Today we mark the 50th anniversary of American spacewalks, or EVAs (for extra-vehicular activity), the first of which was performed by NASA astronaut Edward H. White II in Earth orbit on June 3, 1965 during the Gemini IV mission.

While the United States had been beaten in the spacewalk race by the Soviet Union by almost three months (Aleksei Leonov performed the very first human spacewalk in March of the same year) it was nevertheless an enormous achievement for the country, NASA, and of course for Ed White too!

The video above shows footage of the historic EVA with a narration by White himself. (Sound begins about 30 seconds in.) Sadly, Ed White was killed two years later on Jan. 27, 1967 in the fire that claimed his life and those of fellow Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom and Roger Chaffee. But his legacy will live on each and every time an American astronaut suits up and opens a hatch to venture out into an alien environment, whether it’s in Earth orbit, on the Moon, on Mars, or somewhere we haven’t even thought of yet!

You can see scans of the original film photos from the Gemini IV mission here on ASU’s “March to the Moon” gallery, and check out NASA’s tribute to 50 years of spacewalks gallery here.