Neil Armstrong’s Family Opened Up About His Struggles After Returning From The Moon

It's a wonder if a young Armstrong ever considered how he'd feel about achieving his wildest dreams. Born in 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Neil Alden Armstrong was the first child to his parents, Stephen and Viola. But did they have any inkling of how far their firstborn would go? Not at the time.

Stephen Armstrong was a local government auditor. His work necessitated no fewer than 16 moves in the first 14 years of Neil’s life, uprooting the entire family, including his little sister June and brother Dean. Undoubtedly, it was an unstable period, but thankfully, it did come with one major upside. Amid all the to-ing and fro-ing, young Armstrong developed a fondness for flying from the tender age of two.

And that fondness didn't stop at passenger flights, either. A visit to the Cleveland Air Races sparked even further passion in the young Armstrong. And his interest was reinforced yet again when his father took him on his first flight at the age of six. This momentous event happened in Warren, Ohio, aboard a “Tin Goose,” as the Ford Trimotor was nicknamed.

After much upheaval, Armstrong’s family finally settled down in 1944 right back where they’d started over in Wapakoneta. There, Armstrong went to Blume High School. He also started flying lessons and was up in the air flying solo by the time he was just 16. It's a fact that becomes all the more impressive when you consider that he hadn’t even earned his driver’s license by that time! What's more, he also found time to become an Eagle Scout.

After high school, Neil headed off to Purdue University in 1947 when he was 17. And unsurprisingly, his chosen field of study was aeronautical engineering. In fact, he was offered a place at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well. However, sources suggest that some sage advice from an uncle seems to have influenced his decision to opt for Purdue.

This uncle pointed out to his nephew that he’d receive a sound education 150 miles away at Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana, without the trouble of traveling more than 800 miles to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to go to MIT. And so it was that Armstrong packed up and went to Purdue with a special U.S. Navy program picking up the tab for his degree.

The program that he enrolled in meant that after two years of college, Armstrong was committed to a couple of years of flight practice and then 12 months flying in the U.S. Navy. Following this, he would return to college and finish his studies. His time in the Navy started early in 1949 when he arrived at Florida’s Pensacola Naval Air Station.

in September 1949 Armstrong made his first solo flight, and his inaugural touchdown on a carrier, USS Cabot, in March 1950. By August of that year, he had officially qualified as a U.S. Navy pilot. And his progress continued with his maiden jet flight in a Grumman F9F Panther at the start of 1951. Then in June his squadron, VF-51, headed for Korean War duty aboard USS Essex.

The Korean War was essentially a Cold War conflict in which communist North Korea, backed by China and the Soviets, was pitched against South Korea, America, and their allies. The conflict broke out in June 1950. And little over a year later, the then-21-year-old Armstrong was gearing up to go to war far for his homeland. It was time to put all that he'd learned so far to the test.

Armstrong started off with escort missions guarding spy planes, but he was soon flying on bombing sorties — which would end in a life-threatening situation. In August 1951, as he flew his F9F Panther at low altitude to bomb a target, about six feet of one wing was ripped off by a booby-trap wire set up across a valley. Thankfully, the young pilot was able to stay in the air, but the threat was far from over.

After losing control of his machine, Armstrong soon realized that he’d be unable to land his damaged plane safely on USS Essex, which didn't leave him with many options. Instead of a landing, then, he decided instead to eject. His plan was to do this above the sea where, hopefully, he’d be rescued by helicopter. Unfortunately, things didn't go to plan. The wind took him inland away from the water. With impeccable timing, though, an old flight school buddy showed up in a jeep and drove him to safety.

After surviving the near-miss, Armstrong completed close to 80 missions between January to March 1952 and surely proved that he was a resourceful and courageous young man. Following Korea, Armstrong became a reservist, and he continued to fly. He also returned to Purdue to complete his studies as planned. Back at college, he was involved in amateur theatrics and played in the Purdue All-American Marching Band.

Armstrong completed his degree in 1955. And the following year, another momentous life event came when he married his college sweetheart, Janet Shearon, in January 1956. They went on to have three children together: Karen, Eric, and Mark. Tragedy struck in the summer of 1961, however. Karen, the middle child, was diagnosed with brain cancer. Tragically, she died at the beginning of 1962, a couple of months short of her third birthday.

Aside from the unimaginable loss faced in his private life, Armstrong plowed forward with his professional career. He started life after graduating as a test pilot at Cleveland, Ohio’s Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, with his inaugural flight taking place in March 1955. In July he transferred to Southern California’s Edwards Air Force Base High-Speed Flight Station. And when 1956 rolled around, he had an opportunity to show the cool, calm, and collected head that would later serve him well as an astronaut.

In March 1956 Armstrong piloted a modified four-engine Boeing B-29 Superfortress. However, during the plane’s ascent, one of the engines failed. The crew then fired off an experimental Skyrocket, which they needed to do so that the plane would be able to land. As the rocket was released, though, one of the propellers came apart. Fragments flew into two of the other engines. With destruction all around him and the crew, Armstrong was left with only one decision.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, the only choice left was for him to turn the engines off completely. Armstrong was now left with just one functioning engine. Nevertheless, after a long, cautious descent he successfully landed the massive Superfortress. Armstrong flew in excess of 200 different planes as a test pilot, with similarly hair-raising incidents cropping up from time to time. His colleagues recognized him as an excellent engineer.

In 1962 NASA announced that opportunities were available for would-be astronauts. Armstrong applied and, despite handing his paperwork in well after the official deadline, was accepted. In fact, a friend named Dick Day had spotted his application and spirited it into the right in-tray. And in 1965 NASA named Armstrong as one of the backup astronauts chosen for the Gemini 5 mission. A flight that was designed as practice for a Moon landing.

Although Armstrong didn’t make it into space with Gemini 5, he was now selected as a first-choice astronaut for the Gemini 8 launch. He’d be the command astronaut and David R. Scott, another space-flight newbie, was named as the pilot. The mission included a docking exercise in orbit with a crewless vessel — the first time this had ever been attempted. Powered by a Titan II rocket, Armstrong and Scott took off on March 16, 1966.

But, just as with so many of Armstrong's previous missions — things were not smooth sailing. While the docking process went to plan, Armstrong and Scott’s ship then started to spin around. They detached from the other vessel, but the problem only worsened. Armstrong now turned off the Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System, which meant the astronauts were committed to re-entry and landing as soon as possible.

And once the decision to abandon the mission had been made, Gemini 8 made a successful return to Earth, splashing down off the coast of Japan on September 15. Some claimed that Armstrong might have taken the wrong course when the emergency occurred, but the general consensus was that the two freshly-appointed astronauts were not at fault.

In spite of the failed mission, it would seem that Armstrong soon bounced back after his Gemini 8 disappointment. And just a year later in 1967, there was good news on the horizon. That year, along with 17 colleagues, he was chosen as one of the possible astronauts to fly to the Moon with the Apollo program. So with sights set out to space, Armstrong started training to pilot the lunar module down onto the surface of the Moon.

NASA built three vessels — Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV) — for the crew to practice their Moon landing with. The astronauts went on to dub these crafts “flying bedsteads.” And it was in May 1968 that Armstrong was piloting one of the training vessels when the controls malfunctioned. The bad news — the mishap took place while he was at an altitude of around 100 feet. Yet again, history was repeating itself. The vehicle started to lurch in a way that almost no training can prepare someone for.

With few choices left, Armstrong decided it was time to eject — which, thankfully, he carried out without any major mishap. He hurt only his tongue. But considering the stakes, he got off lightly. The LLTV, however, plunged to the ground, the impact causing it to burst into flames. Later, technicians determined that if Armstrong had left it even a fraction of a second longer before ejecting, then the parachute would have malfunctioned.

Armstrong seemed unfazed by this close shave, however, and was later to assert that the LLTV training had been essential to the success of the Moon missions. Armstrong was then chosen as a backup commander for Apollo 8, which flew in December 1968. And while Apollo 8 circled the Moon, NASA offered Armstrong command of Apollo 11, the mission that would go on to make the first Moon landing.

Naturally, Armstrong accepted. His crew would be Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. And as we know, Armstrong and Aldrin would successfully land on the Moon and Collins would remain in orbit aboard the ship they would all return to Earth in. Perhaps given his gleaming track record, NASA also decided that it would be Armstrong who would be the first man to set foot on the Moon.

On July 16, 1969, a Saturn V rocket blasted the three astronauts skywards. Armstrong’s wife Janet and his sons Eric and Mark were on a boat on the Banana River just by the Kennedy Space Station to witness the launch. It must have been an anxious moment for Janet, but fortunately things went off without a hitch. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were on their way to the Moon.

The spaceship was blasted into orbit around the Earth, and shortly afterwards, the engines fired again, propelling the three astronauts on their course for their target — the Moon. After three days of space travel, on July 19, the mission reached its destination. As planned, the ship entered the Moon's orbit. They would now circle the Moon 30 times.

On July 20, Aldrin and Armstrong clambered into Eagle, the ship that would take them down to the surface of the Moon. They then parted company with the orbiting vessel and headed downwards to the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong, piloting the lunar module, spotted a smooth patch of surface and steered the craft towards it, dodging a crater and bringing the landing module down safely.

The landing was no mean feat, however. The task ahead was a seriously close-run thing. Indeed, when the pair touched down they had less than half a minute’s worth of fuel to spare. The tension of the touchdown was reflected in Armstrong’s heart rate, which had gone as high as 150 beats per minute. Nonetheless, they’d made it onto the surface of the Moon.

Nearly seven hours after the landing, Armstrong climbed out of the lunar module and planted his left boot on the Moon dust. And as the world looked on, he uttered the immortal words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong actually meant to say “a man,” but he can surely be forgiven for that minor slip-up given the circumstances!

As history records, Aldrin and Armstrong stayed on the Moon for more than 21 hours and then reunited with Collins, before returning safely to Earth eight days after they’d left the planet. Eighteen days of quarantine followed, after which Armstrong and the others could face jubilant hordes of well-wishers. There were ticker-tape parades in Chicago and New York, as well as endless media and public appearances.

So you might think that everything would be rosy in Armstrong’s life after that pinnacle of achievement and the public adulation it elicited. But life wasn’t so easy for the first man on the Moon. Many of the difficulties Armstrong was to face in later years were only revealed in a biography written by James Hansen, however. First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong was published in 2005.

In a 2019 interview with the British newspaper the Daily Mirror, Hansen said, “I’ve never met anybody quite like Neil. He had no ego and turned down so many opportunities to make money. Many of the astronauts who went to the Moon also had some religious or spiritual epiphany, but nothing changed in his approach to life.” Sadly, though, things did change for the famed astronaut after that fateful mission.

According to Hansen, Armstrong said, “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics.” Nonetheless, there was something gnawing away at his psyche. In fact, Armstrong developed an overwhelming fear that his two sons, Mark and Eric, would be kidnapped. He also became obsessed with the 1932 tragedy of Charles Lindberg, the flying ace.

Lindbergh’s son had been kidnapped and murdered. Mark Armstrong told Hansen, “I know there were threats made against us. Dad moved away from fame because he didn’t want what happened to the Lindbergh baby to happen to us.” In addition, problems had also started to emerge in Armstrong’s relationship with his wife Janet. Sadly, the somber echoes from their past were haunting them, threatening to push the couple over the edge. 

It seems that the death of their infant daughter Karen had cast a long and irreparable shadow. After that gut-wrenching tragedy, Armstrong would never discuss the traumatic incident, meaning that Janet had no choice but to grieve alone. “I don’t remember her death ever being discussed at home,” Mark explained to Hansen. “My sister died on January 28, my parents’ wedding anniversary. They never celebrated it for that reason. It was a wound that never healed.”

Unable to patch things up, in 1990 Armstrong and Janet separated, divorcing four years later after being married for almost four decades. The same year, Armstrong wed again, to Carol Knight. But despite the happy news, he now became anxious that his new marriage could drive a wedge between him and his sons, even though they were now in their 30s. He compensated by taking them to Scotland and Ireland to play golf.

Armstrong also avoided speaking about his Moon experience with his family and friends, just as he’d refused to speak about the death of his daughter. “I think he was concerned about being misrepresented,” Hansen said. “He had been a naval fighter pilot in the Korean War and a test pilot for years but felt the only thing people wanted to talk to him about was the Moon landing, which only took a year out of his life.”

“People expected Neil to be sort of demi-God or hero, but he was different from other astronauts,” Hansen told the Daily Mirror. “He wasn’t at all the gung-ho, macho fighter pilot type, those often depicted as the guys with the ‘right stuff’.” Armstrong seems to have been a complex man, and not always a happy one. But his achievements were extraordinary. Neil Armstrong died in 2012 aged 82.

Neil Armstrong's experience is one only very few can understand. But his moonwalking partner, Buzz Aldrin, has coped quite differently. While Armstrong closed himself off, Aldrin leaned into recounting his experience, particularly to combat conspiracies about their landing. Indeed, years later, Aldrin revealed some surprising facts about his Moon visit that have opened people's eyes.

Aldrin’s revelations about his Moon trip in a 2016 interview centered on one of the color shots taken on the mission by Armstrong. In fact, Armstrong took all of the still photos on the Moon’s surface for the simple reason that he was the one wielding the camera. The many famous shots he got were captured with a high-performance Hasselblad.

Of course, the astronauts captured a whole gallery of extraordinary images from this first manned Moon-landing expedition. That’s hardly a surprise given the momentous accomplishment of those two men setting foot on the Moon. For example, there’s the amazing shot of Aldrin standing by the Stars and Stripes, saluting his country’s flag flying improbably on the Moon’s surface.

A single photograph of Aldrin’s bootprint in the moondust is another unforgettable shot. Then there’s what’s known as the visor image. In that picture of Aldrin facing the camera we can actually clearly see Armstrong in reflection in the former’s helmet visor. Also visible in the reflection is the lunar landing module, Eagle.

Indeed, one of the many topics Aldrin addressed in an interview staged at the Science Museum in London, England in 2016 was the photography from the Moon mission. And as he answered questions he let slip what we might seem to be a rather startling admission. He went so far as to say that an aspect of the moon landing had been “so well staged.”

Aldrin and Armstrong’s successful landing on the moon – with Michael Collins in orbit in the return vehicle – was actually the fulfillment of a commitment made by President John F. Kennedy back in 1961. He’d told a joint Congressional session that America would land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Sadly, Kennedy had been dead for nearly six years by the time this dream came true. Nevertheless, it was a stirring example of American ambition and know-how.

This high-level commitment to expand the U.S. space program came in the context of the Cold War. This conflict between the U.S. and her allies and the Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union was a clash of ideologies which sometimes spilled onto the battlefield; one such example was the Korean War. Aldrin actually fought in Korea as a fighter pilot, flying on 66 missions and bringing down two enemy MiG jets.

Another Cold War front on which the opposing sides competed was the Space Race. By the time Kennedy had announced the intention to travel to the Moon, the Soviets had twice already stolen a significant march on the Americans in space exploration. In 1957 they had launched the first orbiting satellite, Sputnik. Then in 1961 the first man into space had been the Russian Yuri Gagarin. It was clearing that the U.S. was lagging behind in this Space Race.

The presidential pledge led to an acceleration of NASA’s space program, with the Gemini missions running through the 1960s. In fact, Aldrin was one of the astronauts who flew on Gemini XII, the project’s final mission in 1966. In less than two years, the program had perfected various operations and maneuvers that would be essential to a future Moon-landing project.

The next step in the plan to put a man on the Moon was NASA’s Apollo program. It did not get off to the best of starts. The three-man crew that was to launch aboard Apollo 1 were all killed when a take-off practice drill in January 1967 went disastrously wrong. But by October 1968 things were back on track.

The next crewed mission, Apollo 7, successfully launched with its three-man crew and orbited the Earth 163 times. This mission was notable as the first American spaceflight to transmit live TV pictures back to the public. The next Apollo missions, 8, 9 and 10, moved closer to the ultimate goal of landing on the Moon.

As we know Aldrin, along with Armstrong and Collins, were the astronauts for the Apollo 11 mission. Armstrong was the mission commander and Collins was the command module pilot. This command ship was the spacecraft that would return the three astronauts back to Earth. Aldrin was the pilot of the lunar module. It was down to him to land it on the moon’s surface – and return safely to the command module.

Powered by its 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket, Apollo 11 took off from Cape Kennedy in Florida on July 16, 1969. It was one of four sections that made up the spaceship with the other three being the command module, Columbia, the lunar module, Eagle and a service module. Hundreds of thousands had gathered at the base, today known as Cape Canaveral, to watch the three astronauts blast off into space.

Once the spacecraft had left Earth’s atmosphere it headed for the Moon, using the thrust of the last of the three sections that made up the Saturn V rocket. The first had launched them from the ground and remained there while the second had powered them through the stratosphere. They were on their way.

Less than three hours after launch came a crucial part of the mission – the separation of the Apollo modules from the Saturn V rocket. The Columbus module also had to separate from the lunar module Eagle to maneuver the two into the correct configuration. The two parts of the spacecraft then successfully docked back together, and set off towards the Moon. A little more than two full days of space travel later, the astronauts were in lunar orbit.

By now it was the morning of July 20, and Aldrin and Armstrong clambered into Eagle, leaving Collins on his own in lunar orbit. The pair prepared to start flying the lunar module down to the Moon’s surface. They’d circled the Moon nearly 12 times and it was time to start their descent to the surface.

The first step to the Moon landing was to maneuver the lunar module from a standard orbit to an elliptical one that would bring them as near to the surface as 50,000 feet. At that point, the astronauts used Eagle’s engine to start the final controlled descent. At 500 feet from the Moon’s surface, Armstrong switched the craft to manual control.

At last, the lunar module landed. Armstrong announced this in his immortal message, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” The original flight plan had called for a four-hour rest break before Aldrin and Armstrong prepared to leave their capsule. However, once on the surface they quickly began to make ready to emerge.

In fact, the preparations to leave Eagle took nearly four hours. Finally, a little short of 110 hours after leaving Earth, Armstrong stepped onto the rocky terrain of the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility. He now radioed another message which has become a central part of the Moon landing story. “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” In the heat of the moment he actually forgot the “a” which he’d intended to include.

About 20 minutes after Armstrong had disembarked from Eagle, Aldrin followed him down the small ladder to step onto the Moon’s surface. Armstrong had already set up the TV camera so that the hundreds of millions of viewers on Earth could witness these extraordinary events on the Moon. The two astronauts now began to explore the lunar landscape around Eagle, spending about two-and-a-half hours outside before returning to the lunar module.

In the end, the two astronauts spent nearly 22 hours on the surface of the Moon before taking off to dock with Columbus. During their time outside Eagle, they’d taken many outstanding photos, a number of which are published again and again in the press and online. And some of those who claim that the Moon landings never happened use so-called anomalies in the photos as evidence to support their contentions.

Self-styled “Moon truthers” have repeatedly used the photos taken by Armstrong to try and prove that the entire Moon landing mission was staged. One example of this is an image that shows shadows on the ground which are apparently not parallel. Those that question the truth of the Apollo 11 mission say this indicates the use of studio lighting. But experts roundly reject this allegation.

The website of London’s Royal Museums Greenwich quotes the words of Professor Anu Ojha, the British National Space Academy’s director. Speaking about the parallel shadows claim, he explained, “This is on the surface of the Moon, but we can reproduce this effect any time we want to on Earth. You have all seen this phenomenon yourself, where, because of perspective, parallel lines appear to be non-parallel.”

Ojha continued, “If you are trying to reduce onto a two-dimensional plane a three-dimensional situation, you can make lines do all sorts of weird things. Artists have been using this for centuries.” And he goes on to debunk another Moon-landing trope involving a photo. In this claim, “truthers” say that photos from the Moon mission which include the sky show no evidence of stars, proving that the astronauts were not really in space.

However, the explanation for the lack of stars in the photographs is really quite simple. When the shots were taken, it was daytime on the Moon. The light of the Sun means that stars are not visible. Another claim relates to a picture in which the Stars and Stripes is visible and apparently ruffled by a breeze. The conspiracy theorists say that there’s no wind on the Moon, proving the photo is a fake.

But the truth is that the flag has a stiffening pole set along its top. And the apparent wrinkles in it are easily explained. Ojha nails it with, “All the wrinkles are there because it’s literally been screwed up for four days en route to the Moon.” And as he says, “We find ourselves awash in an ocean of information online… The only tools we have to navigate through this maelstrom are the critical-thinking skills that we are trying to develop in people as scientists.”

Ojha takes a coolly analytical approach to the claims of the “Moon truthers”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone is so dispassionate in their reactions. One of those who can become irritated and even angry is Buzz Aldrin. When he was confronted by one Moon-landing denier, Aldrin’s temper boiled over altogether.

The man in question was Bart Sibrel, 37 at the time of the incident, standing 6'2” tall and weighing in at 250 pounds. It’s worth noting that the much-smaller Aldrin was 72 when the episode happened in September 2002. The astronaut had been falsely enticed to visit a hotel in Beverley Hills, California purportedly for an interview with a Japanese TV channel.

But when Aldrin arrived at the hotel he was confronted by Sibrel, a notorious conspiracy theorist. Sibrel demanded that Aldrin swear on the Bible that he had really traveled to the Moon, a stunt he had pulled with other Apollo astronauts. But this time he got an answer he probably hadn’t anticipated. Aldrin punched him in the face.

Afterwards, Sibrel was good enough to tell Florida-based newspaper the St. Petersburg Times that, “I was very surprised that he hit me. I thought it was very foolish of him to do it in front of two video cameras. He has a good punch. It was quick, too. I didn't see it coming.” Beverly Hills police decided to treat Aldrin’s punch as an act of self-defense and no charges were laid.

However, February 2016 found Aldrin in a much more affable mood as he was interviewed before a live audience at an event staged in London, England. The venue was the Science Museum and the interviewer was Brian Cox. He’s a popular science TV presenter and particle physics professor at England’s University of Manchester.

During the interview, Cox and Aldrin came on to the topic of an especially well-known photo from the Apollo 11 mission, the visor picture, which we mentioned earlier. You’ll recall that it’s an image of Aldrin standing in the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility with a clear reflection in his helmet visor of Armstrong taking the picture.

Cox is clearly blown away by this singular image. In YouTube video footage recorded at the event, he says, “it’s probably the most famous picture from the surface of the Moon, I would say.” But he goes on to highlight a widespread misconception about the photo. “Many people say that’s Neil Armstrong,” Cox says to Aldrin, “but in fact it’s you with Neil in the reflection.”

And Cox goes even further in his praise for the image, adding, “It’s probably the most iconic picture in human history.” Aldrin then elaborates on the story of the helmet image. “Neil’s such an excellent photographer,” he generously points out. “See, I was walking along like this,” he continues, as he waggles two fingers to mimic a man walking.

Aldrin recalls, “Armstrong said, ‘Hey, stop!’ So I stopped and looked at him and he took the picture right away. You can identify that I was moving just a little. But people ask me about it – because it’s so well staged – and we call it the visor picture because the reflection in the visor shows the landing craft and the white-suited astronaut, Neil, who took the picture.”

Aldrin goes on to say, “People have asked me why is that such a perfect and iconic picture and I’ve got three words. Location, location, location.” That quip raises a hearty laugh from the audience. It’s easy to suspect that this may be a line that Aldrin has used before. Over the years he’s had every opportunity to become an accomplished public speaker, after all.

Now, that single phrase, “it’s so well staged” of course can quite easily be taken out of context and used as fuel for the delusions of the conspiracy theorists.Indeed, the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Express headlined a July 2020 article with “‘It was so well staged!’ Buzz Aldrin’s Moon landing confession revealed after 50 years.”

If you rip Aldrin’s words from their context at that Science Museum interview, you could claim that he’s admitting that the entire Moon mission was faked on a sound stage somewhere. But you’d have to be steeped in the delusions of conspiracy theory to believe that Aldrin was admitting to the preposterous tale that the entire Apollo 11 mission, from start to finish, was entirely faked.

In fact, Aldrin fell victim to the conspiracy theorists’ fantasies in earlier years. According to the fact-checkers at Snopes, the prank website Huzler published a piece in 2014 asserting that Aldrin had admitted to the fakery of Apollo 11. Huzler claimed to quote Aldrin’s words, “Apollo 11 was not real, none of it was. I am ashamed to say this but I cannot hide it any more, it was a set-up, like the ones they use in Hollywood films.”

Enthusiastic “Moon truthers” started spreading these supposed words of Aldrin’s on social media, apparently completely failing to notice that Huzler is a self-proclaimed prank site. So those that believe the Moon landings were a hoax, were themselves embarrassingly hoaxed. And if you believe that the Moon landings never happened, don’t mention it to Buzz Aldrin – unless you enjoy being punched in the face.