The Day The Eagle Landed

It was a Wednesday on July 16, 1969 when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins were launched into the history books. The whole world was watching Neil Armstrong as he took that "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." CBS This Morning Correpondent Hattie Kauffman interviews veteran CBS newsman Walter Cronkite as he remembers the moon landing.

In 1969, Walter Cronkite narrated the miraculous trip to the moon for millions of Americans. "The significance of the moon landing is undoubtedly that man escaped his environment on earth for the first time and landed on a distant orb called the moon. That is the accomplishment in my mind, that it's going to be living 400 years from now as a date that school children will memorize even as we memorize 400 years later the landing of Columbus in America," says Cronkite.

His excitement echoed across the globe. In every city, on every street corner, the moon mission was just about the only thing people were talking about.

"This is the greatest thrill I've ever witnessed," said one man, and a child commented, "I think this is pretty good, 'cause a hundred years ago they'd think it was crazy to fly up there."

"You know, when they landed on the moon, all I could say was, 'Wow, gee whiz!' I was speechless, first time in my life, and on the air. I was actually speechless," says Cronkite.

Six hours after landing, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were frolicking on the moon.

All these years later, with fresher images of a space station and a Mars Rover clouding our memory, it is easy to forget how truly risky this mission was, but Cronkite still remembers.

"To land that thing on the moon and to be sure that we were going to get it down on a surface that we'd only been able to survey by robotic devices, and get it down in the right spot, and then to be sure that with that foundation on the moon we were going to get that rocket to fire, to get it back to rendezvousÂ…The anxiety was high, I can assure you, both in Houston and right there at our BS booth in New York," Cronkite remembers.

For all the fear, for all the anxiety, man conquered the moon and found no cheese, no aliens lurking behind lunar rocks, only the wonders of another world.

Or, as Buzz Aldrin expressed it that July 20, 1969, they found "Magnificent desolation."

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