MARJE Williams has marked the 30th anniversary of man's first trip to the moon - by brushing the dust off a scrapbook she compiled when history was made.

Marje was just 16 when she watched in awe as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon.

She was fascinated by space and would sit up with her father, Henry Busby, watching every development of the Apollo 11 mission.

And she created her own special memento of the event - a scrapbook charting the day-by-day progress of the crew's historic space flight.

Thirty years on Marje, of Langdale Road, Feniscowles, Blackburn, still has the scrapbook - which has become a little slice of history.

She said: "I logged it all and took newspaper clippings and everything. I even made an Airfix model of the lunar module, although I don't have that now.

"The scrapbook is looking a bit tatty now but I am glad I kept it." Included in Marje's own time capsule is a copy of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph's moon landing supplement.

The adverts in the supplement were all written with a space theme - from the card shop which suggested going away cards for anyone visiting the moon, to the space age sewing machines and the travel agent who couldn't send you to the moon, but could fly you to the sun.

Marje, a former nurse, said: "I think we were all fascinated by anything to do with space then. You never thought anybody would ever get to the moon.

"Now the space shuttle goes up and you don't think anything about it but then it was a great thing."

At one point Marje even had her own telescope which she would use to scan the heavens.

Marje continued to take an interest in space exploration and remembers well Helen Sharman's 1991 mission as the first Briton in space and the Challenger flight which ended in disaster only seconds after it took off in 1986.

But she said "People don't follow them like they used to because it is so commonplace.

"When you look back it is amazing how far technology has come in such a short space of time."

Also see LETTERS

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.