By Zach Hester, Reporter • zach@southerntorch.com

PHOTO: (Universal History Archive/UIG/SH)

USA -— If you ask anyone around my age (mid-twenties) "What year did we go to the moon?," I can almost guarantee that a song from the Disney Channel original television series Even Stevens is likely what pops into your head. The lyrics go like this: “We went to the moon in 1969 / Not 1968 but the year after...we went to the moon in 1969 / Not 1970 but a year sooner.” 

The song may be a corny way to remember the day that our world grew a little bigger, but regardless, it’s a solid reminder of the day that the United States of America, the greatest country in the entire world, placed a man on the moon.

This Saturday, July 20, 2019 is the 50th anniversary of that legendary event in modern history. Back in 1969, an estimated 530 million people watched the broadcast. 

President Kennedy said in 1962, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

The celebration of this crowning achievement may have been at Houston’s Johnson Space Center here on the face of the Earth we know so well, the real triumph was taking place on the surface of a brand new world. The long-awaited goal was achieved. A man was walking on the moon.

As we dare to dream of what the next great voyage into the vast expanse of space (Mars, perhaps) will be, it’s important to remember those words from one of our greatest commanders-in-chief. On the anniversary of this feat of modern science, we need to remember this goal that inspired us to a higher calling and will encourage us to achieve the impossible once again.