On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the now famous line, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind," when he became the first person to set foot on the moon.
It fulfilled the almost as famous "We choose to go to the moon" line delivered by President John F. Kennedy to a crowd at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 12, 1962. In that speech the president declared that the United States would send and return a man to the moon by the end of the decade, which he stressed would be no small undertaking.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too," Kennedy said in the speech.
The landing on the moon was a major victory for the U.S. in the space race. The Soviet Union had been the first to launch a satellite into space. Less than a year and a half before Kennedy's speech, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human to travel into space.
President Kennedy was assassinated a little more than a year after the moon speech, but its achievement is regarded as an enduring legacy of his commitment.