American astronaut Neil Alden Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, was born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio.
Long before he ever stepped out of the Lunar Module Eagle, Armstrong’s legendary cool-headedness and razor-sharp engineering mind were forged in the high-stakes cockpit of the experimental X-15 rocket plane. As a civilian test pilot for NACA (the direct forerunner to NASA), he flew the hypersonic aircraft to the absolute edge of space, encountering terrifying mechanical emergencies that would have doomed a lesser pilot. During one harrowing flight, the X-15 bounced off the upper atmosphere at Mach 3, overshooting his landing site by miles; Armstrong calmly inverted the aircraft, used its remaining energy to glide back across the desert floor, and landed safely. His unparalleled reputation as a premier pilot-engineer made him the natural, consensus choice to command Apollo 11, turning his quiet Ohio upbringing into the ultimate launchpad for humanity’s greatest voyage.
Image: Neil standing next to the X-15 in 1960 by NASA via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
