Born on August 5, 1930 on his grandparents’ farm in Auglaize County, Ohio, Neil Armstrong was the eldest of three children of Stephen and Viola Engel Armstrong. His family moved several times before they settled in Wapakoneta when Neil was 13. Neil fell in love with airplanes at the age of 6 when he took his first flight. He worked at numerous jobs around town and at the nearby airport so he could start taking flying lessons at the age of 15 and on his 16th birthday he was issued a pilot's license. He hadn't even received his automobile license yet.
Always fascinated by planes and flying, Armstrong built a small wind tunnel in the basement of his home where he performed experiments on model planes he built.
After he graduated from Blume High School in 1947, Neil entered Purdue University with a US Navy scholarship. He began work on an aeronautical engineering degree, but in 1949, he was called to active duty with the Navy. He won his jet wings at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida at the age of 20, the youngest pilot in his squadron. He was sent to Korea in 1950 and flew 78 combat missions in Navy Panther jets winning three Air Medals. Before the war was over, Armstrong returned to Purdue to complete his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955.
Armstrong joined NACA, (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), NASA's predecessor, as a research pilot at the Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland and later transferred to the NACA High Speed Flight Station at Edwards AFB, California.
In 1962, Armstrong was transferred to astronaut status. He served as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, launched March 16, 1966, and along with David Scott, performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space by mating his Gemini 8 with an uninhabited Agena rocket. In 1969, Neil Armstrong was commander of Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission. Armstrong was mission commander and was accompanied by Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the Lunar surface and shortly thereafter, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.
After a brief visit, the astronauts returned to the orbiting spacecraft and returned to Earth, splashing down safely on July 24, 1969. In the wake of this accomplishment, Armstrong received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award offered to a U.S. civilian. He has also been awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, seventeen medals from other countries, the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy in 1970; the Robert J. Collier Trophy in 1969; and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, 1978.
It sounds wonderful!!! He is a good man; his biography really shocked me... He had a lot of goals... I would like to go to the moon and fell the stars near to me Also I would like to fell the moon's gravity and flight!! I hope that one day a woman can go to the moon; it will be big surprise for the men right?? hahaha!!! =D
http://space.about.com/od/astronautbiographies/a/neilarmstrong.htm
