The first men to walk on the Moon arrived July 20, 1969, after a nerve-wracking search for a safe landing spot. The lunar lander carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had been headed for a crater full of boulders, but Armstrong flew it manually to land beyond the crater. The ship had 10 to 40 seconds of fuel left when it touched down.
Armstrong stepped out onto the surface first, at 10:56 p.m. Eastern time, followed 20 minutes later by Aldrin. Armstrong intended his first words from the surface to be "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" but he failed to say the "a" in his rush.
Armstrong took all the photographs, so Aldrin is featured in all the high-quality pictures from the Moon's surface; the only photos of Armstrong are grainy shots from a 16-mm automatic camera in the lander.
When the pair ended their surface tour, they discovered that the lunar dust they'd tracked into the lander smelled like gunpowder or spent cap pistols. Michael Collins, the third man on the mission, remained in lunar orbit with the command module.