Neil Armstrong 1930-2012

Neil Armstrong was the centre of perhaps my happiest TV moment on that evening in July 1969, when he stepped off the ladder to the footpad of the LEM and then onto the Moon and said those famous if somewhat garbled words: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” (Most of us never heard the word “a” in his statement.)

 

 

A few years before, in 1962, a couple from Ohio appeared on the panel show I’ve Got A Secret. Their secret? Their son had just been selected to be an astronaut that very day. Just watch the clip and listen for the question (at about 4:40) that Gary Moore asks Stephen and Viola Armstrong about their son Neil. Reportedly Neil Armstrong didn’t see this until nearly 40 years later.