Moon Township and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing 40 years later.

The 20th of JULY, 2009
From Yahoo.com/News
By Ted Anthony/Associated Press
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Space: Is the final frontier all it used to be?

MOON, Pa. – On July 22, 1969, barely 48 hours after a human being first stepped onto the moon's surface, a community in Pittsburgh's western suburbs called Moon Township had a parade, as suburban communities do.

Understandably, Moon had achieved some notoriety in the weeks leading up to Apollo 11's lunar landing. And on this day, it named Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins honorary citizens and lowered an "astronaut" from a hovering helicopter into Moon Park.

And why not? This was a time of great joy. The Pittsburgh Press was editorializing about the "Moondust Glowing in America's Eyes." The downtown district's "Moonday" shut down offices and some businesses. The Foodland supermarket announced a sale that promised "out-of-this-world specials" to customers: "We've gone lunatic!"

Moon was also the home of Pittsburgh's airport, where soaring into the sky in a metal bird remained a romantic notion. These were still the days when, as TWA once put it, you could climb aboard "super-skyliners" that were "skyclubs by day, skysleepers by night."

We are 40 years older now, we Americans. And many things have changed.

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In this photo made July 7, 2009, a sign marks the shopping center named Moon Plaza in Moon, Pa.. Forty years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, space occupies a very different place in the popular culture.
(AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)