Environmental concerns had been sparked a few years earlier by a man we might now call a “citizen journalist,” astronaut Bill Anders. On Christmas Eve, 1968, at the end of an enormously turbulent rife with political upheaval, Anders photographed the earth from his perch on an Apollo spacecraft, for the first time depicting our planet as fragile and alone in the cosmos. Earthrise, as the photograph was called, was placed on a U.S. postage stamp and inspired Earth Day, celebrated for the first time by millions on April 22, 1970, sixteen months after Anders made the image.
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