Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

1968 was a difficult year. The Vietnam War dragged on.

The nation reeled from the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

Riots had erupted in cities across the United States,

including at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. And yet, at the end of this year,

something happened, that as one person later wrote, saved 1968. A dramatic scene unfolded on

Christmas Eve and involved NASA's Apollo 8 mission, the first manned spaceflight to reach

lunar orbit, and a definitive moment in the space race between the Soviet Union and the

U.S. The Soviets had plans to send their own manned spacecraft to the moon, but the Americans

were now outpacing their rivals. Enter Apollo 8, led by commander Frank Borman, and astronauts

Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.

They were to leave on December the 21st, 1968, and be the first human beings to orbit the moon.

Of course, all space missions, especially back then, involved significant risk. But the maneuvering

needed to enter the lunar orbit was incredibly precise, and the chances for success

were slim. But these men succeeded, and at nearly 240,000 miles away from Earth, just before 5 a.m.

on Christmas Eve, 1968, they became the first humans to see the far side of the moon.

The Apollo 8 crew completed 10 orbits around the moon. They took photos and

scoped the terrain to identify spots for a future moon landing. During these orbits, Bill

Anders captured one of the most iconic photos in human history and ever taken from space.

His shot of the Earth rising from the other side of the moon was later entitled Earthrise. And back on

Earth, the largest TV audience ever at the time, tuned in to hear the astronauts broadcast from space

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