The Apollo 11 moon landing | 24 July 1969 edition
As the peak of the space race, and perhaps the crowning glory of the American century, the arrival of two US astronauts on the moon on 20 July, provided a chance for writers such as Anthony Tucker to write a first draft of history. His account of the Eagle’s landing remains thrilling 50 years on. Meanwhile, Alistair Cooke, the Guardian’s famous US correspondent from the mid-40s until 1972, took in the response from those in the US watching, for days on end, on television.
Other stories in this edition include optimistic news about France no longer standing in the way of the UK joining the common market and news that the Sun newspaper, founded five years earlier, would likely fold by the end of the year. Of course, Rupert Murdoch bought the title a few months later and the rest is … history.
3.56am: man steps on the moon
By Anthony Tucker
Men are on the moon. At 3:56 am on Monday morning – nearly four hours ahead of schedule – Armstrong, the lunar module commander, opened the hatch and clambered slowly down to the surface of the moon. Minutes later Aldrin followed him down the steps of the ladder – already renamed Tranquility Base – to join in this moving, clumsy culmination of eight years of intense dedication. It was the fulfilment of a dream which men have shared since the beginning of recorded history.
The decision to walk early was made three hours after the lunar module Eagle had made a perfect landing at 9:17pm, four miles downrange from the chosen site. The spacecraft was steered manually to clear a boulder-strewn crater “the size of a football pitch”. It was a moment of extraordinary tension and silence.
The lunar module curved gently down over the Sea of Tranquility, the drama heightened by the calm, almost casual voices of the astronauts and the mission controller at Houston.
The casualness was deceptive: from 500ft above the surface and all too aware that an error could lead to irretrievable disaster, Aldrin brought the spacecraft down under Armstrong’s direction. At the moment of approach Armstrong’s heartbeat rose from its normal 70 to 156. Yet his voice was calm and flat: “Contact light: engines stopped? The Eagle has landed.”
The landing was perfect. Spaceflight Centre and the world seemed momentarily stunned by emotion: only Armstrong, Aldrin – and above them, Collins – seemed unmoved at the end of the drama which began with a characteristically laconic acceptance of the “go” for separation of the lunar module shortly before 7 p.m.
“You got a bunch of guys who’re about to turn blue”, said the Houston space controller, when the module had landed. “We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.” […]
Ten minutes after landing Aldrin radioed: “We’ll get to the details of what’s around here, but it looks like a collection of just about every kind of rock. Colour depends on what angle you’re looking at?”
The close look already began to bile the image gained from centuries of examining lunar reflectivity – for that is what we see by – and the more detailed examination from orbit by man and camera. And from there, in the Sea of Tranquility, the colourful earth is simply bright. “It’s big, and bright and beautiful,” said Armstrong.
They said they had no difficulty in adapting to the moon’s gravity. The conversation from the moon’s surface came through loud and clear.
Separation began on this side of the moon, but the descent itself – the journey to which President Kennedy committed his nation eight years ago – began with a firing of the lunar module’s motor after a long separating half-orbit on the far side of the moon and out of touch with the control centre back at Houston. The world waited for the static-filled radio silence to be broken by an astronaut’s affirmative. After what seemed on earth to be an age, the disappointed millions who had hoped to watch the first steps of separation on television, at last heard a calm and distant Armstrong confirm that the landing trajectory was good. The first minor miracle had been performed.
From that moment, with the tension mounting second by second and with the minimum of interrogation from earth, or from the orbiting Collins, the lunar module bore Armstrong and Aldrin downward, using its motor as a brake and slowly tilting until it was upright and ready for landing.
Bloody Sunday | 5 February 1972 edition
Writing in the Guardian in 2010, reporter Simon Winchester recalled the “90 minutes [that] will stay with me for as long as I live”. Shortly after 4pm on Sunday 30 January 1972, during a Civil Rights Association march in the Bogside area of Derry, 14 people were killed by gunfire from British paratroopers – one of the defining horrors of the Troubles. As well as Winchester’s eyewitness story, this edition of the Weekly featured Les Gibbard’s cover cartoon lamenting the deaths; Simon Hoggart’s report on the aftermath in Bogside; and Ian Aitken on the establishment of the tribunal run by the Lord Chief Justice. The battle for justice for those killed on Bloody Sunday continues, with an unnamed British paratrooper being charged with murder in March 2019.
The Derry Killings
By Simon Winchester, Derry
The tragic and inevitable Doomsday situation which has been universally forecast for Northern Ireland arrived in Londonderry on Sunday afternoon when soldiers, firing into a large crowd of civil rights demonstrators, shot and killed 13 civilians.
Fifteen more people, including a woman, were wounded by gunfire and another woman was seriously injured after being knocked down by an armoured car. The army reported two military casualties and said that its soldiers had arrested between 50 and 60 people who had been allegedly involved in the illegal protest march.
The shooting lasted for about 25 minutes in and around the Rossville Flats area of Bogside. Where only moments before, thousands of men and women had been drifting slowly towards a protest meeting to be held at Free Derry Corner, there was a handful of bleeding bodies, some lying still, others still moving with pain, on the white concrete of the square.
The army’s official explanation for the killing was that their troops had fired in response to a number of snipers who had opened up on them from below the flats. But those of us at the meeting heard only one shot before the soldiers opened up with their high-velocity rifles. And, while it is impossible to be sure, one came away with the firm impression, reinforced by dozens of eyewitnesses, that the soldiers, men of the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment, may have fired needlessly into the huge crowd.
The death toll at 7.30pm, three hours after the shooting, was confirmed as 13, all men [another died four months later from gunshot injuries]. An Army statement at 7.30pm said that after an hour of heavy stoning, men of the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment moved into the William Street and Rossville Street areas. “They went in to arrest people in the crowd and chased several men who were running away,” the statement said. “While this operation was in progress, gunmen operated up from the rubble at the base of the Rossville Flats and soldiers returned the fire. Casualty returns are still coming in.”
At about 3.30pm, men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Greenjackets, in William Street, endured ten minutes of heavy stoning before opening up on the mob with CS gas and a large water cannon, drenching hundreds of marchers and journalists in purple, indelible dye. Until about 4.15 the mob was engaged in a fierce tussle with soldiers. Huge quantities of gas and hundreds of rubber bullets were fired at this stage and many of the rioters were injured. Then, at 4.05pm, a single shot was fired in William Street, presumably by an IRA man. The Provisional [IRA] had been under strict local orders to keep their guns at home and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association stewards did their best to keep order and look out for gunmen.
Shortly before 4.15pm Mr Kevin McCorry, the civil rights organiser, began to walk through the crowd, telling them through a megaphone that Miss [Bernadette] Devlin, Mr [Ivan] Cooper, and Lord Brockway were to speak [at Free Derry Corner].
As this meeting was getting under way four or five armoured cars appeared in William Street square, and people began to run away. Paratroops piled out of their vehicles, many ran forward to make arrests, but others rushed to the street corners. It was these men, perhaps 20 in all, who opened fire with their rifles. I saw three men fall to the ground. One was still alive, with blood pumping from his leg. The others, both apparently in their teens, seemed dead.
The Hillsborough tragedy | 23 April 1989 edition
On 15 April 1989, 96 Liverpool fans travelled to Sheffield for a football match and never came home. The crush in the Leppings Lane end of the Hillsborough stadium ruined hundreds of lives and changed British football for ever.
The chaos at the ground and the failures by police were highlighted in a Guardian editorial published two days after the disaster. It addressed the opening of gate C (which led to the crush), the organisational and policing failures, and foresaw some of the modernising conclusions of the 1990 Taylor report.
It took until April 2016, after the longest inquest in British legal history, to determine that the victims were unlawfully killed and that failings by the police and ambulance services contributed to their deaths.
Down the tunnel to total disaster
Guardian editorial
It was, individual acts of heroism apart, a tragedy without any redeeming feature. It was a professional event, organised by professionals. And it was the most awful, dislocated, deadly botch. If you look for an image to remember it by, think of the inert bodies carried to ambulances on advertising hoardings, because no one had enough stretchers.
Nothing went right at Hillsborough on Saturday. What went wrong? Too many arrived too late. Hold-ups on the motorway. Too many, from Liverpool, were siphoned into the smaller end of the ground. There were no early checks, as was normal and expected, for ticket holders. So there was a frantic scrum outside the ground, before the choked turnstiles, which threatened life. A gate was opened. A great surge of late fans poured into the central pen, crushing scores – mostly kids – who had arrived early, with tickets, against the wired remembrances of East Berlin that now ring our soccer grounds. Police central control – with TV monitors – could not even control the death toll. The melee outside became a melee inside whilst, on adjacent terracing, there was space a’plenty. The public address system produced scant relevant information for almost an hour. Life-saving equipment wasn’t to hand or in working order. Ambulances didn’t realise the dimension of the disaster.
There will be a public inquiry. It will pass harsh judgement on the performance of the police, condemning the decision to give Liverpool fans the smaller ticket allocation, the lack of barriers away from the turnstiles, the confusion on the ground and the paucity of coordination on high. But that is only the beginning. After [the 1987 fire on the London Underground at] King’s Cross, heads rolled and millions have been spent to make sure such a horror does not recur. After [the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over] Lockerbie, the entire fabric of airport security has been taken apart and woven together again. Sheffield on Saturday demands as serious a response.
Football has been scarred by increasing violence. That was a social and a political problem. From Hillsborough you may piece together the story of how one problem gave birth to another. Liverpool fans were nonsensically given the Leppings Lane end because, since they had to be segregated, that was the easiest for traffic flow from Merseyside. The perimeter fences against which they died were there to stop them, like their predecessors, pouring onto the pitch. But, in the process, a trap was sprung upon dozens of innocent victims.
Football fans are not animals. The iron pens, which prevent escape, have to be dismantled. The European system of moats, allowing access in desperation to the pitch, has to be adopted. If that – or any parallel relaxation – produces additional hooliganism, so be it. The game, only a game, can always be stopped.
Terraces on our big grounds pack in more spectators than the seated areas where no surges can occur. Installing all seats would cost money. So what? The clubs have never struck a balance between transfer fees and civilised facilities for the millions whose five pounds a time make them possible. If Hillsborough, with a good safety record, can stage a tragedy of this dimension, how many more of our decaying stadiums are waiting in line?
Unless there is now a mighty response to refurbish our football grounds – and to accept that any additional risk of hooliganism will spell nemesis for the game – it will surely happen again.
The fall of the Berlin Wall | 19 November 1989 edition
On 9 November 1989, the most potent symbol of a divided Europe was torn down. After months of protests, the East German communist authorities announced that their citizens could travel freely to West Germany, 28 years after the erection of the 3.6-metre-high wall that became synonymous with the iron curtain. A stream turned to a torrent as East Germans flooded across the border. In one night, the political map of Europe was redrawn.
Within weeks, the communist regimes of Czechoslovakia and Romania fell. On 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified and Chancellor Helmut Kohl was poised to lead the union of east and west. This editorial looked ahead with optimism to a post-cold war Europe.
The Berlin Wall crumbles into history
Guardian editorial
They crossed the border with incredible joy, amazement, tears and good humour. They sang and sparkled, above, below and beside the Berlin Wall. It was one of those very rare, absolutely electrifying, moments when the ordinary lay people take over and all the professionals – from prognosticators to border guards – get quietly out of the way. From the sidelines we should now be thinking big, electric thoughts about a future where so much, as yet barely definable, is possible.
Germany is a country on the verge of reunification in spirit – never mind yet about the jurisdictional details. The process under way simply sweeps aside the natural hesitations of history about seeing one Germany once again. It also sweeps aside any real chance of tanks or troops or anyone else standing in the way. The victims of Beijing died so that everyone else would realise that this is now the unacceptable and dead-end alternative.
The crumbling of the Berlin Wall also signifies definitively the end of the superpowers’ cold war in Europe. Those flickering black-and-white images of the Berlin airlift can go back to the film archive room. The long-obvious truth is now openly revealed. Politics, not weapons, kept Europe divided. Our own former defence secretary, Mr George Younger, seen briefly yesterday going on about the “absolute preponderance of Soviet troops in Europe, needs to take a deep breath and have a word with his American friends, who have themselves fallen into reflective silence.
Anyone who now proposes to modernise short-range nuclear weapons should have his (or her) head examined. Perhaps it will need a tactical redeployment of generals without jobs. But we should start the advance planning for the decommissioning of the deterrence machine now.
There is no denying that the centre of European gravity is going to shift as a result of the German earthquake. No one can be quite sure that some new fault line will not appear. It is very important not to encourage, in appearance or reality, a situation where East Germany simply joins “the western camp”. That would be to create a fresh imbalance – another reason why the dissolution of one monolith must be accompanied by that of the other. It would be the surest way of providing Mr Gorbachev’s critics with destructive ammunition. The Soviet Union (unlike, we should note, the US) has always insisted that it is a European power, and will be rightly alarmed if a new Germany merely enlarges the other Europe. It is preferable to see the re-emergence of a Germany linked to the rest of Europe, but essentially its own arbiter.
There are shadows in many minds, of course there are shadows. But West Germany, over 40 years, has developed the most prudent of democratic credentials, the most wise and cautious of voting patterns. Germany with its entirely new human face is the formidable economic power on the European – and world – scene. If reunification is a challenge, it can only be met by wider European cooperation.
Looking even further ahead (but if ever there was a stimulus to vision it is now) we begin to understand the potential behind the idea of Mr Gorbachev’s common European home. A Europe where national rivalries are subsumed by economic cooperation, where military budgets are cut to ceremonial levels, where the wealth is at last available not only to tackle long-neglected evils at home but to pay for a genuine fight against poverty, injustices and ecological disaster in the rest of the world.
Genocide in Rwanda | 17 April 1994 edition
Hundreds of thousands had already died in the bloody quarter-century of conflict between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi. Then, on 6 April 1994, a plane crash killed the neighbouring countries’ presidents, both Hutu – this became the flashpoint for a Hutu-led genocidal campaign against Tutsis (and moderate Hutus). Between 500,000 and a million people were slaughtered before the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front brought the worst of the violence to an end in July.
Mark Huband’s report from Kigali (first published in the Guardian on 12 April) covers the initial explosion of violence, in which 15,000 people were killed in just a few days as United Nations troops stood by.
Rwanda gripped by death
By Mark Huband, Kigali
A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. He pulled at her clothes as she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate, terrified hope that they could save her from her death.
But none of the troops moved. “It’s not our mandate,” said one, leaning against his jeep as he watched the condemned woman, the rain splashing at his blue United Nations badge.
The 3,000 foreign troops now in Rwanda are no more than spectators to the savagery which aid workers say has seen the massacre of 15,000 people – mainly from the traditionally dominant Tutsi minority.
The killing started after President Juvénal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart – both from the majority Hutu tribe – died in a rocket attack on their plane last week while returning from peace talks. His presidential guard and the Hutu-dominated army unleashed a campaign of terror. Opposing them is the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, dominated by Tutsis.
The Belgian and French troops are here to get foreigners out. So far they have ferried about 1,000 from an assembly point at the French school to military aircraft. Rwandans, including staff of international organisations, are left to their fate.
About 275 Rwandans staying in one hotel have been barred from leaving on European military aircraft, a Belgian Red Cross employee said yesterday. “All of them are Tutsi. They are going to be assassinated. It’s disgusting that they don’t take them. We are going to publish [their names] when we get to Belgium,” he said, before being evacuated with his Rwandan wife.
The splintering of the city between the RPF and different sections of the armed forces has perpetuated the anarchy. Evacuation convoys between the school and the French-controlled airport travel via muddy backroads to avoid the city centre which is -controlled by civilian and military bandits intent on killing and stealing from whoever falls into their hands.
Less than a mile from the airport yesterday army trucks filled with foreign evacuees were blocked when they drove into a massacre where machete- and knife-wielding Rwandans lined the roads smiling as their victims lay dying. On the way to pick up the evacuees, the convoy had passed the bodies of two newly killed men sprawled in the muddy courtyard of a house. As the convoy returned past the same house less than an hour later, the body of a woman and two more men lay with the two already dead, their eyes wide open. The woman had had one of her legs cut off.
Watching the convoy were the killers – young men, two women with clubs, old men and children. Close to one body stood a man with a clipboard in office clothes. Beside him stood a well-armed government soldier in smart uniform.
At Antoine de Saint-Exupéry school, French troops lay on the roof with guns trained on the deserted road outside as the names of evacuees were read out in the courtyard below. Halfway up a hill less than a mile away lay a pile of corpses. From nearby houses women, old and young, were casually led to the pile and forced to sit down on it. Men with clubs then beat the dead and dying bodies which surrounded the women as they sat, screaming, pleading for their lives.
Suddenly the men turned on the women. They beat them until they no longer moved, then went to find more people to kill, within view of the school where the evacuees packed their children, pet dogs, teddy bears and suitcases into trucks.