What major historical events do you remember?

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July 20, 1969, was the date that I will never forget.

At the time I was a student teacher undertaking a teaching practice round at the prototype of a one-teacher school on the campus of Claremont Teachers College in Perth.

Practice teaching in those days required a great deal of focus and concentration. Thoroughly prepared lessons and rigorous assessments were the order of the day.

But on this particular day, everyone downed tools when it came to occupation. In essence, everything about teacher practice was suspended for the day. Instead, three or four hundred of us who were involved with training were seated in a rather long room with our eyes glued to its reasonably small black-and-white television set at the front and up on the podium.

For several hours we sat and waited while the Apollo mission readied for the descent onto the moon Neil Armstrong.

The pictures were extremely grainy and the reception broke up from time to time; all of us suffered from eye strain that day.

But the exhilaration that came to us all when Armstrong finally set foot on the moon’s surface and made his statement about “one small step for man one giant step for mankind”, was an utterance I will never forget.

After Armstrong‘s descent came Buz Aldrin and we watched while the flag was planted and various other processes were carried out.

I went home that night with a roaring headache but was ecstatic at the history that I along with so many others, had witnessed that day.

There are many days in my memory that I remember as commemorative, but this one “The day that man walked on the moon” tops the lot.