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Neil Armstrong Facts
530 million people listened to Neil Armstrong's first words after stepping on the moon. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
On his 16th birthday, he received a student flying certificate, and a few months later, he soloed—all before he had a driver's license.
Neil Armstrong's passion for flying grew when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races at the age of two.
Three kids were born to Neil Armstrong. At the age of just two, one of them passed away from pneumonia.
Armstrong was a naval aviator before he became an astronaut. During the Korean War, he flew 78 combat missions over Korea.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom (1969), the highest civilian award given by the United States, had Neil Armstrong among its recipients.
In March 1966, Armstrong performed his first spaceflight as the command pilot of Gemini 8, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space.
He was the subject of a hoax in the early 1980s that stated he became a Muslim after hearing the call to prayer while on the moon. The hoax persisted for three decades in a number of Muslim nations, including Egypt, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
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