The American landing on the moon happened on July 20, 1969 (Sunday). Mankind’s first step was taken on the moon on July 21 (Monday)
Sometime after that, I was in church on a Wednesday evening at prayer meeting. That was an occasion for testimony and for prayer. One of the church’s deacons stood up and announced that it was ridiculous to think that human beings had landed on the moon. The reason, he said, was that you could hold up your thumb and the end of your thumb would completely blot out the entire moon. How, he asked, could human beings land and stand on something that small?
I was in my early twenties, plenty old enough to recognize that what the deacon has said was just crazy. He clearly had no idea of perspective, the notion that a small object could blot out the view of a larger object if the larger object was sufficiently distant … something one could learn quickly in a lot of ways but especially if you have ever tried to draw a scene with some objects nearby and larger objects far away. Read more…