Neil Armstrong: the famous astronaut in Pop Culture
Neil Armstrong
Exactly 91 years ago, on August 5, 1930, Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, a small town in Ohio. Almost since his birth he was passionate about flying and airplanes, at just two years old, little Armstrong was taken by his father to the National Air Races in Cleveland and had his first flying experience at just 6 years old on a Ford Trimotor in Warren. Perhaps not even he could have imagined that thirty years later he would enter history as the first man to set foot on the Moon (exactly on July 21, 1969 at 02:56:15 UTC).Read also: First Man , the conquest of the Moon as a life lesson
Neil Armostrong has not only entered the history of humanity - it is impossible not to remember the famous quote "a small step for a man, a big step for humanity" pronounced as soon as he set foot on the lunar ground -, but it has also acquired considerable importance in Pop Culture and therefore here we are to tell some anecdotes about the famous astronaut.
Neil Armstrong: a life dedicated to flight and to 'aeronautics
First of all, let's start by telling a little about the life of the astronaut. Neil had two younger brothers, June and Dean, and his father Stephen worked as an auditor for the Ohio State government while his mother Viola was a housewife. In his first 15 years, Neil and his family had to repeatedly move to the state in 20 different cities due to his father's job.Neil Armstrong's Birthday: Rare Unseen Pics Of The First Man To Set Foot On Moon
Today is the 91st birth anniversary of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the Moon, and in his honour, here are some rare pictures of the astronaut.
(Image: NASA)Born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong is remembered as the one who earned humanity an everlasting honour. He was an aeronautical engineer from Purdue University and an aerospace engineer from the University of Southern California. He even served as a naval aviator between 1949 and 1952 and flew 78 combat missions during the Korean war.
(Image: @spaceanswers/Twitter)In 1955, Armstrong then joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which was later renamed as NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. He flew more than 1,100 hours, testing various supersonic fighters as well as the X-15rocket plane. Then in 1962, Armstrong joined the space program with its second group of astronauts.
(Image: NASA/Lee Jones)On July 16, 1969, Armstrong, along with Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins, blasted off in the Apollo 11vehicle toward the Moon. four days later, the Eagle lunar landing module, guided manually by Armstrong, touched down on a plain near the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquillity. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong stepped from the Eagle onto the Moon’s dusty surface with the words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”.
(Image: @berniceh59/Twitter)Armstrong and Aldrin left the module for more than two hours and deployed scientific instruments, collected surface samples, and took numerous photographs. After 21 hours and 36 minutes on the Moon, they lifted off to rendezvous with Collins and begin the voyage back to Earth. The team was hailed for their part in the opening of a new era in the human exploration of the universe.
(Image: NASA)Armstrong resigned from NASA in 1971. He confined himself to academic and professional endeavours. From 1971 to 1979 he was professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio). After 1979 Armstrong served as chairman or director for a number of companies, among them Computing Technologies for Aviation from 1982 to 1992 and AIL Systems. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. He died on August 25, 2012, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(Image: NASA)
