John Noble Wilford, the New York Times’s science writer who wrote the front-page story about the moon landing 40 years ago, has a terrific essay about it in today’s paper.

It then occurs to me that if Columbus and Capt. James Cook were alive, they might be less astonished by two men landing on the Moon than by the millions of people, worldwide, watching every step of the walk as it happens.

Here is how he wrote his famous first sentence:

I think of what I will write. I have never made a practice of composing a draft story in anticipation of a success, or alternative drafts for failure. I trust myself to draw inspiration from what happens, thinking spontaneity will serve me better and endow the story with the energy of immediacy. But now, phrases and disconnected sentences spill out of my wakefulness.

I get up and read the articles I have written about the mission up to now. Reporters may feel impelled to write of the next day’s events as the culmination of the space race, the achievement of an ambitious national goal, a historic triumph. I swear to myself that I will not use “historic” in my top paragraph.

I reach for my notebook and try several opening sentences. They must be put on a strict diet. I cross out adjectives. I eliminate clauses that are superfluous and sound too much like heavy music for a movie soundtrack. I begin again: “American astronauts landed.” No, too restrictive and chauvinistic; it will be clear soon enough that the astronauts are American and the goal of a decade has been achieved.

I finally get to the irreducible essence in one short sentence: “Men have landed and walked on the moon.”