Fifty years ago today, while we were camped out in a bayou in Louisiana watching on a portable t.v., Neil Armstrong piloted the Apollo 11 lunar module, nicknamed The Eagle, to the surface of the Moon.  At 4:17 in the afternoon, he and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first human beings to land on another world.  At the time of the landing, the Moon and the two astronauts were 244,391 miles from the Earth. 

The third member of the crew, Michael Collins, continued to orbit the Moon in the command module Columbia. Alone in Columbia for twenty-one and a half hours, Collins maintained an orbit ranging from 62 to 76 miles, and when he was on the far side of the 2,160-mile diameter Moon, he was at least 2,222 miles away from the nearest human being, with no radio contact with Earth or his crewmates and a 2,100 mile-wide ball of rock between him and every other human who ever lived.

Think about that next time you feel isolated.

Also, today is yesterday was the day that was written about 33 years ago.