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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hobbes" data-source="post: 1746371" data-attributes="member: 3371">When Armstrong took those first few steps away from Eagle, nearly 600 million people watched. The Moon landing was the most watched event in television history; such an unprecedented audience provided unprecedented media opportunities. At the Nixon White House, presidential advisers had been planning for weeks how the chief executive and first lady would respond to Apollo 11. The President would call the astronauts the day before their liftoff, while the first lady would call the astronauts' wives. After a successful Translunar Injection, Nixon would proclaim July 20 a holiday Moon Day "allowing all Americans to watch the Astronauts' activity." Once Armstrong and Aldrin were safely on the surface, the President would make the world's first "interplanetary" congratulatory telephone call from the Oval Office, during which he would express his pride in the American space program's achievement. He would also state his belief that the Moon landing had given the world "one priceless moment, in the whole history of man [in which] all the people on this earth are truly one."Documents from the Nixon presidential materials in the National Archives capture the painstaking preparation and planning for these events. A commemorative "first-day issue" stamp, made from a die carried to and from the Moon by Apollo 11 and held among the Nixon presidential materials, preserves the words of that telephone conversation.From the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2003/summer/20-july-1969.html" target="_blank">National Archives</a></blockquote>

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