After undergoing cardiac bypass surgery in August of 2012, Neil Armstrong seemed to be
recovering just fine, at which point reportedly some of his nurses removed wires that had
been temporarily attached to his pacemaker.
What followed was internal bleeding which, in turn, led doctors to drain the blood instead
of choosing to operate to stop the bleeding.
Ultimately he died today in history, August 25, 2012, at the age of 82.
What followed was a legal battle that eventually saw the hospital threatened with having the
details of the lawsuit publicized if they didn’t pay a settlement.
The hospital then gave in, with some among Armstrong’s family receiving portions of
a $6 million settlement for alleged malpractice on the part of the hospital workers.
The details of what exactly occurred in Armstrong’s last days have largely been kept out of the
public eye owing to a non-disclosure agreement as a stipulation of the settlement.
That said, Armstrong’s wife, Carol, was very public about her opposition of the lawsuit
in the first place, noting Neil would not have approved of it, with Carol further saying
in an interview, “I wasn’t part of it.
I want that for the record.”
Whatever happened exactly, after Armstrong’s death, then President Obama stated, “Neil
was among the greatest of American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time.
When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried
with them the aspirations of an entire nation.
They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable
— that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible.
And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered
a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”
So how did Neil Armstrong come to be one of the most legendary explorers in human history?
Funny enough, it all started with his late application being clandestinely slipped into
the application pile when it technically should not have been.
You see, Armstrong turned his application in to NASA about a week after the June 1,
1962 deadline, making him ineligible for that historic second round of astronaut hirings.
Lucky for Armstrong, Dick Day, who was the one to encourage Armstrong to apply in the
first place and was working at NASA as the assistant head of Flight Crew Operations,
clandestinely slipped Armstrong’s application into the candidate resume folders before the
applications were reviewed by the selection panel.
Said Day, “I really don’t know why Neil delayed his application, but he did, and all
the applications came to me, since I was the head of flight crew training.
But he had done so many things so well at Edwards.
He was so far and away the best qualified, more than any other, certainly as compared
to the first group of astronauts.
We [Day and Walt Williams] wanted him in.”
It has been speculated since, whether accurately or not is anyone’s guess, that the lateness
of the application may have had something to do with Armstrong’s two year old daughter,
Karen, tragically dying a few months earlier from complications due to a tumor growing
on her brain stem.
Whatever the case, as for his qualifications, Armstrong had been a pilot since 16 years
old and ultimately flew a whopping 78 combat missions during the Korean War.
In one mission, he had part of a wing sheared off by a cable booby trap about 500 feet above
the ground, all while under heavy fire.
He managed to keep the plane in the air long enough to get away, but eventually had to
eject, at which point he was rescued by a fellow Navy flier in a Jeep, funny enough.
During College, beyond writing and directing two musicals, on the side, he earned both
a bachelor’s of science in aeronautical engineering and later a master’s of science
in Aerospace engineering.
He followed all that up by becoming a test pilot, flying over 200 different aircraft
models, including the rocket powered variety, in the process quickly becoming considered
one of the top pilots in the world.
Once he was tabbed to become an astronaut, out of a group of 29 astronauts that trained
for the Apollo mission to the moon, only three were chosen for the planned first Moon landing
mission when the final announcement was made in January of 1969.
Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and the oft forgotten Michael Collins became the
official crew of Apollo 11.
Immediately, attention turned to which crew member - Armstrong or Aldrin -- would be the
first to walk on the moon (Collins was the command module pilot and, therefore, was ineligible).
Even though both men were going to walk on the moon, it was a great honor to be the first.
In fact, the question was asked at the press conference and the response was that it had
yet to be decided.
Over the next four months, as the astronauts continued their training, debate and rumors
circulated among the media.
At first, it seemed that Aldrin would have the honor.
This speculation came from the precedent set by the Gemini program, which made ten crewed
flights for the purpose of testing ships and astronauts to spacewalk.
During the flights, the commander (which Armstrong was to be for Apollo 11) stayed inside the
ship while the pilot (which Aldrin was to be for Apollo 11) did the space walking.
Further fueling this thinking was that it was rumored that Aldrin was actively campaigning
to be the guy.
According to the memoir written by Chris Kraft, head of Mission Control, “Buzz Aldrin desperately
wanted that honor and wasn't quiet in letting it be known.”
In April, only three months before liftoff, it was announced that Neil Armstrong would
be the first man to walk on the moon.
The main reason NASA gave for the decision was that the Eagle’s hatch opened to one
side - rather than up or down - and that side was towards the pilot, Aldrin.
The bottom line was that when the hatch was opened, the commander, Armstrong, had a clear
path to exit, while the pilot was pinned in the rather cramped space of the module.
By a sheer happenstance, it made more sense for Armstrong to exit first.
Plus, as NASA’s heads pointed out, Armstrong was actually the more senior member of the
team anyway, having entered the program in 1962, while Aldrin came in 1963.
In later years, despite the official hatch story, some, including Kraft and fellow astronaut
Al Bean of have come out and said that NASA wanted Armstrong to have this honor rather
than Aldrin because they thought Neil’s ego could handle it better than Aldrin's.
So perhaps the hatch design simply gave them the excuse they needed.
Whatever the case, when he stepped out on the moon, Armstrong spoke some of the most
famous words in the history of mankind, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind."
So true, so brilliant, so inspirational yet...so contradicting?
The word "man" and "mankind" are used synonymously, meaning that the oh-so-famous quote quite
simply put was, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for man."
So which was it Neil???
A one-lettered indefinite article is all it would take to turn this quote into the inspirational
words our brains all process when we hear them.
That article is "a"- "One small step for "a" man, one giant leap for mankind."
That is how most people interpret his words and, according to Neil Armstrong, those are
the words he intended to speak.
NASA's official transcript of the quote still shows the "a" in parentheses, "That's one
small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
This is because the "a" is not audible in the broadcast.
For years, both NASA and Armstrong insisted that static had obscured the "a".
Armstrong himself stated that he would never make such a mistake (omitting such an important
part) but after listening to recordings of his quote, finally conceded that it's possible
that he may not have said the "a".
When he admitted this, he stated, "I would hope that history would grant me leeway for
dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was
not said—although it might actually have been".
An Australia-based computer programmer named Pater Shann Ford conducted a digital audio
analysis to support Armstrong's claim that he did say "a" and concluded that he did,
in fact, say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to technological limitations of the time.
However, linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote their own digital audio analysis of
the infamous quote on Language Log blog and concluded that, "The acoustic evidence seems
to be against Ford's theory."
But that's not the end of the story.
Support for Armstrong has been found in a team of researchers from Michigan State University
and Ohio State University who have concluded that Armstrong did indeed speak the words
he claims to have spoken but static or technological limitations are not to blame for its apparent
omission.
According to them, Armstrong's Ohion accent is to blame y'all.
According to a Michigan State University specialist in communicative sciences, assistant professor
Laura Diller, because of the dialect of his hometown, if Neil Armstrong did voice the
word "a", it was short and fully acoustically blended with the preceding word "for".
The Acoustical Society of America's article on this topic states that,
“Dilley and her colleagues, who include MSU linguist Melissa Baese-Berk and OSU psychologist
Mark Pitt, thought they might be able to figure out what Armstrong said with a statistical
analysis of the duration of the 'r' sound as spoken by native central Ohioans saying
'for' and 'for a' in natural conversation.
They used a collection of recordings of conversational speech from 40 people raised in Columbus,
Ohio, near Armstrong’s native town of Wapakoneta.
Within this body of recordings, they found 191 cases of 'for a'.
They matched each of these to an instance of 'for' as said by the same speaker and compared
the relative duration.
They also examined the duration of Armstrong’s 'for (a') from the lunar transmission.
The researchers found a large overlap between the relative duration of the 'r' sound in
'for' and 'for a' using the Ohio speech data.
The duration of the 'frrr(uh)' in Armstrong’s recording was 0.127 seconds, which falls into
the middle of this overlap, though it is a slightly better match for an 'a'-less 'for'.
In other words, the researchers conclude, the lunar landing quote is highly compatible
with either possible interpretation, though it is probably slightly more likely to be
perceived as 'for' regardless of what Armstrong actually said.
Dilley says there may have been a 'perfect storm of conditions' for the word 'a' to have
been spoken but not heard.”
This might all have you wondering if Armstrong had previously planned his famous line, or
it came to him while sitting on the Moon.
Even until his last breath in 2012, Armstrong adamantly insisted that his first line was
spontaneous and was only settled on in the moments prior to the walk.
A BBC documentary released after the astronaut’s death disputes that.
In the film, Dean Armstrong - Neil’s brother - tells the story of a note passed during
a late-night game of Risk (Nobody can say astronauts didn’t know how to party….
But, like, seriously, go check out our video Don Draper in a Space Suit on the TodayIFoundOut
channel.
Many astronauts did little else but train and party extremely hard every other second
of the day, with that side of their lives generally carefully kept out of the public
eye.)
In any event, in the months leading up to the mission, Dean, Neil, and their families
spent time together on Cape Cod.
After both men put their boys to bed, Neil challenged his younger brother to a hearty
game of Risk.
During that game, Neil handed Dean a piece of paper:
"On that piece of paper there was 'That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap
for mankind.'
'He says, 'What do you think about that?'
I said 'fabulous.'
He said, 'I thought you might like that, but I wanted you to read it."
That said, both Aldrin and Collins made it clear that at no point did Armstrong share
his thoughts about what he would say with them.
Of course, perhaps his brother was an exception.
Although, given the second thing he said on the Moon was far less eloquent, seemingly
there was some prep.
As for that second thing, according to the official Apollo 11 Air to Ground Voice Transcription,
it was “And the – the surface is fine and powdery.”
Armstrong continued on this line of thinking, “I can – I can pick it up loosely with
my toe.
It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots.
I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see
the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.”
After coming back to Earth and spending a couple weeks in quarantine to make sure no
one from the crew had picked up any diseases from the aliens they encountered on the Moon,
Armstrong then went on a major publicity tour promoting NASA and the lizard people agenda,
served as the Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics for the Office of Advanced
Research and Technology, and then, not long after in 1971, left NASA.
From there, Armstrong lived a mostly quiet life.
Said John Glenn of this, "[Armstrong] didn't feel that he should be out huckstering himself.
He was a humble person, and that's the way he remained after his lunar flight, as well
as before."
Beyond keeping a mostly low profile, he, among other things, taught aerospace engineering
at the University of Cincinnati, helped investigate spaceflight accidents and acted as a spokesman
and/or board member for various businesses.
Ever the explorer, in 1985, Armstrong went on a little trip with Edmund Hillary (the
first person, along with Tenzing Norgay, to summit Mount Everest), Steve Fossett (first
person to fly around the world nonstop, doing it in a balloon and separately in an airplane),
and Patrick Morrow (the first person to summit each of the tallest mountains on Asia, Africa,
North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia).
What did this prestigious group decide to do together?
To take a jaunt to the North Pole, presumably using Armstrong’s connection with NASA to
get access, given NASA closely guards the ice wall there, keeping it from the public
eye in order to maintain the deception that the Earth isn’t flat as is plain as day
to anyone with eyes...
For more on this, go see the video on our sister channel, TodayIFoundOut titled: Why
Do People Think the Earth is Flat?
Bonus Facts: When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped
onto the Moon all those years ago, literally everything they did became a record because
everything they did that day was the first time in human history someone had done that
thing on the Moon.
For example, after Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface of the Moon, the pair became
the first to hop like a Kangaroo on the moon... for science!
You see, NASA wasn't entirely sure about how astronauts would be able to move around on
the Moon since they could only theorise about how the lower gravity would affect their movement
and balance.
As such, the pair were asked to experiment with different ways of moving to discern the
most efficient method of getting from point A to point B for future astronauts.
Initially, NASA had assumed that the best way to move around on the Moon would be to
use small, double-footed jumps not unlike a kangaroo.
However, Aldrin and Armstrong found this way of moving to quote, "awkward and unnatural"
and both astronauts found it much easier to move in a more conventional manner, hopping
from one foot to the other.
Armstrong nicknamed this way of moving "the lope".
As for the first full meal on the Moon, this consisted of bacon, cookies and coffee, along
with some peaches and a glass of grapefruit juice.
If you hoped the bacon part of the meal was the first item eaten on the Moon, we're sorry
to disappoint.
Contrary to what you'll often read, in fact, a very small something was eaten shortly before
the meal- communion bread, eaten by Buzz Aldrin shortly after landing on the surface.
Before Aldrin set off on the Apollo 11 mission, he took with him a small communion kit given
to him by Rev Dean Woodruff, so that he could symbolically take part in the ceremony with
the other members of his Presbyterian church.
This kit contained a small piece of communion bread and a small vial of wine, both of which
Aldrin consumed after saying a prayer during the Apollo 11 radio blackout.
This was also, unsurprisingly, the first religious service held on the Moon.
Aldrin had initially planned to share his Communion prayer with the people of Earth,
but NASA requested at the last minute that he not do this in order to avoid offending
people not of the Christian faith, as had happened when the crew of Apollo 8 had read
a passage from Genesis.
Aldrin agreed and instead performed the ceremony privately while Armstrong "respectfully observed".
Aldrin also took another interesting first from Armstrong- Buzz managed to become the
first person to urinate on the Moon.
Take THAT Mr. "too cool for school gets to walk and talk on the Moon first-Armstrong".
And if you’re thinking just now this isn’t nearly as brave as being the first to step
out onto the moon and the black void of space, you should probably know that the urine collection
system on the Lunar Module had to be pressurized.
To ensure that the astronauts weren’t…
injured… while peeing, it was noted in the Apollo Experience Report that “a prime urine-transfer
design constraint for the Lunar Module was that the crewmen would be protected at all
times from pressure differentials…”
This system, however, was a little buggy at first...
NASA engineers being NASA engineers, they worked out the kinks in the end.
But let’s not discount the bravery of being the first to use the extreme suction device
on the lem.
Speaking of Buzz, Aldrin’s mother’s name, before getting married, was Marion Moon.
As for his nickname of “Buzz”, Edwin Eugene Aldrin got that name due to one of his older
sisters, Fay Ann Aldrin mispronouncing “brother” as “buzzer.”
(She was a year and a half old when Buzz was born.)
Rather than call him “Jr.” or the like (his father’s name was also Edwin Eugene
Aldrin), “Buzzer” was shortened to “Buzz” and became his chosen moniker for the rest
of his life.
In 1988, Aldrin even made it official by legally changing
his first name to “Buzz.”