On July 20, 1969, at about four minutes before 10:00pm Central Daylight Time, former naval aviator and test pilot Neil Armstrong became the first human being to stand on the surface of the Moon. About 20 minutes later, he was followed by Buzz Aldrin, an Air Force colonel with a PhD in astronautics from MIT (Aldrin had, quite literally, written the book on orbital rendezvous techniques). Armstrong and Aldrin’s landing was the culmination of almost a decade of scientific and engineering work by hundreds of thousands of people across the United States. Even though the lunar program’s goals were ultimately political, the Apollo project ranks as one of the greatest engineering achievements in human history.

The six successful Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972 still inspire awe today, almost half a century later. A big part of that awe comes from the fact that those voyages from the Earth to the Moon were accomplished with only the most basic of computing assistance. There were no supercomputers as we’d understand them today; although the computers that eventually powered the Apollo spacecraft were almost unbelievably advanced at the time, they are alarmingly primitive when viewed through the lens of 21st century computing.

Fortunately for amateur and professional historians wondering how the effort succeeded despite its comparatively primitive computing, NASA has extensive historical resources about project Apollo available in the public domain to study, including the outstanding Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (along with its companion site, the Apollo Flight Journal). We’ve combed through gigabytes of documents and images to bring you this brief retrospective of some lesser-known interesting historical tidbits around Apollo 11 and that one small step nearly a half-century ago.

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Gus Grissom: Nearly the first man on the Moon?

Ohio-born Neil Armstrong seems like the all-American poster boy for the first lunar landing. In addition to his good looks and ice-cool test pilot skills, he was also a civilian at the time of the Apollo landings—avoiding having the first human to stand on the Moon be an active-duty soldier, sailor, or airman was seen as an important symbolic gesture. However, Armstrong wasn’t the original front-runner for that first moonwalk.

As Project Apollo barreled forward in the middle of the 1960s, Mercury and Gemini veteran astronaut Gus Grissom was the most likely candidate for command of the first mission to land on the Moon. As the only member of the original "Mercury Seven" astronauts still actively flying, Grissom was the most senior member of NASA’s astronaut corps. And he was also the first choice of Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton, who managed the Apollo crew assignments.

Tragically, Grissom was killed on January 27, 1967, along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee, during a "plugs out" test of the Apollo 1 command module. The spacecraft was sitting on Launch Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy when a spark—likely from a wire with worn insulation—ignited something in the pressurized oxygen atmosphere. All three astronauts succumbed to rapid asphyxiation, losing consciousness in less than twenty seconds.

The hatch on the Apollo 1 spacecraft opened inward and used the spacecraft’s own pressurization to supplement its mechanical locks to ensure it would stay closed. Ironically, elements of this design were implemented due to the failure of Grissom’s Mercury spacecraft hatch after splashdown. It is possible that if the block 1 Apollo spacecraft had been equipped with Mercury-style explosive bolts for fast opening, the three astronauts might have survived. In the wake of the Apollo 1 fire, the hatch on the block 2 Apollo spacecraft was redesigned to allow for quick emergency egress.

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Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum

NASA / Apollo 8 press kit

One small step for…a man?

"That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said Armstrong as he took his first steps on the Moon’s dusty surface. The words seem inspiring until you actually try to parse the sentence and see that it's weirdly redundant. Both parts seem to imply something done by or on behalf of all of humanity. Did Neil Armstrong, caught up in the moment and distracted by checklists and the weight of millions of watching eyes, flub his line?

The recording of Armstrong’s line is one of the most closely studied bits of audio in existence. Newspapers at the time variously quoted Armstrong as saying "one small step for man" and "one small step for [a] man," and even Armstrong himself attested that he’d spoken the line with the indefinite article in place. It definitely makes more sense that way: "That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" captures the journey of Apollo in a single metaphor. NASA officially maintained that the "a" had been covered in a burst of static, though that sounds a little fishy when listening to the recording.

The urban legend debunking site Snopes.com has an excellent breakdown of the situation, and it concludes with a quote from Armstrong himself, who, when confronted with the evidence, appears to admit defeat:

According to the authors, Mr. Armstrong sighed, "Damn, I really did it. I blew the first words on the Moon, didn't I?"

Mr. Gorsky

There are lots of funny but false urban legends surrounding Apollo 11, but the most famous is the one that concerns the supposed second words spoken on the Moon. After Armstrong’s "giant leap" line, the astronaut is rumored to have uttered the cryptic line, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."

Decades later, in an apocryphal press conference, Armstrong was supposedly asked about the significance of the line. As the story goes, the astronaut responded to the question by explaining that one day as a kid, he was playing baseball with his brother. Armstrong’s brother hit a fly ball that landed in the yard of the Armstrongs’ neighbors, the Gorskys. Neil ran over to grab the ball, which had rolled close to the Gorskys’ bedroom window, and as he picked it up he heard an exclamation from within: "Oral sex? You want oral sex? Ha! You’ll get oral sex when the boy next door walks on the Moon!"

It’s a funny story, but it’s just not true. NASA transcripts prove conclusively that no such words escaped Armstrong’s lips on the lunar surface; according to Snopes, Armstrong himself mentions that he first heard the joke in late 1995.

(The joke was given new legs in the 2009 Watchmen film, which features a suited astronaut saying "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!" on the surface of the Moon during the opening credits montage.)

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Listing image by NASA