Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) was an astronaut and aeronautical engineer
who was the first person to walk on the Moon. He was a United States
Naval Aviator who served in the Korean War and later worked as a
civilian test pilot for experimental aircraft. Armstrong joined the NASA
Astronaut Corps in the second group, selected in 1962; he made his first
spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's
first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot
David Scott, he completed the first docking of two spacecraft. In July
1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin performed
the first crewed Moon landing, while Michael Collins remained in lunar
orbit in the command module. Stepping onto the lunar surface, Armstrong
said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
He was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the
Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Congressional Gold Medal.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
905:
Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, was captured during his attempt
to restore Carolingian power over Italy by King Berengar I and blinded.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_the_Blind>
1925:
American high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found
guilty of violating Tennessee's Butler Act by teaching evolution in
class.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial>
1969:
During the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the
Lunar Module Eagle and photographed human boot-prints on the Moon.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin>
1973:
Mossad agents killed a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway,
mistakenly believing he had been involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics
massacre.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair>
2012:
Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç became the first person in
history to complete a solo human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erden_Eru%C3%A7>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
aventurine:
1. A kind of brownish glass containing gold-coloured spangles.
2. (mineralogy, by extension) A variety of translucent quartz, spangled
throughout with scales of yellow mica.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aventurine>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Electro-magnetic discoveries have recreated the simultaneous
"field" in all human affairs so that the human family now exists under
conditions of a "global village." We live in a single constricted space
resonant with tribal drums. … The new electronic interdependence
recreates the world in the image of a global village.
--Marshall McLuhan
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan>