On 20 January 1930, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, a boy named Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. was born. His little sister could not say 'brother' properly - it came out 'buzzer' - and the nickname Buzz stuck for life. His dad was a pilot, and Buzz grew up watching planes climb into the sky. He went to West Point military academy, became a fighter pilot in the Korean War, and earned a Ph.D. from MIT with a thesis on how spacecraft could meet and dock in orbit. He literally wrote the manual.
NASA picked him as an astronaut in 1963. On 16 July 1969, Buzz strapped into the Apollo 11 capsule on top of a Saturn V rocket alongside Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins. Four days later, on 20 July, he and Armstrong landed the lunar module Eagle on a flat plain called the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong climbed down the ladder first. Nineteen minutes later Buzz followed, gazing out at the Moon's powdery grey surface, which he called 'magnificent desolation.' Before stepping outside he had quietly taken communion - the first religious act ever performed on another world.
They stayed on the Moon for 21 hours, planted an American flag, and brought home 47.5 pounds of lunar rock. Half a billion people watched on television, the biggest TV audience in history at the time. Buzz later legally changed his first name to Buzz, became a tireless cheerleader for sending humans to Mars, and at age 72 famously punched a guy in the face for calling the Moon landing a fake. He is still around today, still pushing for the next giant leap.
