Текст для чтения Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong

         Neil Alden Armstrong was born on 5 August 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio. There were three children in a family of Viola Louise Engel and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. His father worked as an auditor for the Ohio state government. Neil had younger brother Dean and younger sister June. Because of Stephen Armstrong’s service the family moved from one town to another and after Neil’s birth they lived in twenty different towns. When Neil was two years old his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. At that time Neil grew fond of flying. The first airplane flight in Neil’s life was in July 1936 when Neil was six years old. It was in Warren, Ohio, when his father took him to go for a ride in a Ford Trimotor. The final moving of the family was to Wapakoneta in 1944. Neil Armstrong entered Blume High School there. He started to attend flying lessons at the county airport and received the flight certificate at the age of fifteen. It should be noted that Neil Armstrong earned his driver’s license later than the flight certificate. He also was a member of the Boy Scouts and in the end he received the rank of Eagle Scout. From 1947 to 1955 Neil studied at Purdue University (Indiana, the USA).

      Neil Armstrong began making a career in aviation and astronautics after serving in the Korean War. Then he served as a test pilot. Neil Armstrong was also university professor.

     The whole world heard the name Neil Armstrong on July 20th, 1969 when he became the first man to set foot on the Moon.  He was a part of the Apollo 11 spaceflight alongside Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Apollo 11’s success in 1969 opened a new era of space exploration.  About 600 million people — a fifth of the world’s population — watched the moon landing on television and followed it on the radio. That was when they heard Neil Armstrong’s famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the Moon, collecting information, doing experiments and taking photographs.  After his historic flight to the Moon, Armstrong became a national hero. He was a very modest, quiet and private man who didn’t like the idea of being a public figure. On one occasion he said that he was and would always be an engineer and that he was very proud of his profession. Armstrong stopped flying but never lost interest in the space exploration programme. Once he visited the USSR and met Russian cosmonauts.

      Neil Armstrong died in August 2012 at the age of 82.

1.      Why is Neil Armstrong famous?

2.      What was Neil Armstrong’s childhood like?

3.      Where did Neil study?

4.      What war did he take part in?

5.      Was Neil a university professor?

6.      What were his famous words?

7.      When did Apollo 11 crew set foot on the Moon?

Write down all of the different words you associate

with the word     ‘mission’ / ‘ the Moon ‘ / ‘aviation’