First Moon Landing Stamps Commemorate 50th Anniversary

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin achieved something that had long been confined to the realm of science fiction when they landed a spidery spacecraft named Eagle on the Moon. A worldwide audience watched and listened when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon’s surface and famously said, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”

On the 50th anniversary of this first Moon landing, two stamp designs commemorate that historic milestone. One stamp features Armstrong’s iconic photograph of Aldrin in his spacesuit on the surface of the Moon. The other stamp, a photograph of the moon taken in 2010 by Gregory H. Revera from his home in Madison, AL, shows the landing site of the lunar module, Eagle, in the Sea of Tranquility. The site is indicated on the stamp by a dot. Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps.