Buzz Aldrin was born Edwin Eugene Aldrin in Montclair, New Jersey on this date in 1930. He’s best known as the second man to walk on the Moon. Here are ten facts about him that you might not know:
- His mother’s maiden name was Moon.
- The name Buzz started as a childhood nickname when his sister, Fay, couldn’t pronounce the word “brother” and would say “Buzzer” instead. In 1988, Aldrin changed his name officially from Edwin to Buzz.
- His father wanted him to join the navy rather than the air force and even secured him a Naval Academy appointment from Albert W. Hawkes, one of the United States senators from New Jersey. However, Aldrin wasn’t so keen as he got seasick and was much more interested in flying aeroplanes. He faced down his father and told him to ask Hawkes to change the nomination to the United States Military Academy at West Point, which was done, and Aldrin entered West Point in 1947.
- He served in the Korean war, flying F-86 Sabre Jets in the Air Force’s 51st Fighter Wing, completing 66 combat missions in Korea.
- After that, he attended MIT and gained a doctorate in aeronautics, the first astronaut to get a doctorate. His doctoral dissertation was about the piloting and rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit. Aldrin’s techniques have been used on many NASA missions, earning him the nickname of "Dr. Rendezvous".
- More recently, he’s been an advocate for missions to Mars. In August 2015, Aldrin, together with the Florida Institute of Technology, presented a master plan to NASA where astronauts, with a tour of duty of ten years, might establish a colony on Mars before the year 2040.
- He got so angry once with a conspiracy theorist who claimed the Moon landing was faked that he punched him in the face. The denier tried to press charges, but a judge ruled that Aldrin had been provoked.
- He nearly won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography For A Non-fiction Program for footage he shot with Michael Collins during the Apollo 11 moon landing, which was used in the CNN documentary Apollo 11. National Geographic’s The Cave, however, pipped them at the post.
- Altogether, Aldrin logged 289 hours and 53 minutes in space. He’s also done a significant amount of exploring on Earth. Guinness World Records lists Aldrin as the oldest person to have visited both the North and South Poles. He went to the North Pole in July 1998 aboard the nuclear icebreaker Sovetskiy Soyuz, and went to the South Pole as a tourist in November 2016, when he was 86 years and 314 days old. His stay came to an end when he had to be medically evacuated for, of all things, altitude sickness. He’s also done some exploring under the sea, diving to the wreck of the Titanic in 1996.
- The Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear was named in honour of Buzz Aldrin.
Character birthday
Hurricane: Real name Joseph Pilgrim, son of Servant and Willow. His power is air manipulation, which manifested when he was a child, mildly to start with, resulting in his sister and her best friend dubbing him “Little Puff of Air Man.” However, as he matured, so did his power and he can now create any air movement up to the strength of a hurricane force wind. Not yet in a published story. His parents’ story is in The Power of Love.
The Power of Love
Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic ordering and the significance of chance encounters. She believes there's a spiritual explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.
A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.
Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.
When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.
Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic ordering and the significance of chance encounters. She believes there's a spiritual explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.
A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.
Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.
When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.
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