Selena Gomez

                                                                 Selena Gomez


Born on July 22, 1992, in Grand Prairie, Texas, Selena Gomez got her start in show business with a two-year run on the kids' show Barney and Friends. After a few bit parts in movies, Gomez guest-starred on Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Hannah Montana. In 2007, she was cast in the lead on Wizards of Waverly Place and in 2009 released a music album.

Profile

Actress. Born Selena Marie Gomez on July 22, 1992, to Amanda Cornett and Ricardo Gomez in Grand Prairie, Texas. Her mother, commonly known as Mandy, gave birth to Gomez at the age of 16.
Selena began her career in show business in 2001 when she performed on the popular children's show Barney & Friends, as Gianna. Gomez was dropped from the series after two years in 2003. Over the next two years, Gomez auditioned for shows without much success. She landed a small role in the movie Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over in 2003 and a bit part as Julie on Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire in 2005. She also got a part as Emily Grace Garcia in the television show Brain Zapped in 2006, and even recorded a song for the show.
In 2006, Selena Gomez got her first major role when she guest starred as Gwen in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody on the Disney Channel. Also on the Disney Channel, Gomez played the role as the evil Mikayla in Hannah Montana.
Gomez landed her first starring role when the Disney Channel cast her as Alex Russo in the series Wizards of Waverly Place in 2007. The series has become a popular fixture on the channel.
In 2008, Selena Gomez made her first animated movie, Horton Hears a Who!, and later starred in the ABC Family movie Another Cinderella Story with Disney Channel star Andrew Seeley. Selena filmed two movies for the Disney Channel Original Movie franchise as well. The first was Princess Protection Program, which was released in 2009 and also starred Demi Lovato. She also starred in Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie later in 2009.
Gomez also has a growing music career. She started in 2008 when she recorded a cover of "Cruella de Vil" for DisneyMania 6. She also recorded three songs for the soundtrack to her movie Another Cinderella Story, and a song for the animated movie, Tinker Bell. Gomez recorded the single "One and the Same" for her movie Princess Protection Program as a duet with her friend and co-star Demi Lovato. She also recorded four songs for the soundtrack to her other feature film, The Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie. In 2008, Selena singed a record contract with Hollywood Records. She is currently working on her debut album, Kiss and Tell, which will be released in the fall of 2009. Gomez had a cameo in the Jonas Brothers' video for the single, "Burnin Up."Gomez is a spokesperson for Borden Milk, appearing in their advertising campaign and print ads. She also worked on a teen-voting campaign, which helped encourage teenagers to learn more about the 2008 presidential candidates.


All credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/selena-gomez-504530?page=2

Justin Beiber

                                                                  Justin Beiber


        Born March 1, 1994, in Stratford, Canada to a single mother, Justin Bieber took second place in a local talent competition but turned into a YouTube phenomenon. He signed a record contract with Usher and became the first solo artist to have four singles enter the Top 40 before the release of a debut album. His record "My World" has gone platinum in several countries. He lives and works in Atlanta.

Childhood

Pop star Justin Bieber was raised by a single mom in the small town of Stratford. Bieber, whose debut album My World hit stores in November 2009, is a true overnight success, having gone from an unknown, untrained singer whose mother posted YouTube clips of her boy performing, to a budding superstar with a big-time record deal, all in just two years.
Bieber always had an interest in music. His mother gave him a drum kit for his second birthday and, as he tells it, he was "basically banging on everything I could get my hands on."
But it was an obscure talent contest in his hometown, in which the 12-year-old Bieber finished second that put him on the road to superstardom. As a way to share his singing with family, Justin and his mom began posting clips of Bieber performing covers of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and Ne-Yo on YouTube.
Within months, Justin was an Internet sensation, with a large following of fans, and an eager manager arranging for the teenager to fly to Atlanta to consider a record deal. There, Bieber had a chance meeting with Usher, who eventually signed the young singer to a contract.

Career Highlights

Bieber's first single, "One Time," went certified platinum in his native Canada shortly after its release in May 2009. His album My World matched that success, selling more than 137,000 copies within a week of hitting stores. Bieber broke into the Billboard Top 10 in early 2010 with "Baby," which also featured Ludcris. Bieber soon released My World 2.0 (2010), which offered his growing fan base ten new songs.
In 2011, Bieber took to the big screen in the concert documentary Never Say Never. His fans crowded movie theaters to catch him in action on stage and get a glimpse of his life behind the scenes. The movie, which eventually earned more than $73 million at the box office, also had guest appearances by Kanye West, Miley Cyrus and Bieber's musical mentor Usher. That same year, Bieber released an album featuring his own take on such holiday classics as "All I Want For Christmas Is," his duet with Mariah Carey.
Bieber had his biggest hit single to date in April 2012 with "Boyfriend." The song appears on his latest album Believe released in June.

Personal Life

Teen idol Justin Bieber broke the hearts of many of his young female fans in 2010 when he started dating television actress and singer Selena Gomez. It hasn't been easy for Gomez to be Bieber's girlfriend. She has been accosted by some of his devoted followers. There were even death threats against her posted on Twitter after the pair was photographed kissing while on vacation in 2011.
While still only in his teens, Bieber has survived his first public scandal. A woman filed suit against Bieber in 2011, claiming that he was the father of her child. But a DNA test proved that the young pop star was not the father and the woman dropped her lawsuit. Bieber sang about the scandal in the song "Maria."


Credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/justin-bieber-522504

Lady Gaga

                                                                         Lady Gaga


       Lady Gaga was born as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986 in Yonkers, New York. She attended New York University's Tisch School for the Arts but left to find creative expression. She wrote songs for other artists until being discovered by R&B singer Akon. Her debut album, The Fame, was a huge success, and the single "Poker Face" topped charts in almost every category, in almost every country.

Early Life

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986 in Yonkers, New York, to Cynthia and Joseph Germanotta. Germanotta, now known as Lady Gaga (she has attributed the inspiration for her name to the Queen song "Radio Ga-Ga"), went on to become an international pop star.

Gaga learned to play the piano by the age of 4. At the age of 11, she was accepted to the Juilliard School in Manhattan, but instead attended a private Catholic school in the city. She continued studying music and performing, writing her first piano ballad at the age of 13, and she held her first performance in a New York nightclub at the age of 14.
A few years later, Gaga was granted early admission to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts—she was one of only 20 students in the world to receive the honor of early acceptance. While there, she studied music and worked on her songwriting skills. She later withdrew from school to find creative inspiration. To make ends meet, she took three jobs, including a stint as a gogo dancer, while she honed her performance-art act.

Professional Debut

In 2005, Lady Gaga was briefly signed by Def Jam Records, but was dropped just months later. Being dropped by the label propelled the singer to perform on her own in clubs and venues on New York City's Lower East Side. There, she collaborated with several rock bands, and began her experimentation with fashion.

In 2007, at the age of 20, Gaga began work at Interscope Records as a songwriter for other artists on the label, including Britney Spears, New Kids on the Block, and The Pussycat Dolls. R&B singer Akon discovered Gaga while she was performing a burlesque show that she created, called "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue." Impressed, Akon signed the performer to his label under the Interscope umbrella, Kon Live. Through 2007 and 2008, Gaga wrote and recorded her debut album, The Fame. The record was received positive reviews and popular success in the United States. With the help of her own creative team, "Haus of Gaga," the performer also began to make a name for herself internationally.

Commercial Breakthrough

Lady Gaga's debut single, "Just Dance," was released to radio in early 2008, and received both popular and commercial acclaim. The song was then nominated for a Grammy Award (for best dance recording) in 2008. The song lost to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," but this didn't keep Gaga from reaching No. 1 on the mainstream pop charts in January 2009. The second single off of The Fame, "Poker Face," earned Gaga even more success. The song topped singles charts in almost every category, and in almost every country. Both songs were produced by Akon's affiliate RedOne, who co-wrote most of Lady Gaga's album.
Later in 2008, Lady Gaga opened for the newly reformed New Kids on the Block. She also collaborated with the group on the song "Big Girl Now" from New Kids on the Block's album The Block. The following year, Gaga released an album of eight songs, The Fame Monster, followed by 2011's Born This Way.


All credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/lady-gaga-481598

Adele

                                                                               Adele


     Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born in north London, England, on May 5, 1988. A huge fan of Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald as a child, Adele was a music fiend beginning at the age of three. She attended the BRIT School, a free school for the performing arts. Her first two albums, 19 and 21,                            

Quotes

I like having my hair and face done, but I'm not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician not to be on the cover of Playboy.

– Adele

earned her critical success and a level of commercial viability on par with the Beatles and Bob Marley.

Early Years

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on May 5, 1988 in North London, England. She was the only child of Penny Adkins, an "party mom" who was just 18 at the time of her birth, and a Welsh father, Mark, who left the family when Adele was only 4 years old.
Mark, who never married Penny, remained in contact with his daughter up until her teen years, when his problems with alcohol, and increasing estrangement from his daughter, caused their relationship to deteriorate. By contrast, Adele grew close to her mom, who encouraged her young daughter "to explore, and not to stick with one thing."
Early on, Adele developed a passion for music. She gravitated toward the songs of Lauren Hill, Destiny's Child and Mary J. Blige. But her true, eye-opening moment came when she was 15, and she happened upon a collection of Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald records at a local junk shop. "There was no musical heritage in our family," Adele told The Telegraph in a 2008 interview. "Chart music was all I ever knew. So when I listened to the Ettas and the Ellas, it sounds so cheesy, but it was like an awakening. I was like, oh, right, some people have proper longevity and are legends. I was so inspired that as a 15-year-old I was listening to music that had been made in the 40s."
While clearly bright, Adele wasn't a match for regular classroom work. Instead, her mother enrolled her in the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology, which counts Amy Winehouse as an alum.
While at school, Adele cut a three-track demo for a class project, which was eventually posted on her MySpace page. When executives at XL Recordings heard the tracks, they contacted the singer and, in November 2006, just four months after Adele had graduated school, signed her to a record deal.

Commercial Success

Adele's debut album, 19, which is named for the singer's age when she began recording it, hit record stores in early 2008. Led by two popular lead singles, "Hometown Glory" and "Chasing Pavement," the record rocketed Adele to fame.
Released in the United States through Columbia Records, 19 resonated with American audiences, much like it had with British music listeners. Adele cemented her commercial success with an appearance in October 2008 on Saturday Night Live. At the taping of the show, the album was ranked No. 40 on iTunes. Less than 24 hours later, it was No. 1.
At the 2009 Grammy awards, Adele took home Best New Artist. In addition, the album earned the singer the distinction of being named the "Sound of 2008" by the BBC. That same year, she earned the Critics' Choice prize at the BRIT Awards.
Her much anticipated follow-up album, 21, again named for her age when she recorded it, did not disappoint upon its release in early 2011. Tapping even deeper into Adele's appreciation for classic American R&B and jazz
, the record was a monster hit, selling 352,000 copies within its first week. Anchored by hits like "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You," 21 placed Adele in rarified air. In February 2011, she found herself with two top-five singles and a pair of top-five albums in the same week,                                 the first artist since the Beatles in 1964 to achieve that milestone. Adele also broke the solo female artist record for staying at No. 1 for 11 weeks. In 2012, she swept the Grammy Awards, taking home six wins, including Album of the Year. "This record is inspired by something that is really normal and everyone's been through it—just a rubbish relationship," she said at the Grammy ceremony.
Coupled with the success is Adele's own maturity, and ability to avoid the same kind of fame-induced pitfalls that plagued the late Amy Winehouse. Adele, whose larger, curvier body bucks the trend of most Top 40 celebs, is also supremely confident not just in her talent, but also in her looks. "I've seen people where it rules their lives, you know, who want to be thinner or have bigger boobs, and how it wears them down," she told Vogue magazine in 2011. "And I just don't want that in my life."

Personal Life

On June 29, 2012, Adele announced on her website that she was pregnant with her first child. The baby's father is Adele's boyfriend, Simon Konecki. Adele recently spoke to People magazine on being a mother: "I really want to be a mum. I better start getting on with it!" she said, adding that she wants to have three sons by the time she's 30.


All credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/adele-20694679?page=2

Gabby Douglas

                                                       Gabby Douglas: A young olympian
                                                                        Her Sacrifices

     Gabrielle Douglas was born on December 31, 1995, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Gabby Douglas began formal gymnastics training at 6 years old and won a state championship by the time she was 8. She moved away from her hometown and family in 2010 to pursue training with a world-renowned Olympic trainer, and was selected to compete with the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team at the 2012 Summer Olympics. There,                            

Douglas became the first African American to win gold in the individual all-around event. She also won a team gold medal with teammates Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross, McKayla Maroney and Jordyn Wieber.

Early Life

American gymnast Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas, better known as Gabby Douglas or "Flying Squirrel," was born on December 31, 1995, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Timothy Douglas and Natalie Hawkins. Her first experience with gymnastics came at the age of 3, when she perfected a straight cartwheel using a technique that she learned from her older sister, Arielle, a former gymnast. By age 4, Douglas had taught herself how to do a one-handed cartwheel.
Thanks to Arielle's persuasion tactics, Douglas's mother allowed her to begin taking formal gymnastics classes at the age of 6. Only two years later, in 2004, she was named a Virginia State Gymanstics Champion.

Gymnastic Achievements

When Douglas turned 14, she left her hometown and family, and moved to West Des Moines, Iowa, to train with renowned coach Liang Chow, known for molding American gymnast Shawn Johnson into a world champion and Olympic gold medalist. Travis and Missy Parton volunteered to be Douglas's host family in West Des Moines: According to Douglas's official website, she plays big sister to the Parton's four daughters, one of whom is also a student of Chow's.
At the 2010 Nastia Liukin SuperGirl Cup—a televised meet held in Massachusetts—Douglas made her debut on the national scene, placing fourth all-around. She also placed third on the balance beam, sixth on vault and ninth all-around in the junior division of her first elite meet, the 2010 CoverGirl classic in Chicago, Illinois. Douglas went on to win the silver medal on balance beam and fourth all-around at the 2010 U.S. Junior National Championships, and then took the uneven bars title at the 2010 Pan American Championships. Her performance at that event also placed Douglas at fifth all-around and won her a share of the U.S. team gold medal.
Douglas was a member of the U.S. team that won the gold medal in the team finals at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, Japan. She also won the 2012 Olympic Trials, which took place in San Jose, California, and was selected to the national team that will represent the United States at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England.
"Her unique blend of power, flexibility, body alignment and form has led her to be compared with three-time Olympian Dominique Dawes," states an article on American-Gymnast.com. Douglas is the first African American to make the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team since Dawes in 2000. She aims to be the second African American woman to win an individual medal, according to a June 2012 Los Angeles Times article.
The American-Gymnast.com article reported that Douglas's high-flying skills and high difficulty score on bars liken her to Dawes and enticed her to U.S. women's national team coordinator Martha Karoyli, who nicknamed her "Flying Squirrel."
By 2012, 16-year-old Douglas had proven herself a champion, going from underdog to Olympian in a short time. She became the subject of significant media attention in the summer of 2012: She was featured on
the cover of Sports Illustrated in early July of 2012, along with the rest of the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team, and on one of five covers released by TIME Magazine that same month.

2012 Olympics

At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Douglas and other members of the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team—Kyla Ross, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber—took home a team gold medal. Fans worldwide watched as judges announced the team's medal win—the first gold medal for the American women's gymnastics team since 1996.
Douglas went on to compete in the individual all-around event, and became the first African American to win gold in the prestigious event. Following her two golds, she competed in the individual uneven bars and individual beam events, but failed to medal in either, placing eight and seventh, respectively.


All credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/gabby-douglas-20900057?page=2

Whitney Houston

                                                         Whitney Houston: A great loss



Born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, Whitney Houston released her debut album at age 22 and scored three number one singles. Whitney (1987) delivered four more number ones and earned Houston her first Grammy. With her marriage to singer Bobby Brown in 1992, Houston's career got off track. She made a comeback with 2009's I Look to You. Houston died on February 11, 2012.

Profile

Born August 9, 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, Whitney Houston almost seemed destined from birth to become a singer. Her mother Cissy Houston, cousin Dionne Warwick and godmother Aretha Franklin were all legendary figures in American gospel and soul music. Cissy Houston was the choir minister at New Hope Baptist Church, and it was there that a young Whitney got her start. Even as a child, Whitney was able to wow audiences; she later told interviewer Diane Sawyer that a rapturous response from the congregation at New Hope had a powerful effect upon her: "I think I knew then that [my singing ability] was an infectious thing that God had given me."
By the time she turned 15, Whitney was performing often with her mother and trying to get a record deal of her own. Around the same time, she was discovered by a photographer who was awed by her natural beauty. She soon became an extremely sought-after teenage model, one of the first African American women to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine. But music remained her true love.
When she was 19, Whitney Houston was discovered in a nightclub by the renowned Clive Davis of Arista Records, who signed her immediately and took the helm of her career as she navigated from gospel to pop stardom. In 1983, Houston made her debut on national television, appearing on The Merv Griffin Show to sing "Home" from the musical The Wiz. She and Davis spent the next two years working on her debut album, finding the best producers and songwriters available to showcase her amazing vocal talent.
In 1985, she released her debut album Whitney Houston and almost immediately became a smash pop sensation. Over the next year, her hit singles "Saving All My Love for You" and "How Will I Know" helped the album reach the top of the charts, where it stayed for fourteen non-consecutive weeks. Houston won a Grammy in 1986 for "Saving All My Love for You"; the award was presented to the singer by her cousin Dionne Warwick. Houston followed the monumental success of her first album with a second release, Whitney, in 1987. That record, too, went platinum many times over and won more Grammy Awards, leading to a successful world tour. During this time, the singer also appeared at a concert for Nelson Mandela's birthday and founded the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, a nonprofit organization that funds projects to help needy children over the world.
By 1992, Whitney Houston was on top of the world, but her life was about to get very complicated very quickly. That year she married the R&B singer Bobby
Brown, formerly of New Edition, after a three-year engagement. At first the marriage was passionate and loving, but things turned sour as the decade progressed and both Brown and Houston battled substance abuse and increasingly erratic behavior.
In spite of these growing personal troubles, Whitney Houston continued to progress in her career,                                 crossing over successfully into acting in 1992 by starring opposite Kevin Costner in the wildly popular The Bodyguard. With this movie, she set a trend for her films to follow: in each film she also released a hit single, creating sensational record sales for the soundtracks. Her smash single from The Bodyguard, a cover of Dolly Parton's 1974 "I Will Always Love You," proved to be Houston's biggest hit ever, spending a record-breaking fourteen weeks atop the U.S. charts. The soundtrack album went on to win Houston three Grammys, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Later in the 1990s, Houston also starred in The Preacher's Wife and Waiting to Exhale, both accompanied by hit soundtracks as well.
In 1998, Houston released My Love Is Your Love, her first non-soundtrack studio album in many years, and it earned her another Grammy but could not top the chart performance of her previous albums. However, her collaboration with Mariah Carey in the animated film The Prince of Egypt produced a single, "When You Believe," which won an Academy Award.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Houston's increasingly rocky marriage, struggles with drugs and health problems threatened to derail her career. Several concert cancellations and a notorious TV interview with Diane Sawyer in 2002 in which Houston appeared far too thin and in very poor health led many to speculate that she was on the verge of a breakdown.
In 2004, Bobby Brown began filming a reality show for Bravo entitled Being Bobby Brown; Houston received substantial airtime. The show aired during the worst years of the couple's crumbling marriage; drug use, lifestyle excess and bad behavior were all caught on tape and Houston's reputation sunk to new lows. Houston tried to ignore the controversy, charging ahead with her music by releasing Just Whitney… to combat her detractors, but it did not match the success of her earlier works.
Over the next few years, Houston attempted to repair her marriage and to break her drug habit, but after several relapses her mother, Cissy, had to step in. As Whitney Houston explained to Oprah Winfrey in 2009: "[My mother] walks in with the sheriff and she says: 'I have a court injunction here. You do it my way or we're not going to do this at all. You're going to go on TV, and you're going to retire. And say you're going to give this up because it's not worth it.'" Whitney took a break from her career, divorced Bobby Brown in 2007, and won sole custody of their child, Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown.
After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life, Houston seemed to be pulling herself

together. She released a new album,I Look To You, in 2009. "The songs themselves will speak to you and you'll understand where I am and some of the changes I've gone through for the better," Houston told Entertainment Tonight. The recording received a warm welcome from music fans, making to the top of album charts. Her live shows, however, garnered mixed reviews with some complaining about the quality of her voice. In early 2012,                                 Houston rumored to be experiencing financial trouble, but she denied this claim. She, in fact, seemed to be poised for a career upswing. Houston worked on a new musical film Sparkle with Jordin Sparks, a remake of the 1976 movie about an all-girl musical group similar to the Supremes. She had reportedly been approached to join the singing competition The X Factor as a judge. Unfortunately, Houston did not live long enough to see the latest comeback reach fruition.
Whitney Houston died on February 11, 2012, in Los Angeles. Houston had been seen out in the days before her death, including at one of the pre-Grammy Award parties. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County coroner's office on March 22, 2012, the official cause of her death was accidental drowning. The effects of heart disease and cocaine found in her system were contributing factors. With her passing, the music world has lost one of its most legendary stars. Her longtime supporter and mentor Clive Davis once said that Houston "is in the great tradition of great, great singers, whether it's Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughn or Gladys Knight."



All credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/whitney-houston-9344818?page=3

Neil Armstrong

                                                                     Neil Armstrong: RIP
                                          We pay our respects to the first man on the moon
                                                                         


     Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. After serving in the Korean War and then finishing college, he joined the organization that would become NASA. He joined the astronaut program in 1962 and was command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII, in 1966. He was spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar mission, and the first man to walk on the moon. He died in 2012.


  

Military Service

Astronaut Neil Armstrong developed a fascination with flight at an early age and earned his student pilot's license when he was 16. In 1947, Armstrong began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University on a U.S. Navy scholarship.
His studies, however, were interrupted in 1949 when he was called to serve in the Korean War. A U.S. Navy pilot, Armstrong flew 78 combat missions during this military conflict. He left the service in 1952, and returned to college. A few years later, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). For this government agency he worked in a number of different capacities, including serving as a test pilot and an engineer. He tested many high-speed aircraft, including the X-15, which could reach a top speed of 4,000 miles per hour.

Astronaut Program

In his personal life, Armstrong started to settle down. He married Janet Shearon on January 28, 1956. The couple soon added to their family. Son Eric arrived in 1957, followed daughter Karen in 1959. Sadly, Karen died of complications related to an inoperable brain tumor in January 1962. The following year, the Armstrongs welcomed their third child, son Mark.

That same year, Armstrong joined the astronaut program. He and his family moved to Houston, Texas, and Armstrong served as the command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII. He and fellow astronaut David Scott were launched into the earth's orbit on March 16, 1966. While in orbit, they were able to briefly dock their space capsule with the Gemini Agena target vehicle. This was the first time two vehicles had successfully docked in space. During this maneuver, however, they experienced some problems and had to cut their mission short. They landed in the Pacific Ocean nearly 11 hours after the mission's start, and were later rescued by the U.S.S. Mason.

Moon Landing

Armstrong faced an even bigger challenge in 1969. Along with Michael Collins and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, he was part of NASA's first manned mission to the moon. The trio were launched into space on July 16, 1969. Serving as the mission's commander, Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module to the moon's surface on July 20, 1969, with Buzz Aldrin aboard. Collins remained on the Command Module.
At 10:56 PM, Armstrong exited the Lunar Module. He said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he made his famous first step on the moon. For about two and a half hours, Armstrong and Aldrin collected samples and conducted experiments. They also took photographs, including their own footprints.
Returning on July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 craft came down in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. The crew and the craft were picked up by the U.S.S. Hornet, and the three astronauts were put into quarantine for three weeks.
Before long, the three Apollo 11 astronauts were given a warm welcome home. Crowds lined the streets of New York City to cheer on the famous heroes who were honored in a ticker-tape parade. Armstrong received numerous awards for his efforts, including the Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Later Contributions

Armstrong remained with NASA, serving as deputy associate administrator for aeronautics until 1971. After leaving NASA, he joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as a professor of aerospace engineering. Armstrong remained at the university for eight years. Staying active in his field, he served as the chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., from 1982 to 1992.
Helping out at a difficult time, Armstrong served as vice chairman of the Presidential Commission on the space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986. The commission investigated the explosion of the Challenger on January 28, 1986, which took the lives of its crew, including school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

Death & Legacy

Despite being one of the most famous astronauts in history, Armstrong largely shied away from the public eye. He gave a rare interview to the news program 60 Minutes in 2006. He described the moon to interviewer Ed Bradley, saying "It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it." That same year, his authorized biography came out. First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong was written by James R. Hansen, who conducted interviews with Armstrong, his family, and his friends and associates.
Even in his final years, Armstrong remained committed to space exploration. The press-shy astronaut returned to the spotlight in 2010 to express his concerns over changes made to the U.S. space program. He testified in Congress against President Barack Obama's decision to cancel the Constellation program, which included another mission to the moon. Obama also sought to encourage private companies to get involved in the space travel business and to move forward with more unmanned space missions.
Taking this new decision, Armstrong said, would cost the United States its leadership position in space exploration. "America is respected for its contributions it has made in learning to sail on this new ocean. If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is simply allowed to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered. I do not believe that would be in our best interests," he told Congress, according to a report on NewsHour.
Armstrong underwent a heart bypass operation in August 2012. A few weeks later, on August 25, 2012, Neil Armstrong died of "complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures" at the age of 82. He is survived by his second wife Carol in Indian Hill, Ohio, and his two sons from his first marriage. He and his first wife divorced in 1994.



Credit goes to: http://www.biography.com/people/neil-armstrong-9188943?page=2