“HE WAS A TOURIST, a quarter-million miles from home. And like any traveler, he wanted to bring home a special memory.

So Apollo16 astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr. came up with a plan. Several months before his scheduled 1972 mission to the moon, Duke receveid permission from NASA to leave behind a family photograph. The picture—of Duke, wife Dorothy, and sons Charles III and Thomas—was taken by a friend in the Dukes’ Houston, Texas, backyard several week before the April 16 liftoff.

Astronaut Duke was given intensive photography training prior to the mission. He was taught about f-stops, exposure, and learned how to operate a custom Hasselblad camera. He took thousands of practice pictures and hundreds on the moon. But he never considered himself much of a photographer. “Just a point-and-shoot man,” he said decades later.

In the final hour of the final day of his three-day visit to the moon, Duke took out the shrink-wrapped family snapshot and gingerly placed it on the lunar surface, near the crater Descartes. It was a gift, his message to whoever might one day stumble upon it. He then took a snapshot of a snapshot. Evidence. A memory.” (Who We Were by Michael Williams, Richard Cahan and Nicholas Osborn, Chicago Cityfiles Press, 2008, p. 238).

Actually, he took at least three snaphotd : AS16-117-18839, AS16-117-18840 and AS16-117-18841, though the last one is clearly the best shot.

Previously on Skandalon: Apollo, Nicholas Osborn.

Banksy: “TV has made us into monsters” (drawing).

The excitement of playing with white squares.

”Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette, also known as The Bicycle Thief) is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi Bartolini and was adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini. It stars Lamberto Maggiorani as the poor man searching for his lost bicycle and Enzo Staiola as his son.” (Wikipedia)

“Joan Aldrin (C) applauding her husband, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, as she watches TV coverage of splashdown at end of mission.” Houston, TX, US. Photo by Vernon Merritt III, July 24, 1969.

Splashdown time was 12:50:35 p.m. EDT.

”Morse stresses that the feat of the moon landing was accomplished not by supermen or a few geniuses, but by a huge team of smart, imaginative people working incredibly hard. “It’s tough to remember that the goal of going to the moon was set by JFK less than 10 years before. We had rocket technology, but really no technology to get up there, and land, and then get back. We had to dream it up, and then build it. NASA, in just a few years, made a spacecraft that could do that. When you think of it, of how talented and dedicated all of these apparently ordinary guys were … Looking back, it’s all just so incredible.”

“No photographer spent more time with the Apollo 11 astronauts than LIFE’s Ralph Morse, who for years — and especially in the months leading up to the July 16, 1969 lift-off — chronicled the crew’s public and private lives. Forty years later, Morse spoke with LIFE about the astronauts, the moon landing, and rare and never-before-published photographs capturing that heady time. Above: A never-published photo of astronaut Michael Collins and his wife Pat with their children (from left, Kate, Michael Jr., and Ann), Houston, Texas, March 1969.”

All things amazing: “The Torero and his family” by Wolfgang David (photographer), Alicante, Spain. B/W Art print, published 1966, in Germany.