A world in pictures (literally)

This is quite literally the world in a picture, but this picture represents so much more. This photograph was taken by William Anders as they orbited the moon on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 on Christmas eve and saw the earth rise above the horizon of the lunar surface. This spaceflight was the first to leave earth's orbit and reach the moon, and represented the success of the American space program, and while it is often overshadowed by the success of the moon landing in the following year, this has been acclaimed as the most influential nature photograph. The astronauts that saw this were so inspired by this scene of the earth rising that they began to read from the book of genesis, and it reminded them of how insignificant everything seemed, and in later interviews they said that it was extremely humbling to be the first crew to orbit the earth, and even more humbling when they realized how small the earth was, and how precious it seemed. From this photograph, we got the first glimpse of the beyond, before this nobody knew what it was like to be this far away from earth and be able to look at all of life as we know it in an area no bigger than a marble. This is one of my favorite photographs of all time because it makes me wonder at how precious our little piece of rock that floats through space really is, and it is an extremely beautiful picture that represents not only our abilities as a species when we put our minds together, but also it shows our relative insignificance, which to me is a humbling thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_8_genesis_reading.ogg