Man On The Moon – Neil Armstrong (1930 – 2012)
Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, the first human being to set foot on a celestial body other than Earth passed away yesterday. He was 82.
Armstrong had undergone heart surgery several weeks ago, and a statement from his family said he died following complications resulting from cardiovascular problems and blocked coronary arteries.
On July 20, 1969, half a billion people — a sixth of the world’s population at the time — watched a ghostly black-and-white television image as Armstrong backed down the ladder of the lunar landing ship Eagle, planted his left foot on the moon’s surface, and said, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Twenty minutes later his crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, joined him, and the world watched as the men spent the next two hours bounding around in the moon’s light gravity, taking rock samples, setting up experiments, and taking now-iconic photographs. The third member of their crew, Michael Collins, orbited overhead in the Apollo 11 command ship, Columbia.
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour wrote recently that he and the band were in BBC studios at the time of the moon landing to provide a live soundtrack to the event. “[Pink Floyd] were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23,” Gilmour wrote in the Guardian. “The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall.”
And fortunately someone had the foresight to record the live jam session, and the recording (which has become known as Moonhead) has subsequently made its way into a video overlaying visuals from the landing:
Info & Pic Sources: RollingStone.com, Wikipedia, ABCNews.com