Scientists explore the illusion of memory

Scientists explore the illusion of memory - Every time someone recalls a memory, it's a chance to change it. A memory might seem like a permanent, precious essence carved deep into the circuits of the brain. But it is not. Instead, scientists are discovering that a memory changes every time you think about it.

"Every time you recall a memory, it becomes sensitive to disruption. Often that is used to incorporate new information into it." That's the blunt assessment from one of the world's leading experts on memory, Dr. Eric Kandel from Columbia University.

And that means our memories are not abstract snapshots stored forever in a bulging file in our mind, but rather, they're a collection of brain cells — neurons that undergo chemical changes every time they're engaged.

So when we think about something from the past, the memory is called up like a computer file, reviewed and revised in subtle ways, and then sent back to the brain's archives, now modified slightly, updated, and changed.

As scientists increasingly understand the biological process of memory, they are also learning how to interrupt it, and that means they might one day be able to ease the pain of past trauma, or alter destructive habits and addictions, as though shaking an Etch A Sketch, erasing the scribbles on the mind, and starting fresh.

In his McGill University lab, researcher Karim Nader routinely erases the memory of his laboratory rats. But first he has to give them a memory and he does that by putting them in an isolation cubicle, playing a tone, and then delivering a small electrical shock to their feet.

Experiments to erase memory

"So that's the traumatic memory," he says. For the rat, the sound of the tone equals an unpleasant experience. The next time the animal hears the tone, it is afraid, even though it doesn't get the foot shock.

How do you tell that the rat remembers pain? It freezes.

"If you are in the dark, and you're scared. You freeze. It's the same as a rat, the same brain mechanism that controls our fear response controls the rat's fear response," Nader said.

The next step in erasing the memory is to put the animal back in the conditioning chamber and play the tone, so the memory is freshly recalled in the rat's brain. Then Nader experiments with drug that blocks the chemical process needed to restore the memory. The old memory of the tone followed by a foot shock is replaced by a new memory of a tone followed by nothing at all.

Nader puts the rat back into the isolation cubicle, plays the tone and watches what happens. The previously shocked rat no longer freezes in fear when it hears the tone. Instead, it moves around the box calmly exploring the environment, the bad memory of tone-plus-shock apparently erased, as though the whole unpleasant foot-shocking business never happened.

The point of this research? If you can erase a memory in a rat brain, you should also be able to erase a memory in a human brain.

"The memories can become unstored and have to be restored. And when they're being restored, it's an opportunity to either strengthen them, change their content to possible false memories, or weaken them," Nader said. "And if you weaken them, essentially it's the same as erasing memories."

"The old view of memory processing was that our memories got stored in the brain and once they're stored, you can't touch them," Nader said. But scientists now realize that memories are evolving all the time. "Every time someone recalls a memory, it's a chance to change it," Nader added.

That's because the memory has to be restored using a biochemical pathway that is very similar to the original storage. And there are ways to interfere with this memory "reconsolidation" using a drug. "You have to change the strength of the connection between neurons. It's almost like you've unwired the memory," Nader said.

For some, the idea that memories are unstable is an unsettling concept. But Eric Kandel says understanding the biology of memory doesn't dehumanize it.

"This does not take the magic out of it," Kandel said. "You know that your heart is a muscular pump that pushes blood around the circulation, but that doesn't mean you can't lose your heart to somebody. The metaphorical meaning is not in any way altered, but there is a biological underpinning to what the brain actually does."

"The modern view is that everything you and I do, from the most simple reflex act of hitting a racket in tennis to the most creative flights of ideas, comes from the brain," Kandel said. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his research on the biological basis of memory. "You are who you are and I am who I am because of what we learn and what we remember and these are all biological processes," he said.

It was a controversial concept when Karim Nader published his first scientific paper about interfering with memory, more than a decade ago. Back then, he faced many skeptics and he was surprised at the hostile the reaction.

"Definitely," he said. "There was a huge shock and backlash. After years of scientific rigour and argument, I did manage to inspire a lot of the younger generation to at least test it. So very quickly after that it had been shown across species, across tasks, using different kinds of tools, so at that point it became impossible for anyone to say, 'this can't be real.' I mean it has to real, they find it in snails, they find it in humans, they find it in dogs."

Understanding memory could lead to treatments

Understanding the neurochemical process of memory opens up possibilities for therapy in situations where memory is causing pain.

"People think that post-traumatic stress disorder might be susceptible to treatments of this kind. No one has shown this in a convincing way. But this is certainly an interesting avenue of investigation," Kandel said.

"There are many disorders of memory. Obviously, age-related memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, working memory loss, PTSD which is a hyperactivity of memory if you will," he explained.

Nader believes memory disruption could be helpful in a wide range of psychiatric disorders. He is collaborating with other researchers on drug addiction, and others are investigating the implications for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

"So if you imagine OCD, what happens over time is somebody becomes more and more obsessive in a certain compulsion, then the neurons that contribute and maintain that behavior, they're going to undergo a reconsolidation process," Nader says.

"So every time they have another episode, that circuit controlling the compulsion is going to have to be hypothetically unstored and then restored. And so if you had a tool just to block that restorage process, then, in theory, what should happen is you should be able to make somebody better and go from their compulsive behavior to something relatively more normal."

Early research on post traumatic stress disorder has been encouraging, Nader said. In studies, subjects have been asked to remember the trauma, and then take a drug that has been shown to block memory reconsolidation, and that seems to reduce the strength of the traumatic memory to non-PTSD levels.

Researchers finding other ways to change memory

Other research has suggested that it might even be possible to block the memory reconsolidation without drugs, by asking a person to remember something and then, in those moments of remembering, replace the old memory with new information.

"The memory becomes unstored and during that time you just tell them a different kind of information is correct and you allow time for that other information to be restored. It's almost as if the new information, can, in some cases, replace the old information," Nader said.

"It's great theoretically, because you don't have to give anyone any kind of a drug," he said. "Every time you remember something, it's an opportunity to change the content of it, that's just the way the brain is."

Sitting in his McGill University lab, watching his rats calmly exploring the chamber they once feared, Karim Nader agrees that memory is much more transient than most people think.

"Yes, but that's not to say it's bad," he said. "The fact that memory turns out to be far from permanent is a positive thing for human survival. Evolution thinks it's the best way for it to work. Therefore, it's not a bad way. If it was a bad way, then we would have been extinct a while ago." ( cbc.ca )

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Doomsday Clock shows signs for hope, need for progress

Doomsday Clock shows signs for hope, need for progress - The group behind the Doomsday Clock rolled back its hands to six minutes until midnight and warned that there's still much to be done.

The hands of the Doomsday Clock ticked backward today – giving humanity an extra minute before proverbial midnight.

 

The Doomsday Clock now reads six minutes until midnight.

The symbolic clock, a fixture of the Cold War still ticking 60 years later, measures the threat of man-made catastrophe through nuclear war or global warming. Today's new reading represents progress by world leaders to curb weapons proliferation and cap climate change, said the group behind the Clock during its event today in New York City.

At 10 a.m. Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to six minutes until midnight. The timepiece has changed 19 times since its creation in 1947. Only five of those were closer to midnight than today's reading – 1949 (Russia's first atomic weapons tests), 1953 (Cold War ramps up), 1981 (conflicts in Afghanistan, South Africa, and Poland), 1984 (Cold War escalates further), and 2007 (North Korea and Iran pursue nuclear weapons, global warming becomes evident).

But the Bulletin said today that the memory of mushroom clouds and warnings of greenhouse gases now come with silver linings.

"By shifting the hand back from midnight by only one additional minute, we emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while at the same time recognizing signs of collaboration among the United States, Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil, and others on nuclear security and on climate stabilization," said the official announcement.

Much like the committee that awarded Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize last year, the Bulletin was hopeful about the new American president – even if his rhetoric has led to few real accomplishments.

"With a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach, not only has Obama initiated new arms reduction talks with Russia, he has started negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program, and directed the U.S. government to lead a global effort to secure loose fissile material in four years," said today's statement. ( csmonitor.com )

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Chinese writer Mo Yan wins Nobel literature prize

Chinese writer Mo Yan wins Nobel literature prize - Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, a somewhat unexpected choice by a prize committee that has favored European authors in recent years.

The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, praised Mo’s “hallucinatoric realism,” saying it “merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.”

Peter Englund, the academy’s permanent secretary, said the academy had contacted Mo before the announcement.

“He said he was overjoyed and scared,” Englund said.

Though Mo, 57, is the first Chinese national to win the Nobel literature prize, he’s not the first Chinese.

A Chinese emigre to France, Gao Xingjian, won in 2000 for his absurdist dramas and inventive fiction, especially the novel Soul Mountain. His works are laced with criticisms of China’s communist government and have been banned in China.

When Gao won, the communist leadership disowned the prize. Mo’s award is likely to be more warmly greeted in Beijing.

Born Guan Moye in 1955 to a farming family in eastern Shandong province, Mo chose his penname while writing his first novel. Garrulous by nature, Mo has said the name, meaning “don’t speak,” was intended to remind him to hold his tongue lest he get himself into trouble and to mask his identity since he began writing while serving in the army.

His breakthrough came with novel ‘Red Sorghum’ published in 1987. Set in a small village, like much of his fiction, ‘Red Sorghum’ is an earthy tale of love and peasant struggles set against the backdrop of the anti-Japanese war. It was turned into a film that won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988, marked the directing debut of Zhang Yimou and boosted Mo’s popularity.

Mo writes of visceral pleasures and existential quandaries and tends to create vivid, mouthy characters. While his early work stuck to a straightforward narrative structure enlivened by vivid descriptions and raunchy humor, Mo has become more experimental, toying with different narrators and embracing a freewheeling style often described as ‘Chinese magical realism.’

European authors had won four of the past five awards, with last year’s prize going to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.

As with the other Nobel Prizes, the prize is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million. ( AP )

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The art and science of guessing a Nobel Prize

The art and science of guessing a Nobel Prize — Guessing who will win a Nobel Prize is a bit like forecasting the stock market: Experts don't seem to do it any better than laymen.

So if you hear professors and pundits predicting the "God particle" will be the theme of the physics prize next week, or that an American writer — finally — is due for the literature award, check their track record.

"My top candidate has never won, and it's the fourth year I do it now," admitted Norwegian peace researcher Kristian Harpviken, one of the most prominent voices in the annual guessing game for the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

FILE - In this undated portrait, Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) is shown. Guessing the Nobel Prize winners is a bit like forecasting the stock market: the sages don't seem to do it any better than the layman. So when you hear scholars and pundits predicting the Higgs boson particle will be the theme of the physics prize next week, or that an American writer, finally, is due for the literature award, it's good to keep their track record in mind. "My top candidate has never won, and it's the fourth year I've been doing it," admits Norwegian peace researcher Kristian Harpviken, one of the most frequently cited commentators on the Nobel Peace Prize. (AP Photo)

A week ahead of that announcement, the Irish online betting agency Paddy Power gave the lowest odds Friday to retired American scholar Gene Sharp, Afghan women's rights activist Sima Samar and Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni. All have been among Harpviken's top picks in recent years.

Harpviken, who heads the PRIO peace institute in Oslo, admits his speculation is just that — speculation — based on current events, previous prizes and personal preference.

"I think guessing is important in that it brings attention to what the Nobel Peace Prize should be about," he said. "I would be very hesitant to speculate on a certain candidate who is absolutely undeserving."

The secretive prize committees rarely drop any hints and Harpviken doesn't have any inside information. Virtually none of the Nobel guess-makers do — but that doesn't stop them from trying.

The peace and literature prizes generate the strongest buzz, and are typically less difficult to predict than the awards for chemistry, physics, medicine and economics.

The six award committees will announce one prize a day, starting with medicine on Monday and ending with the economics award on Oct. 15. The Nobel Foundation this year lowered the prize money 20 percent to 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million), citing turmoil on financial markets. All prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

It would have been easier to guess the winners if the Nobel committees had stuck to the will of the Swedish industrialist, who wanted the annual awards to reflect the greatest achievements "during the preceding year." Instead, the Nobel statutes were changed so that committees can reward discoveries made decades ago, to make sure they have stood the test of time.

"I think Alfred would have been OK with that," said Per Carlson, a former chairman of the physics prize committee.

Handing out a prize too soon increases the risk of jurors failing to identify the right scientists behind a discovery, Carlson said.

That happened in 1974, when the Nobel Prize in physics went to British radio astronomers Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish. The latter was cited for the discovery of pulsars — rotating neutron stars — though it later became clear that one of his graduate students deserved the credit.

The Nobel time lag could hurt the chances of the most talked-about scientific breakthrough this year: the identification of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle also referred to as the "God particle."

Though British scientist Peter Higgs predicted the existence of the particle in the 1960s, it was only in July this year that scientists at an atom-smasher outside Geneva claimed to have identified it.

Whether Higgs was even nominated is unclear — the deadline was in February and nominations are not revealed for 50 years.

Secrecy is paramount to the Nobel committees. Literature jurors have been known to use code words when discussing Nobel candidates and using fake book covers when reading their work.

After suspected leaks ahead of recent announcements, the literature panel has taken additional measures this year. A press release declaring the winner will no longer be delivered by courier to the offices of major news organizations in Stockholm, including The Associated Press. And the panel's permanent secretary, Peter Englund, has stopped giving his customary interviews in the weeks leading up to the prize.

"We just think it's better this way," Englund told the AP in an email.

Betting on the literature prize is in full swing, with Ladbrokes offering 3/1 odds for Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan — an outsider whose name appears in the Nobel buzz every year though the committee has never given the prize to a musician — placing fourth at 10/1. The last American to win the Nobel Prize in literature was Toni Morrison, in 1993.

In perhaps the most elaborate example of Nobel guesswork, the scientific division of news and financial information provider Thomson Reuters analyzes thousands of citations and papers in high-impact academic journals to identify possible winners of the science and economics awards.

Even though they allow themselves three guesses for each of those four prizes, the Thomson Reuters analysts led by David Pendlebury haven't predicted a winner since the 2009 medicine award. Of the 158 scientists they have identified as potential Nobel laureates since 2002, 26 have won, but only nine in the year they had predicted.

"If we do get any of these right it's all the more remarkable, because we have no field expertise," said Pendlebury, whose academic background is in ancient history. The main difficulty in making forecasts, he said, is that "there are more people of Nobel class than there are Nobel Prizes to go around."

The scholars and literature buffs speculating on Nobel Prizes may be different from the crowd predicting scores in sports bars, but the psychology is similar.

When accurate guesses are rare, a person making an inaccurate guess can easily dismiss it by saying that most other people got it wrong too, said Jiao Zhang, a professor at the University of Miami who has studied the dynamics of guess-making.

"Whereas in the rare case when his guess is accurate, he can say to himself, 'I'm among the few who got it right,'" Zhang said in an email. "Vindication and validation are sweet."

Economics — which wasn't in Nobel's will but was tacked on to the other prizes by Sweden's central bank in 1968 — is arguably the most difficult discipline to predict. Unlike Nobel-winning scientists who discovered things like X-rays or the AIDS virus, economics laureates are typically rewarded for abstract theories about market behavior.

Hubert Fromlet, a professor of international economics at Sweden's Linnaeus University, each year offers a "narrow" list with the 10 economists he believes are most likely to win. He also provides a "relatively narrow" list with 20 names and a "broader" one with 40.

But with 40 names, does it really count as I-told-you-so if one of them wins?

"Of course I feel happy when I have someone in the Top 40," Fromlet said. "But if you have someone in the top 10, it's a little bit more fun. It's not a competition. It's just something I like to do." ( Associated Press )

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Einstein's Letter Questioning God Goes Up for Auction

Einstein's Letter Questioning God Goes Up for Auction - From studying slices of his brilliant brain to probing profound physics theories, scientists and enthusiasts alike have long been spellbound by Albert Einstein. Now, an auction is offering the world a peek at Einstein's thoughts on what may be humanity's most profound question: the existence of God.

The private letter written by Einstein expressing his views on God and religion will go up for auction Monday (Oct. 8) on eBay. In the letter, he calls belief in religion and God "pretty childish" and ridicules the idea that the Jews are a chosen people.

 

In a 1954 handwritten letter, Albert Einstein reveals his thoughts on God and religion. The original letter is going up for auction Oct. 8, 2012.

"This is the most historic and significant piece we have listed on eBay," Eric Gazin, president of Auction Cause, the agency managing the sale, told LiveScience in an email. "We are excited to offer a person or organization an opportunity to own perhaps one of the most intriguing 20th-century documents in existence. This personal letter from Einstein represents the nexus of science, theology, reason and culture."

Einstein handwrote the letter in German to Jewish philosopher Eric B. Gutkind on Jan. 3, 1954, a year before Einstein's death. The letter was a response to Gutkind's book "Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt" (1952, H. Schuman; 1st edition).

In part of his letter, Einstein writes, "For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them," as translated from German by Joan Stambaugh.

In his book, Gutkind suggested that unlike the mass hypnosis spoiling mankind at the time, "The soul of the Jewish people was never a mass-soul. Israel's soul could not be hypnotized; it never succumbed to hypnotic assaults. … The soul of Israel is incorruptible."

And as for whether Einstein believed in God? Yes and no, it seems.

In a March 24, 1954 letter, he is quoted as writing, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

However, in the letter to Gutkind, Einstein wrote the word God was "nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

This isn't the first time this "God" letter has been up for auction: In 2008, an unidentified buyer who had "a passion for theoretical physics" bought the letter at a Bloomsbury Auctions sale in London for $404,000, 25 times its presale estimate, according to an article in the New York Times.

The letter to Gutkind has been stored in a temperature-, humidity- and light-controlled environment at an academic institution specializing in the care of cultural heritage collections, according to an eBay description. Since the letter has been known among scientists for more than 50 years, the description reads, its authenticity has never been questioned. The letter is in its original envelope, holding a stamp and postmark from Princeton, N.J, where Einstein lived toward the end of his life.

The last few years have seen an outpouring of projects that bring the famous genius down to earth: For instance, in March, a large collection of Einstein's documents — everything from personal letters to scientific manuscripts — went online as part of an endeavor by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology. The archive reveals both the academic side of Einstein — with one of only three existing manuscripts containing the famous E=mc^2 equation written in Einstein's handwriting — and his personal life — with a postcard to his mother Pauline.( LiveScience.com )

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To hero-astronaut Armstrong, moonwalk 'just' a job

To hero-astronaut Armstrong, moonwalk 'just' a job — Neil Armstrong made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon.

He commanded the historic landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions and becoming the first man to walk on the moon.

His first words after the feat are etched in history books and the memories of the spellbound millions who heard them in a live broadcast.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said. He insisted later that he had said "a'' before man, but said he, too, couldn't hear it in the version that went to the world.

Armstrong, who had bypass surgery earlier this month, died Saturday at age 82 from what his family said were complications of heart procedures. His family didn't say where he died; he had lived in suburban Cincinnati.

He was "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," his family said in a statement.

The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world. The accomplishment fulfilled a commitment President John F. Kennedy made for the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of 1960s.

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.

"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.

In those first few moments on the moon, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.

Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, the modest Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program.

"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."

Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Armstrong for NASA's oral history project, said Armstrong fit every requirement the space agency needed for the first man to walk on moon, especially because of his engineering skills and the way he handled celebrity by shunning it.

"I think his genius was in his reclusiveness," said Brinkley. "He was the ultimate hero in an era of corruptible men."

Fellow Ohioan and astronaut John Glenn, one of Armstrong's closest friends, recalled Saturday how Armstrong was on low fuel when he finally brought the lunar module Eagle down on the Sea of Tranquility.

"That showed a dedication to what he was doing that was admirable," Glenn said.

A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress, and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations."

Along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a "misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future."

Armstrong was among the greatest of American heroes, Obama said in a statement.

"When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible," Obama said.

Obama's Republican opponent Mitt Romney echoed those sentiments, calling Armstrong an American hero whose passion for space, science and discovery will inspire him for the rest of his life.

"With courage unmeasured and unbounded love for his country, he walked where man had never walked before. The moon will miss its first son of earth," Romney said.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong's grace and humility.

"As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own," Bolden said in a statement.

Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.

When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before a packed baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.

He later joined Glenn, by then a senator, to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted that day was the 34th anniversary of his moonwalk.

"Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought.

At another joint appearance, Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on earth I'm truly, truly envious of."

Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown.

In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwestern Ohio farm. In an Australian interview earlier this year, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things."

Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much."

The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month.)

"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed."

"Roger, Tranquility," Apollo astronaut Charles Duke radioed back from Mission Control. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."

The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface.

"He was the best, and I will miss him terribly," Collins said through NASA.

In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon before the last moon mission in 1972.

For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York.

Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.

As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license.

Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.

After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.

Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 — the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959. He commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966, bringing back the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.

Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment.

"But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said.

An estimated 600 million people — a fifth of the world's population — watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.

Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk.

Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent.

Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.

In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents.

"You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard."

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.

In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 310-acre farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.

In 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th Century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong mentioned one disappointment relating to his moonwalk.

"I can honestly say — and it's a big surprise to me — that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said.

From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Va.-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft.

He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, N.Y.

Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.

Armstrong's is the second death in a month of one of NASA's most visible, history-making astronauts. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died of pancreatic cancer on July 23 at age 61.

Just prior to the 50th anniversary of Glenn's orbital flight this past February, Armstrong offered high praise to the elder astronaut. Noted Armstrong in an email: "I am hoping I will be 'in his shoes' and have as much success in longevity as he has demonstrated." Glenn is 91.

At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Saturday, visitors held a minute of silence for Armstrong.

For anyone else who wanted to remember him, his family's statement made a simple request:

"Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - To hero-astronaut Armstrong, moonwalk 'just' a job

Armstrong's small step a giant leap for humanity

Armstrong's small step a giant leap for humanity — When man first harnessed fire, no one recorded it. When the Wright Brothers showed man could fly, only a handful of people witnessed it. But when Neil Armstrong took that first small step on the moon in July 1969, an entire globe watched in grainy black-and-white from a quarter million miles away

We saw it. We were part of it. He took that "giant leap for mankind" for us.

Although more than half of the world's population wasn't alive then, it was an event that changed and expanded the globe.

Associated Press/NASA - FILE - In this July 20, 1969 file photo, a footprint left by one of the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission shows in the soft, powder surface of the moon. Commander Neil A. Armstrong and Air Force Col. Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon after blastoff from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on July 16, 1969. The family of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, says he died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012, at age 82. A statement from the family says he died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. It doesn't say where he died. Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969. He radioed back to Earth the historic news of "one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the moon, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. In all, 12 Americans walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972. (AP Photo/NASA)

"It's a human achievement that will be remembered forever," said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of space policy at George Washington University. Those first steps were beamed to nearly every country around the world, thanks to a recently launched satellite. It was truly the first global mass media event, Logsdon said. An estimated 600 million people — 1 out of every 5 on the planet — watched.

The two historical events likely to be long remembered from the 20th Century are the moon landing and the first atomic bomb, said Smithsonian Institution space curator Roger Launius.

"There is no way to overestimate that significance in human history and he is forever linked to that," Launius said of Armstrong, who died Saturday at age 82.

Just as the voyage of Christopher Columbus split historic eras 500 years ago, so will Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11, said Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, a specialist in 20th Century history.

"We may be living in the age of Armstrong," said Brinkley, who conducted oral histories for NASA, including sessions with Armstrong.

The late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote that the Apollo 11 moon landing was "one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."

Since that day, there's been a common phrase: "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ... ?" with the blank filled with a task that seems far less difficult.

Armstrong's small step was that leap in confidence telling the world "if we can do this, we can do anything," said Howard McCurdy, a professor of space and public policy at American University and author of the book "Space and the American Imagination."

"He took something that 20 years earlier was pure fantasy and turned it into reality and if we could do that for space we could do it for anything," McCurdy said Saturday.

The Apollo 11 moon landing was the finish line in a decade-long space race started by the Soviet Union. And so the first steps on the moon coming from an American civilian had many meanings. Getting there first showed American technological superiority, but Armstrong mentioned mankind — not Americans — demonstrating that this was a moment for the people of Earth, McCurdy said.

Armstrong and Aldrin left a plaque on the moon that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

For all mankind. And that's how the world took it.

"The success for America (is a) success for every living man" reported the Swahili-language newspaper Nguromo of Dar.

And if that wasn't enough, Armstrong and Aldrin also left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in pursuit of space.

"It was special and memorable but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do," Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year.

The Cold War may have slightly muted the significance of the event at the time, but over the years the importance of the moon landing has only grown, Logsdon said.

It's permeated into culture. The moon landing is in movies, television, books, songs and it was even Michael Jackson's signature dance step. That's probably because in some ways that moonwalk touched something that has been hard-wired into humanity: the need to explore. For 25,000 years, humans have been migrating and pushing into new places. Armstrong took it to new heights.

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, noted it was "the first time any human being set foot on a place other than Earth, and that's a pretty big step." ( Associated Press )

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Was Neil Armstrong Misquoted?

'One Small Step for Man': Was Neil Armstrong Misquoted? - Upon taking a "small step" onto the surface of the moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong uttered what would become one of history's most famous one-liners. But strangely, what he actually said is far from clear.

Listeners back on Earth heard, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." But Armstrong, who died Saturday (Aug. 25) at the age of 82, maintained afterwards that he actually said something slightly different: "That's one small step for a man..."

"It's just that people just didn't hear [the 'a']," Armstrong told the press after the Apollo 11 mission.

That little indefinite article makes a big difference, semantically speaking. Without it, "man" abstractly represents all of humanity, just like "mankind." Thus, the quote is essentially, ''That's one small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind."

Despite his initial adamance that he got the grammar right by including the indefinite article, Armstrong acknowledged at a 30-year anniversary event in 1999 that he couldn't hear himself utter the "a" in the audio recording of his moonwalk transmission, according to the Associated Press.

But then, in 2006, computer programmer Peter Shann Ford might have vindicated Armstrong.

Ford downloaded the audio recording of the moon man's words from a NASA website and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate via computers using their nerve impulses.

In a graphical representation of sound waves of the famous sentence, Ford said he found evidence that the missing "a" had been spoken after all: It was a 35-millisecond-long bump of sound between "for" and "man" that would have been too brief for human ears to hear.

"I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful," Armstrong said in a statement. ''I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word." And so was "a," whether spoken or not. ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Was Neil Armstrong Misquoted?

Neil Armstrong, : An Uncommon Man with a Commonly Deadly Disease

Neil Armstrong: An Uncommon Man with a Commonly Deadly Disease - American icon Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died Saturday (Aug. 25) due to heart-surgery complications, officials said.

"Neil Armstrong was a hero not just of his time, but of all time," said President Barack Obama in a statement. "Thank you, Neil, for showing us the power of one small step."

Armstrong underwent surgery at the beginning of this month to bypass four blockages in his coronary arteries, according to news reports. During coronary bypass surgery, doctors take a section of a blood vessel in the arm, leg, or other body part, and use it to divert blood around blocked areas in an artery in order to restore blood flow to the heart muscle, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Though Armstrong was said to be "doing great" after his bypass, coronary bypass surgery doesn't cure the underlying heart problem that typically leads to the blockages in the first place — and that is coronary artery disease, the Mayo Clinic states.

Coronary artery disease is the number-one killer of men and women in the United States, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Because bypass operations are a type of open-heart surgery they come with risks. According to the Mayo Clinic, the most common complications during or following coronary bypass surgery are bleeding and arrhythmias (heart rhythm irregularities). If a blood clot breaks loose soon after surgery, there is also a risk of a heart attack, though this complication is less common. Other less common risks include: kidney failure, infections of the surgery wound, temporary memory loss or muddled thinking, and stroke.

"In an otherwise acceptable health patient in this age range, I would expect a mortality rate of around 2 percent," said Dr. Jeffrey Everett, a cardiothoracic surgeon at The University of Tennessee Medical Center, referring to Armstrong and bypass surgery.

The likelihood of complications increase with age. However, "'physiologic' age, meaning how well one's overall health is, [is] much more important than numeric age," Everett told LiveScience in an email. "Being male is not a higher risk, a woman of the same age would have a higher risk." And though bypass surgery has become very safe and beneficial for patients, there are always risks, Everett said. "[T]hey are never 0 percent. An unfortunate outcome in this case."

Coronary artery disease (also called coronary heart disease) can result from the build-up of plaque in the coronary arteries, which are the vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood to the heart, fueling the muscle's ability to pump. Risk of coronary artery disease increases with age.

Though a common killer, Armstrong was far from a normal man, being the first to step onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969 when he was commander of NASA's Apollo 11 mission.

Armstrong's family reiterated his accomplishments, saying in a statement, "While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves."

The family statement went on, "For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Neil Armstrong, : An Uncommon Man with a Commonly Deadly Disease

NASA's pioneering astronauts: Where are they now?

NASA's pioneering astronauts: Where are they now? - As space exploration has become more common and the number of astronauts has risen past 300, many names have faded into the background. But some will forever be associated with the golden age of space exploration. Some examples:

From 1969's Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing mission:

• Buzz Aldrin: Lunar module pilot for Apollo 11. Second man on the moon after commander Neil Armstrong. Left NASA in in 1971 and returned to Air Force. Wrote several books including "Return to Earth" and "Men from Earth." Advocate for future U.S. space exploration and frequent lecturer. Age: 82.
• Neil Armstrong: Commander of Apollo 11 mission and first human to set foot on the moon. Left NASA in 1971, taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and later became chairman of electronic systems companies. Died Aug. 25 at age 82.
• Michael Collins: Command module pilot on Apollo 11 and circled the moon while colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed. Left NASA in 1970 and became first director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Wrote "Carrying the Fire," considered one of the best insider space books. Age: 81.

Some other notable astronauts:

• Scott Carpenter: Second American to orbit the Earth in 1962. With John Glenn, surviving member of NASA's original Mercury 7 astronauts. Gave the famous send off — "Godspeed, John Glenn." Involved in Navy's SeaLab program, and spent 30 days under the ocean in 1965. Left the Navy in 1969. Age: 87.
• Eugene Cernan: Commander of Apollo 17 in 1972; last astronaut to walk on the moon. Second person to walk in space in 1966 as a pilot on Gemini 9. Retired from the Navy in 1976 and later started an aerospace consulting company in Houston. Age: 78
• John Glenn: First American to orbit the Earth in 1962, circling three times in five hours. Left NASA in 1965 and retired from the Marine Corps the next year. Became a Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio and ran briefly for president in 1984. Return to space in 1998 for a nine-day mission aboard space shuttle Discovery, becoming at age 77 the oldest person in space. Turned 91 in July.
• Jim Lovell: Commander of Apollo 13 in 1970, his fourth space flight. Oxygen tank in the spaceship exploded and the moon mission was aborted. Left NASA in 1973 and became a business executive. Age: 84.
• Edgar Mitchell: The sixth man to walk on the moon in 1971 after maneuvering the landing module from Apollo 14. Made two excursions to collect lunar samples with Alan Shepard. Left NASA in 1972 and went on to become an educator, lecturer and consultant. Age: 81.
• Alan Shepard: First American in space; made a 15-minute suborbital flight in 1961. Returned to space as commander of Apollo 14 in 1971; used a lunar sample scoop with an attached golf-club head to hit a ball on the moon. Retired from NASA in 1974 and went into private business in Houston. Died in 1998 at age 74.
• Jack Swigert Jr.: Pilot for Apollo 13 in 1970, a last-minute replacement after another astronaut came down with the measles. Mission to moon was aborted after an oxygen tank on the spaceship exploded. Left NASA in 1977. Elected to Congress in November 1982; died of bone cancer the next month at age 51.
• John Young: First person to fly into space from Earth six times — seven times counting his lunar liftoff in 1972. Flew two Gemini and two Apollo missions. Commander of the first space shuttle flight, aboard Columbia in 1981. Final space flight in 1983 aboard Columbia. Retired from NASA in 2004. Age: 81. ( Associated Press )

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Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Undergoes Heart Surgery

Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Undergoes Heart Surgery - Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has undergone coronary bypass surgery and is reported to be "doing great" by his family and friends, according to a report in NBC News.

Armstrong failed stress test.

According to the NBC News account, Armstrong visited a hospital on Monday in Cincinnati, where he now resides, for a heart examination. After failing a stress test, Armstrong was admitted to the hospital and bypass surgery was conducted to deal with four blockages in his coronary arteries.

Armstrong receives good wishes

NASA administrator Charles Bolden issued a statement on behalf of the space agency offering good wishes for a speedy recovery. Armstrong's crewmate on the Apollo 11 flight, Buzz Aldrin, tweted his wishes for Armstrong's speedy recovery as well.

Armstrong the first man to walk on the moon

According to his official NASA biography, Armstrong was a naval aviator and test pilot before becoming an astronaut in 1962. He flew as the command pilot on the flight of Gemini 8 in 1966. A tumbling glitch that threatened to kill both crew members during the flight caused the early termination of that mission.

Armstrong is, of course, most famous as the first man to walk on the moon, as commander of the mission of Apollo 11. The lunar module, dubbed Eagle, landed on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, after a computer glitch and the imminent prospect of landing in a boulder strewn field obliged Armstrong to take manual control of the lunar module and land it safely. Later, Armstrong exited the lunar module and set foot on the lunar surface with the immortal words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Armstrong reclusive after his astronaut career

Subsequent to the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong kept from the public view. He taught Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati during the 1970s and has served on the boards of a number of corporations, according to the NASA biography. More recently, he publicly came out in opposition to President Obama's cancellation of the Constellation space exploration program that would have returned American astronauts to the lunar surface.

Armstrong's recent activities

According to the Associated Press, Armstrong spoke in honor of fellow astronaut John Glenn in February on the 50th anniversary of Glenn's Mercury flight as the first American to orbit the Earth.

Armstrong's spirits are high

According to the NBC News account, Armstrong's spirits are reported to be high as he recovers from the surgery. Doctors expect no problems with his recovery. ( yahoo.com )

READ MORE - Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Undergoes Heart Surgery

Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies

Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies - Neil Armstrong was a quiet self-described nerdy engineer who became a global hero when as a steely-nerved pilot he made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step on to the moon. The modest man who had people on Earth entranced and awed from almost a quarter million miles away has died. He was 82.

Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, a statement Saturday from his family said. It didn't say where he died.

Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions. His first words after setting foot on the surface are etched in history books and the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.

Associated Press/NASA - FILE - In undated photo provided by NASA shows Neil Armstrong. The family of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, says he has died at age 82. A statement from the family says he died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. It doesn't say where he died. Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969. He radioed back to Earth the historic news of "one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the moon, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. In all, 12 Americans walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972. (AP Photo/NASA)

"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said.

In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of heated space race with the then-Soviet Union, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.

"It was special and memorable but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do," Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year.

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.

"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.

The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world.

Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamor of the space program.

"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."

A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations," and along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a "misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future."

Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.

When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people packed into a baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.

He later joined former astronaut and Sen. John Glenn to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that Armstrong had walked on the moon.

"Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought.

At another joint appearance, the two embraced and Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on Earth, I'm truly, truly envious of."

Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown.

In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwest Ohio farm. Aldrin said in his book "Men from Earth" that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met.

In the Australian interview, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things."

At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."

Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much."

Derek Elliott, curator of the Smithsonian Institution's U.S. Air and Space Museum from 1982 to 1992, said the moonwalk probably marked the high point of space exploration.

The manned lunar landing was a boon to the prestige of the United States, which had been locked in a space race with the former Soviet Union, and re-established U.S. pre-eminence in science and technology, Elliott said.

"The fact that we were able to see it and be a part of it means that we are in our own way witnesses to history," he said.

The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month.)

"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed."

"Roger, Tranquility," the Houston staffer radioed back. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."

The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface.

In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and the last moon mission in 1972.

For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York.

Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.

As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license.

Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.

After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.

Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 — the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959 — and commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966. After the first space docking, he brought the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.

Armstrong was backup commander for the historic Apollo 8 mission at Christmastime in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, and paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later.

Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment.

"But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said.

An estimated 600 million people — a fifth of the world's population — watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.

Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk.

Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent.

Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.

In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents.

"You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard."

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.

In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 310-acre farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.

"He didn't give interviews, but he wasn't a strange person or hard to talk to," said Ron Huston, a colleague at the University of Cincinnati. "He just didn't like being a novelty."

Those who knew him said he enjoyed golfing with friends, was active in the local YMCA and frequently ate lunch at the same restaurant in Lebanon.

In 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong said there was one disappointment relating to his moonwalk.

"I can honestly say — and it's a big surprise to me — that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said.

From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Va.-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft.

He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, N.Y.

Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.

At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Saturday, visitors held a minute of silence in memory of Armstrong. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies