5 things you may not know about Neil Armstrong

 5 things you may not know about Neil Armstrong

 He had many close calls in flight

Several people remember Armstrong as the calm commander who landed Apollo 11 on the Moon in 1969. But it took him decades of flying to gain the required experience to safely navigate the spacecraft.

Armstrong first got his pilot’s license at age 16. After graduating high school in Ohio in 1948, he took part in Purdue University and had his tuition paid for by the Holloway Plan. The program had him attend his first 2 years at Purdue, then leave for 2 years of flight training and one year of aviator service with the U.S. Navy before returning to campus to complete his final two years.

While serving in the Korean War in year 1951, Armstrong was flying low at 500 feet and 350 miles per hour. His plane hit a wire the North Koreans had connected  up to damage low-flying planes. The wire ripped 6 feet off his right-wing. Armstrong flew his plane toward the ocean and away from enemy tract . He eliminated over the water, but the winds dragged his parachute back toward land. To his surprise, an American military vehicle soon growled by and picked him up. The driver was a friend from a flight school.

He had musical talents

While completing  his bachelor’s in aeronautical engineering, Armstrong even joined a fraternity and had a bit of fun. For the school’s university Varieties, each fraternity had to present a short musical review. Armstrong twice wrote and led his fraternity’s musical, containing a version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It shows he paid too much attention to the musical, and he got a C that term in psychology for engineers, a C in aircraft vibrations and a D in electrical engineering.

Armstrong even met his first wife, Janet, at Purdue University where she was studying home economics. The couple wed in year 1956, and Armstrong began working as a test pilot after graduation. They moved to the California where Armstrong took a job at Edwards Air Force Base. Whenever he flew over their house, Armstrong would tip the plane wings to say “hello” to his wife and young son under .

He was a Individual person

Armstrong’s 2nd child, Karen, died at the age of three in 1962. She had a tangle  on her brain stem and later died of complications from the illness. Friends and colleagues  remembered he aged quickly while this time and kept quiet about his loss. One friend from Purdue recalled he returned to the Indiana for the school’s homecoming events. Their group of friends met for cocktails, and Armstrong broke down after seeing a friend’s young daughter in her green party dress.

Soon after his daughter’s death, Armstrong determined to apply to a new NASA space project. When NASA 1st convened Project Mercury to pursue human space flight, Armstrong was inappropriate because he was a civilian, not a military pilot. In year 1962, NASA began a new project and invited civilian pilots to apply. Armstrong initially hesitated, but he and his wife wanted to leave the California after losing Karen.

He flew several , many missions

Armstrong was chosen for NASA Astronaut Corps in September 1962, but he wasn’t decided NASA’s top guy. He flew his 1st mission as backup crew in year 1965. He continued to serve on crews for space flights until the November 1967 when he was chosen to command the Apollo 11 on a lunar mission.

The White House wished the commander to be a civilian, and NASA leaders picked Armstrong both as the commander and the first one to step out of the lunar module and onto the Moon dust. Several people suspected the higher ups chose Armstrong because of  his likable persona. Armstrong was known for his quiet confidence, and he never took any shortcuts on his way to creating  history.

When Armstrong walked on the Moon on the July 21, 1969, he said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He later claimed he told “a man” and the tape has been examined over the years to see if an ‘a’ was indeed present.

He still had to defend his master's thesis

After his historic Moonwalk, Armstrong got invitations to meet with dignitaries worldwide. He became a household name, but he still had to affect his thesis committee the hard way.

Armstrong had finished his coursework at the University of Southern California for a master’s in aeronautical engineering while still working as a test pilot in the California. In year 1970, he returned to USC and successfully passed an oral aegis of his thesis.

Armstrong left NASA in year 1971, moved his family back to the Ohio and took a professor position at the University of Cincinnati, where he remained for the next 8 years. He remained joined with NASA and he served on different commissions, containing the one that investigated the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

He continued to fly nice into his 70 s. When he died at the age of 82 in year 2012, he donated several  of his personal papers to Purdue University, containing the staggering 70,000 pieces of fan mail.