It’s one of the most immediately recognizable photographic sequences ever made: Ralph Morse’s dizzying pentaptych capturing the July 16, 1969, liftoff of Apollo 11. Here, in five narrow frames, we witness and celebrate a distillation of the creativity, the intellectual rigor, the engineering prowess and the fearlessness that defined the best of the Space Race.
But for all of their emotional and historical heft, Morse’s pictures also present a question: How the hell did he do that?
In 2014 Morse, who died later that year at the age of 97, spoke with LIFE.com, and briefly described how the sequence came about.
“You have to realize,” he said, “that the rocket had to go through the camera, in a sense. It had to go through the camera’s field of view. It took me two years to get NASA to agree to let me make this shot. Now, RCA had the camera contract at Cape Canaveral at that time, and they had a steel box with optical glass attached to the launch platform. We negotiated a deal with them and I was able to put a Nikon, with maybe 30 or 40 feet of film, inside the box, looking out through the glass. The camera was wired into the launch countdown, and at around minus-four seconds the camera started shooting something like ten frames per second.
“It was probably less than an hour after liftoff when we rode the elevator back up the launch tower and retrieved the camera and film from inside that steel box.”
In addition to the launch sequence this gallery also includes a photo of Neil Armstrong’s wife, Jan, with sons Erik and Mark, watching the launch of Apollo 11 from the deck of a boat rented for them by LIFE magazine. The scene, as captured by LIFE’s Vernon Merritt III, is a quiet reminder that the mission to the moon was not only an epic public spectacle. It was also a human adventure, shared by the astronauts and those closest to them.
The gantry retracted while Saturn V boosters lifted the Apollo 11 astronauts toward the moon, July 16, 1969.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Jan Armstrong, wife of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, and her sons watched the rocket’s liftoff.
Vernon Merritt III The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
For millions of people who witnessed the Apollo 11 mission, watching on television or following it on the radio as humanity improbably, literally walked on the moon, the event perhaps did not feel quite real until, more than two weeks later, LIFE published its definitive account of the epic journey.
Waiting two weeks was simply the price one paid for getting it right. One look through the page spreads in this gallery (we recommend viewing all of the slides in “full screen” mode) makes it clear that, with this special issue, LIFE created not only the best first draft of history around the 1969 lunar landing, but produced an astonishingly comprehensive, coherent and, at times, poetic account of what LIFE’s editors called “history’s greatest exploration.”
As Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and command module pilot Michael Collins reached out for destiny all those years ago, 500 million people around the world watched in awe as the grainy black-and-white television footage beamed back to Earth from the cold surface of the moon and it seemed then, for America, that anything was possible. In a sense, LIFE magazine shared in that triumph, as it had rigorously followed and reported on the soaring successes and the tragedies of America’s space program since well before President John Kennedy, in 1961, challenged the country to set foot on the moon.
Less than a decade after JFK’s bold proclamation, America did just that. This is what it looked like, and what it felt like, to be a part of it for the three men who flew, and for the countless others on Earth who watched, and marveled, and willed the trio safely back home.
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969.
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. July 20, 1969: “Neil Armstrong’s booted foot pressed firmly in the lunar soil. . . .”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “In orbit 63 miles high the Lunar Module approaches the landing zone.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “The Eagle has landed.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Buzz Aldrin eased down Eagle‘s ladder, paused on the last rung and jumped the final three feet.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Aldrin’s gold visor mirrored Eagle and Armstrong, who took most of these pictures.”
LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Aldrin walked from the Lunar Module to set up two experimental packages—the laser beam reflector and the seismometer.”
LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Adrin made final adjustments to the seisometer, left behind to monitor possible moon quakes. Earlier he unfurled the ‘solar wind sheet,’ designed to trap tiny particles hurled from the distant Sun.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Nine hours after his arrival, man had littered the moonscape with his paraphernalia.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “On the windless plain Aldrin saluted the American flag, stiffened with wire so that it would ‘wave’. . . .”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Eagle landed 125 feet west of a rock strewn-crater, several feet deep and 80 feet across.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Left: Aldrin inspected the condition of the Lunar Modules footpad. Right: The view from Eagle‘s window after the walk.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “The simplest mark of man’s first visit footprints in the fine moon sand.”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “As seen at some distance from Columbia, Eagle rolled left and closed for rendezvous 69 miles above moon …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Eagle turned its docking port towards Columbia moments before hookup. earth is in upper right corner of large picture …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Tired but triumphant Armstrong got ready for the trip back …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Left:The plaque left behind with the Lunar Module’s descent stage. Right: Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong heroes of history’s greatest exploration …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Three kids bound for the moon. From left: Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Neil Armstrong: He could fly before he could drive …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Despite a relentless schedule Armstrong sometimes found moments for normal family life …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Away from work Armstrong enjoyed a few frivolous moments …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin: ‘The best scientific mind in space’ …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Aldrin is like most astronauts, an exercise buff who spends nearly an hour a day keeping fit …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Aldrin with his wife and daughter …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Mike Collins: An engineer who does not love machines …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Before the moon flight Collins spent time at home with his family …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Collins with his wife and daughter …”
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “A Calendar of Space Flight: Man’s Countdown for the Moon …”
LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “A Calendar of Space Flight: Man’s Countdown for the Moon …”
LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “A Calendar of Space Flight: Man’s Countdown for the Moon …”
LIFE Magazine
LIFE magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “A Calendar of Space Flight: Man’s Countdown for the Moon …”
LIFE Magazine
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Unlocking the ancient mysteries of the Moon …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Anatomy of the Lunar Receiving Lab …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “What the Moon Samples Might Tell Us …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “What the Moon Samples Might Tell Us …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “So long to the good old moon …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “So long to the good old moon …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “The dawn of the day man left his planetary cradle. Right: Armstrong led the way from gantry to spacecraft …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Apollo 11 lifts off …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Journalists— nearly 3,500 of them from the U.S. and 55 other countries — watched in hushed expectant awe as Apollo began its slow climb skyward …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Jan Armstrong raised a hand to ward off the bright morning sun and watched her husband’s spacecraft rear toward a rendezvous with the moon …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “At Disneyland (left) hundreds gave up ‘moon rides’ to watch the real thing. While in Manhattan people cheered and worried in front of huge TV screens. Las Vegas casino crowds paused over Baccarat (below) and passengers jammed a waiting room at JFK airport (right) to watching Armstrong’s walk …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “The moonwalk was broadcast live in London (left) and other world capitals, although Moscow viewers (right) had to wait several hours for an edited version. Pope Paul got a telescopic close-up of the moon, while South Koreans clamored around a 20-foot-square TV screen. GIs read of lunar adventure …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Andy Aldrin watched with grim determination as his father set foot on the moon, while at the Collins home Pat and friends followed the walk on two television sets. Joan Aldrin collapsed on the floor in happy relief when Eagle lifted safely off the moon …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “The fiery sideshow as Apollo comes home …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “The capsule was first righted by floatation bags. Then as astronauts in special insulation suits watched, frogmen scrubbed it down with disinfectant. (right). Apollo crew waved as they entered quarantine aboard [the recovery ship] the USS Hornet …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “In Houston the splashdown joy was personal and intense. NASA workers leaped from their consoles waving flags, and at home Jan Armstrong (below left) beamed and sighed in relief. Joan Aldrin applauded as Buzz Aldrin struggled into the raft and Pat Collins served champagne to a house full of happy friends …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin grinned jubilantly from inside their quarantine chamber on the carrier Hornet before their flight home to Houston …”
Life magazine Special Edition, August 11, 1969. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind …”
New York’s Central Park has been around, in various incarnations, since the mid-1800s. In that time it has been hailed as a masterpiece of landscape design; served as a punchline in jokes about muggings and violent crime; provided the setting for key scenes in books, plays and movies; and remains, for New Yorkers and for countless visitors to Gotham, one of the world’s urban wonders 840 acres of tree-lined paths, public plazas, open fields, gardens, ponds, lakes, bridges, arches, performance spaces, a castle on a hill, a quite charming zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Here, LIFE.com celebrates Frederick Law Olmsted’s and Calvert Vaux’s best-loved and most-frequented creation with a series of photos from 1961.
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Dancers in Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Unicyclist in Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Warming up before a soccer match, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Central Park 1961
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A painter in a secluded spot, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Rowers on the Lake in Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fishing in Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sunbathers cooling their feet, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene near the Boat House, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Model sailboats in Conservatory Pond, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A memorable boat launching.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dogs in a fountain, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Chess players, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Water fountain, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In a wonderland for climbers a bronze Alice got cluttered by children who’d scrambled over the Mad Hatter and other Lewis Carroll creatures.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Newly graduated students strolling past folks dancing ring-around-a-rosy.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Out for a morning ride.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Central Park 1961
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Elephants in Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Seals in Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Kodiak bears, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Couple on a bench, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Coming down from a horse-drawn carriage, Central Park, 1961.
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Central Park 1961
Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Muscovites who wandered into GUM, the USSR’s premier department store, one weekend in June 1959 were treated to an extraordinary scene: a trio of willowy French models, dressed in vibrantly colored suits, greeting shoppers and posing for commissioned photographers LIFE’s Howard Sochurek among them.
The models parading through Moscow that day were in the Russian capital ahead of a five-night Christian Dior fashion show. Yves Saint Laurent had recently taken over the brand’s Parisian atelier and reimagined the seductive “New Look” for which the House of Dior had been known. Gone were the corseted jackets, crinolined ballerina skirts and towering stilettos, replaced instead with practical blazers, loose skirts and shorter kitten heels.
While Dior was undergoing its transformation, so too was the USSR under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier who envisioned a more liberal, dynamic future for his country. The world of Soviet fashion would not be exempt from “Khrushchev’s Thaw,” as the government brokered person-to-person exchanges with Western design houses to help revitalize the Soviet fashion industry, and French couturiers like Dior were especially coveted as guests.
Of all the designers to pierce the Iron Curtain during the 1950s, Saint Laurent’s Dior paired most harmoniously with Soviet reality. After all, the newly refashioned “New Look,” with its functionalist philosophy, embodied the socialist-realist trope that form should follow function, that art should accommodate reality, and that the masses rather than the elites should determine what it meant to be “cultured.”
Yana Skorobogatov is a doctoral student studying history at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dior Fashion Models in Moscow, 1959
Howard Sochurek The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In early 1946, photographer Ed Clark journeyed to Paris (“the grand courtesan of all cities,” LIFE called the ancient town) to record the look and the feel of the French capital less than a year after the end of World War II. The pictures he made there chronicle not the cheerful, bawdy Paris of the popular imagination, but a place that, as LIFE told its readers, was a “grim and depressing disappointment” for any visitors expecting the Paris of Maxim’s, the Ritz, the Folies Bergère, the Moulin Rouge and the city’s other legendary, libidinous diversions.
The Parisians themselves, meanwhile, were “cold, hungry, confused and tired above all, tired too busy keeping themselves alive to bother much about entertaining. . . . [The typical American GI in Paris at the time] felt cheated. Where was the Paris he had heard about?”
The Paris [of Clark’s photos] is the Paris of the Parisians and of anyone else who will take her. She is unadorned, somber and beautiful. Most of the pictures were taken in mist or rain, when the sharp, clean lines of the city’s spires and the bridges pierce through a curtain of gray. This is the Paris that neither Germans nor GIs could change. Even in the age of the atom bomb, she is as indestructible as the river.
For his part, like countless travelers before him through the centuries, Ed Clark fell under the spell cast by the great, gorgeous city. In fact, the Tennessee native once claimed that, at the time he got the assignment, “I didn’t know where France was, let alone Paris.”
But when he came upon a young painter in Montmartre (slide #6 in this gallery, and Clark’s personal favorite photo from his entire career), he found it “so beautiful that I just started shooting.”
View along Quai du Louvre (today Quai François Mitterrand) down the Seine toward Ponte Des Arts with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, 1946.
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Arc de Triomphe
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Churning up the Seine, past Notre Dame, on a gray winter day.
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Exiting the Metro
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The Arc de Triomphe
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Painting Sacre-Coeur from the ancient Rue Norvins in Montmartre, Paris.
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Moulin de la Galette, Paris
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The famous stalls along the Seine
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
View across the Pont Alexandre III bridge toward the Grand Palace
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A small sister of the Statue of Liberty beside the Seine, 1946.
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Street scene
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Near the Pont Neuf steps
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Scene on the Seine
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Selling flowers on the banks of the Seine
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Pont Alexandre III bridge
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The Conciergerie, on the Ile de la Cité
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Rowboats on the banks of the Seine
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
View of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacré-Coeur
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Montmartre cemetery, winter 1946.
Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Passerelle Debilly bridge on a foggy winter day with the Eiffel Tower in the background
There are few more lasting emblems of immigration to the U.S. than Ellis Island—the portal through which some 12 million immigrants entered America between 1892 and 1954. By some estimates, a third of the population of the United States more than 100 million people can trace their ancestry to immigrants who first arrived at Ellis Island
Near the end of that long run, in the fall of 1950, LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt went out to the island in Upper New York Bay to make some pictures. The rough machinery of politics had brought confusion and delay to the processing of thousands of men, women and children looking to step on to American soil. But beyond chronicling the impact that political rivalries in Washington were having on real lives, Eisenstaedt’s pictures also encompass a more permanent truth about the immigrant’s journey, and these images mirror photographs made at Ellis Island decades before.
Many of the pictures in this gallery were never published in LIFE, but some appeared in the Nov. 13, 1950. The story explained the photos, and the situation on the island, this way:
The flat, 30-acre island in New York Bay is not what European Communists gleefully call it—”that well-known concentration camp.” But Ellis Island is today a gray and gloomy place suddenly full of bewildered people who have become victims of American politics.
The trouble began with an unfortunate law, the McCarran Communist control bill. The bill, designed to exclude subversives, was so loosely drawn that it excluded harmless and desirable aliens as well, people whose only crime may have been membership in the Hitler Youth at the age of 9 or enrollment in a Fascist labor union when joining was a prerequisite to eating. Last September, President Truman vetoed the bill. Congress re-passed it over his veto. [In the ensuing power struggle, would-be] immigrants were caught up in this political wrangle, and “delayed” beyond reason on the little island.
LIFE then went on the describe the “flood-tide activity” at Ellis that the great photographer Lewis Hine documented in the early 1900s activity that slowed to a trickle (1,300 a month vs. 3,000 a day in 1906) by the late 1940s and noted that for the first time in decades, the island was “again full of deeply human scenes.”
The new aliens, photographed here by LIFE’s Alfred Eisenstaedt, look the same, have old-country clothes and the same wide-eyed, insistent children. The old buildings, with their huge, tiled rooms, and wire-mesh partitions, are still the same. But this time, because the inspectors must examine not only the bodies and finances of the aliens but their past political connections as well, the atmosphere is gloomier and there are long, inexplicable delays filled with anxiety. . . . [Some] are held for several days. Most of them wind up at a high pitch of exasperation, crying, “Why don’t you ask me now what I think of your beautiful country? Why don’t you ask me now?” Only a few, like Professor Arrigo Poppi, who came from the University of Bologna to study medicine at Harvard, retain their humor. “I came here to study the heart disease,” he said, “and instead I get the heart disease.”
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.
Antonio Magnani coped with his children and fat briefcase holding his entry papers, Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Twenty-four-year-old Schulim Pewzner, a rabbinical student from Warsaw, Poland, at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaed; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The Saturnia docked at at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaed; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaed; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Rachel and Schulim Pewzner, from Warsaw, Poland, interviewed at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Maria Nadalin of Italy, seated at left of the table, was worked on by an inspector-stenographer-interpreter team.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Exhausted parents in recreation hall tried to keep their child amused and quiet. Most of them put up with endless piggyback riding, hair-pulling—anything—to get relief from the bewildered crying.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
In the women’s dormitory, separated from husbands, wives sat silently on their beds. At right is Maria Palmerini of Italy, who came for a six-month visit. She received the same treatment as those who were staying.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Rachel Pewzner, 20, and her 24-year-old husband, Schulim, at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A tired child is ready to go to sleep with his head on the dining-hall table. American food was sometimes too strange for aliens. There was a kosher kitchen for orthodox Jews.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Boarding a ferry at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Rachel Pewzner, 20, and her 24-year-old husband, Schulim, at Ellis Island, 1950.
Alfred Eisenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock
On a ferry in New York Harbor, looking at lower Manhattan, 1950.
