1970 New York Times article about the crippled Apollo 13

On April 17, 1970 I was working in downtown Chicago (aka the Loop). We were expecting the Apollo 13 was going to either return to Earth or never be seen again. It was going to be at lunch time so we went to a bar for lunch where there was a huge TV screen. We waited and the rest of the world waited. Then we saw as it happened what was left of the Apollo 13 appear from the clouds. Big long applause. I will never forget it. A disaster became one of America's greatest achievements.

The Pope thanked the Magic Man. Everyone else thanked NASA.

Wikipedia - Apollo 13

Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970, at 14:13 EST (19:13 UTC) from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the Service Module (SM) upon which the Command Module (CM) had depended. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to make makeshift repairs to the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17, 1970, six days after launch.

Wikipedia - Apollo 13, the movie

Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert, that dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission, is an adaptation of the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America's third Moon landing mission. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA's flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turning the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.

APRIL 18, 1970 New York Times - WORLD REJOICES AT SAFE RETURN

By MARTIN ARNOLD APRIL 18, 1970

For a few minutes yesterday, all over the world, people of every color and station and political belief seemed as one in their joy over the successful splashdown of Apollo 13.

In many American communities, church bells pealed the safe return of the three astronauts. Churches and synagogues offered prayers of thanksgiving.

Millions watched the splash down on television here and abroad, from Japan to England. The European Broadcasting Union said in Geneva that it might well be the biggest television audience of all time.

In English pubs there were cheers and drinks all around.

Thousands in Lima, Peru, got permission to take early lunch breaks from their work to watch the final moments of the drama.

In New York City, thousands watched the recovery in the Pacific on a giant television screen above the old New Haven Railroad ticket windows in the upper level of Grand Central Terminal.

There were nervous whispers of “They've got this far at least” and “It's amazing.” Three times there was long, loud clapping—once when the space capsule appeared on the screen high in the sky, then when it splashed into the Pacific and again when the astronauts limped out.

Along Madison Avenue, lunch‐hour strollers peered into the vast windows of the Mag navox showroom, and at the intersection of Vanderbilt Avenue and 47th Street a hotdog stand operator, Joe Lombardo, assured one and all that “it's all right.” Everyone knew what he was talking about.

Long strands of multicolored tickertape and bushels of con fetti were poured from the windows of many of the city's skyscrapers.

Recess at City Hall

At City Hall, a City Council committee meeting recessed for a minute of silent prayer.

Mayor Lindsay said: “This is a joyful day. Now they are safely back, and New Yorkers join with men everywhere in saying ‘Welcome home.’”

At the United Nations, the Secretary General U Thant, sent a message to President Nixon that said:

“The entire world is thankful and all men will long marvel at the unmatched combination of technological skill, courage and indomitable spirit which alone could safely bring them back to earth's embrace.”

In the Vatican, Pope Paul VI watched the splashdown on television. Then, a spokesman said, “His Holiness stood up and prayed and thanked God for the successful conclusion of the venture.”

In Canada. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau expressed “great relief,” and in England John Cardinal Heenan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, said “Thank God.”

Throughout Europe, streets emptied as people rushed home to watch TV. The telephone operator at the American Embassy in London was inundated with calls.

“People were sobbing with obvious relief and happiness,” the operator said. “I just don't know what to say to them.”

Church bells pealed in Gallup, N. H., and from St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York; traffic came to a standstill in Indianapolis; for a short time no crime was reported in Los Angeles; the dice briefly stopped rolling in Las Vegas.

‘Somebody Up There’

Rose Pollet, a clerk in the Detroit City Hall, said, “There was somebody up there with them.”

“Thank God this thing is over; I think I got an ulcer worrying about it,” said 49‐year‐old Thomas G. McCarthy Jr. in Pittsburgh.

“I was scared to death those chutes weren't going to open,” said Naomi Haley, a secretary in the Tennessee State Capital. In Des Moines, Iowa, a cook, Patsy Riedel, said: “I'll sell my ticket to the moon real cheap. It's a relief they're back.”

Assistant Police Chief Raymond J. Stratton of Indianapolis looked at the tangled traffic and said, “I guess everybody was either looking at TV or parked listening to their radio.”

A department store manager in Richmond, standing behind a crowd of people watching television in his store, summed up the splashdown moment this way:

“Everybody had a quiet smile, but it was curious the way they stood looking at all that good news—silently and almost as if they were still praying.”

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A version of this archives appears in print on April 18, 1970, on Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: WORLD REJOICES AT SAFE RETURN.