When I was at school, I hated the fact that we had to remember the names of big people like who invented stuff and who did what. However, Neil Armstrong was a fairly easy name to remember who was the first human representative to step on the surface of moon. We here often say that we hate our life on earth and would love to migrate to moon. He’s the one who stepped there first, so his name kinda got stuck on my mind.

Fortunately, I answered correctly in multiple exams till now where I had to write down Neil Armstrong’s name as the first man to step on the moon.

To this day, I never bothered to know what his background was and what he had been doing since then. Heck I didn’t even know the date and day of when he stepped on the moon. I only knew the name Apollo 11, and “Houston, we have a problem,” and “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Now that he passed away, and now that I write for an online news site, I had to dig into his past and write about him. Unlike Steve Jobs, whose quotes kind of inspired me to focus on life, Neil didn’t have any impact on me. Like I said, I never even Googled his name. But after he passed away, I kinda feel sad. I sure don’t know why. I just feel sad.

Maybe he wasn’t really a superhero. Maybe he just got lucky. There could be someone else, or maybe astronaut Buzz Aldrin who was with him on the Apollo 11 who would step on the moon before Neil did and the world would’ve known Buzz’s name instead of Armstrong’s, but I don’t really care.

Part of me feels that it’s not the Neil Armstrong’s pass away that makes me sad. It’s probably the fact that people do pass away. At one point, or another.

In any case, Rest In Peace, Neil.

Image and news: WIRED Science.