TIME

Men of the Year reunite after 50 years to reflect on a historic moon voyage

From left: Anders, Borman and Lovell, photographed on Oct. 6, at the Chicago museum where their Apollo 8 spacecraft is displayed

MOST YEARS HAVE AT LEAST A LITTLE something going for them, but 1968 was awful from the start. On just the 23rd day, North Korea seized the U.S.S. Pueblo, killing one sailor and holding the rest prisoner; on the 30th day, the start of the Vietnamese holiday of Tet, the Viet Cong launched a massive military offensive that cost more than 35,000 lives on both sides; on the 95th day, the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered; on the 157th day, Senator Bobby Kennedy’s murder followed; on the 233rd day, Soviet army tanks crashed into Czechoslovakia; on the 241st day, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago descended into violence.

The year was shaped—and soaked in—the blood that was shed. And then, on the 359th day, there was poetry. Three days earlier, the crew of Apollo 8—Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders—had rocketed

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from TIME

TIME5 min read
No Recession? Thank Women
Remote work allowed Alyson Velasquez to juggle her demanding roles as a Wells Fargo talent recruiter and as a mother of two young children, including a son with special needs. The flexibility made sense both for her job, working with hiring managers
TIME3 min read
A One-trick Pony With Many Lives
If you didn’t grow up with a well-worn copy of Sounds of Silence, Bookends, or Bridge Over Troubled Water among the LPs stacked near the family hi-fi, your parents or grandparents probably did. From the mid- to late 1960s, the sounds of Simon & Garfu
TIME2 min read
Wiigging out in 1960s Palm Beach
Vietnam. Stonewall. Charles Manson. Woodstock. These are the touchstones that define 1969 in our collective memory. But in the Palm Beach of 1969, as conjured by the delightfully deranged Apple TV+ soap Palm Royale, they barely register. The resort c

Related Books & Audiobooks