The big newspaper story for November 13, 1968 was NASA's announcement the previous day (yes, I missed the actual day) that Apollo 8 - with Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders - would fly to the Moon in December!
This decision had been made previously but was not announced publicly until all of the data from the Saturn V test flights and the successful Apollo 7 mission in October could be reviewed. Final approval for the world's first manned lunar mission was given by NASA administrator Thomas Paine on November 11, 1968.
Apollo 8, targeted for launch on December 21, 1968, would truly go where no man had gone before!
Source: Encyclopedia Astronautica
"[I]f we fail, then the whole world,…all that we have known and cared for…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that…men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”
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