This day marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the moon. Three american astronauts, Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins fulfilled President John F. Kennedy‘s goal and a whole nation’s dream of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before 1969 came to a close.

Over 400,000 people and billions of dollars in human and material investment for an 8-day long utopian journey there and back. And they did come back to tell the story. In pictures, even. Here to commemorate a brilliant day in Humanity’s history, certainly one of the most memorable of the 20th century, we link you to an astonishing set of high-resolution photos published by The Boston Globe’s online website in The Big Picture.

Also visit NASA’s Apollo 11 40th Anniversary website and for a nice piece of memorabilia, here’s a link to July 1969′s issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, with a 14-page antecipation special on the event.

Families crowded around black-and-white television sets in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take man’s first steps on the moon. Now, they’ll be able to watch the Apollo 11 mission recreated in real time on the Web, follow Twitter feeds of transmissions between Mission Control and the spacecraft, and even get an e-mail alert when the lunar module touches down. Those features are part of a new Web site from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum commemorating the moon mission and Kennedy’s push to land Americans there first.

(read more @ Physorg.com)