Neil Armstrong

American astronaut, the first man to set foot on the Moon, on 20 July 1969, 10:56 PM EDT, with the quote, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He returned home to a New York City ticker-tape parade on 13 August 1969.

Armstrong got his private pilot's license on 5 August 1946 at the age of 16. He became a Navy aviator 1949-52, flying 72 combat missions in Korea. He was shot down once and was awarded three air medals. He became an aeronautical research pilot in 1955 and was selected for astronaut training on 16 September 1962.

He flew as backup command pilot of the Gemini space shot on 16 March 1966, when he made the first manual space docking. In May 1968, his jet trainer crashed and he parachuted safely from 12,000 feet. Armstrong was a crewman on the Apollo 11 on 16 July 1969, and made his historic first step on the Moon four days later.

He left NASA in 1971, becoming a professor of aeronautical engineering until January 1980. From then, he was semi-retired, playing golf three to five times a week. He kept his hand in with a cattle farm in Ohio. He flies his own plane, sits on the boards of various companies and is Chairman of the Board of Computing Technologies for Aviation in Charlottesville, VA.

Armstrong married in January 1956; he had a son, Eric, in 1957 and a daughter, Karen, in 1959 who is now deceased.

Armstrong underwent surgery on 7 August 2012, to relieve blocked coronary arteries. Despite the surgery, however, Armstrong died on 25 August 2012.