New York Times July 21 1969

 Men Walk on Moon! The entire first section of the paper was all Moon-related. There were extensive transcripts of the dialogue between the astronauts and NASA, and a lot of general information articles that were written well in advance. Unfortunately the other, "regular" sections of the paper were missing.

There was a lot about the human interest side of the moon landing, though. Personally I found that more interesting. There seemed to be two main schools of thought. One was that we were on the cusp of a great age of exploration, and we would have extensive moon bases within the next 10-20 years. Others saw it as a distraction or even "act of war" and that societal problems, particularly urban riots, would get more and more frequent while money was wasted on space. Neither came to pass, of course. 

The Times interviewed 30 prominent individuals (28 of them men), who were more-or-less evenly divided on whether the moon landing was a good thing or bad.

Eugene Ionesco and Saul Alinsky more or less sum up the two political sides' reactions to the event.

Pablo Picasso had the best quote of all, though.

Another article was about how all kinds of random things were happening on Earth while history was made on the moon, including the Mets splitting a doubleheader with the Expos.

In Atlanta, Tony Gonzalez hit a grand slam in the Braves' 6-3 victory over San Diego. Thanks to the Braves' Home Run for the Money contest, Gonzalez's blast won $28,600 for "eight-year-old Estelle Hale of Statham, a cripple . . . Mrs. Hale will use the money to build a greenhouse."

Meanwhile, every advertiser wanted to tie their product to the moon one way or another. Easy for Chromalloy American, who helped build Apollo 11. For household cleaner Brillo, it meant a free moon map offer with proofs of purchase. It has a reminder to include the zip code, which was still pretty new and easy to forget if you weren't used to it. There's not expiration date on the coupon, maybe I should try to redeem it . . .