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NASA Television Commemorates Apollo 8 Christmas Eve Broadcast WASHINGTON -- NASA Television will honor the 40th anniversary of the historic Christmas Eve broadcast by the Apollo 8 crew with special programming Dec. 24 and 25 on the NASA TV Public Channel (101). Forty years ago, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders became the first humans to visit another heavenly body as they successfully orbited the moon in their Apollo 8 spacecraft. On Dec. 24, 1968, the three astronauts devoted one of their mission's six live television transmissions to reading from the biblical book of Genesis during what has...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

The Adler Planetarium has the first Christmas message from space: the 1968 flight manual from Apollo 8 containing verses of Genesis. The three crew members took turns, on live television on Christmas Eve, reading the opening passages of the Bible, starting with, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth. ..." "It was a natural. It's really the basis of most of the world's religions," Apollo 8 astronaut and Lake Forest restaurateur James Lovell said in an interview last year. Historian Robert Zimmerman, writing in his book Genesis: The First Manned Flight To Another World, called it "the...

Even though I wasn't born until 1970 I still like to listen this.. You can view the video here: Apollo 8

NASA told them to say something. And so they did. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. . . .'' The trio of astronauts of Apollo 8, speaking from space on Christmas Eve in 1968, quoted from Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It was, opines historian Robert Zimmerman, "the most profound Christmas prayer ever given by any member of the human race.'' "It was a natural. It's really the basis of most of the world's religions,'' said James Lovell, an Apollo 8 astronaut who has lent the flight manual containing the verses to the Adler...

Up to six days ago my post automatically carried my tagline. Abruptly that stopped. If I do not enter it manually, it does not post. Clues as to why? And I can't seem to figure out to fix it. This is apparently one of my duh days.

December 25, 2003, Christmas DayA Message to Earth Apollo 8 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on December 21, 1968. It was the first mission to the moon with a crew aboard, and its purpose was to orbit the moon in preparation for a future landing on the moon. On Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit and the crew began to relay back to Earth live television pictures of the moon and the Earth. They ended their broadcast by saying: “For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to...