No one had been to the moon
As of 1968, no one had stepped foot on the moon. The following year, on July 20, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin would do just that. President Richard Nixon—along with about 500 million people around the world—got to watch the whole thing happen on television. Today, NASA has expressed interest in getting people back to the moon; but the space administration has loftier, goals too—of taking people to Mars.