‘The Space Race’ was a defining factor in the ‘Cold War’. The Soviets beat the US 2 times; first with their orbiting satellite “Sputnik” and second with the first human who ever went in space, Yuri Gagarin.
However, the race wasn’t over yet. The moon was the ‘finish line’ that determined who won. That’s why the US did everything they could to win, maybe even cheat (winning would not just mean who has a bigger ‘stick’, but a global political and technological domination).
A significant bunch of the world is still skeptical if we really stepped on the moon. Recently, NASA uploaded just about every image captured by Apollo astronauts on lunar missions, which you can find on their Project Apollo Archive Flickr account. There are some 8,400 photographs in all at a resolution of 1800 dpi, and they’re sorted by the roll of film they were on Source
Here are some of images:
