Neil Armstrong landed and walked on the moon, the first of just a dozen men to do so. He died in Ohio on August 25, at age 82.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here,” he told NASA’s mission control after piloting the Apollo 11 lunar module to the surface on July 20, 1969. “The Eagle has landed.”
Six and a half hours later, Armstrong climbed down the spacecraft’s ladder and stood for a moment on one of its saucer-shaped footpads. Then he stepped lightly to the left and into the lunar dust. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” he said to hundreds of millions of people watching the live television broadcast. (The “a” in his comment was not audible to those on Earth, but Armstrong later insisted he said it, and it has remained a controversy.)