Image: Pline.
In 1966 on this date, the unmanned Soviet probe Luna 9 became the first man-made object to make a soft landing on the Moon. While the entire spacecraft descended to the surface, a landing capsule was ejected just before impact (16 feet, or 5 meters, above) for the soft landing, and sent back photographs of the lunar surface for study. You can read all the details about the probe at NASA’s information archive page here.
