I was 19, doing a summer job washing cars and delivering beer in Gibraltar. We had no money and had to sleep in Moroccan blankets on the beach.
That night was dead calm, the sky was clear but the moon was not full at all. Forty yards down the beach an American hippy couple had a small transistor radio with a failing battery. Sometime before midnight they cheered loudly when the Eagle landed and we ran over and asked to join them.
So there the four of us sat, yards from the quietly lapping waves, straining to hear the commentary on Voice of America. The astronauts stayed in the Eagle for hours, it seemed. The American girl fell asleep and her boyfriend had to keep waking her.
When Aldrin and Armstrong finally climbed out of the lunar lander we could barely hear anything from the radio, but we howled our heads off and all made giant leaps for mankind in the sand.
Within minutes the battery had failed. When we woke up the moon had disappeared too, and we had to pinch ourselves that any of it had really happened. But two days later we bought a Daily Express and saw photographs, so we knew.
What do you remember?
