moonwalk.


(The photograph above,shows the largest moon visible in fifteen years.Taken by me on the 12th of December, just ahead of the Al Hoota caves, Sultanate of Oman.)

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