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Neil Armstrong :

First man on the moon


He fell in love with airplanes at the age of six

The first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong recently got into a legal battle with one of his former hairdressers for selling some of his hair for thousands of dollars, without his consent. Of course, all of you would have heard of this man Neil Armstrong.

Born on August 5, 1930 on his grandparents' farm in Auglaize County, Ohio in USA, Armstrong was the eldest of the three children of Stephen and Viola Engel Armstrong. His family moved several times before settling in Wapakoneta when Neil was 13.

He fell in love with airplanes at the age of six, when he took his first flight, in a Ford Tri-Motor "Tin Goose". He took on numerous jobs around town and at the nearby airport, so he could start taking flying lessons at the age of 15, and on his 16th birthday, he was issued a pilot's licence.

Always fascinated by planes and flying, he built a small wind tunnel in the basement of his home where he performed experiments on the model planes he built.

After graduating from Blame High School in 1947, Armstrong entered Purdue University with a US Navy scholarship. He began work on an aeronautical engineering degree, but in 1949, he was called to active war duty with the Navy. He won his jet wings at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida at the age of 20, the youngest pilot in his squadron.

He was sent to Korea in 1950 and flew 78 combat missions in Navy Panther jets, winning three Air Medals. Before the war was over, Armstrong returned to Purdue to complete his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955.

Armstrong then joined NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), NASA's predecessor, as a research pilot at the Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland, and later transferred to the NACA High Speed Flight Station at Edwards AFB, California. He was a project pilot on many pioneering high speed aircraft.

In 1962, Armstrong was transferred to astronaut status. He served as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, which was launched on March 16, 1966, and along with David Scott, performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space by mating his Gemini 8 with an uninhabited Agena rocket.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong was the commander of Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission. Armstrong was mission commander and was accompanied by Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, (USAF Lt. Colonel who'd flown Gemini 10) and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin, Jr. (USAF Colonel who'd flown Gemini 12).

On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and shortly thereafter, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. After a brief visit, the astronauts returned to the orbiting spacecraft and all three men returned to Earth, splashing down safely on July 24, 1969.

In the wake of this accomplishment, Armstrong received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award offered to a U.S. civilian. He has also been awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, 17 medals from other countries, the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy in 1970, the Robert J. Collier Trophy in 1969, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honour in 1978.

From 1971 to 1979, Armstrong was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

Until 1992, he served as Chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation in Charlottesville, Virginia and then became Chairman of the Board of AIL Systems, an electronics systems company in New York.

Armstrong also served on the National Commission on Space from 1985 to 1986. In 1986, he was appointed as Vice Chairman of the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger explosion. Neil Armstrong is married and has two children.

He currently lives quietly on his farm in Lebanon, Ohio.

A small crater on the Moon near the Apollo 11 landing site is named in his honour.

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Aung San Suu Kyi :

'A prisoner of conscience'

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (Burma), who is under house-arrest, celebrated her 60th birthday last month. Peace activists around the world launched a campaign to pressurise the Burmese government to release Suu Kyi after a recent announcement that her house-arrest would be extended.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a non-violent pro-democracy activist in Myanmar. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, Burma on June 19, 1945. She is the daughter of Daw Khin Kyi, Burma's only woman ambassador (to India and Nepal), and late General Aung San, the architect of Burma's independence.

She was educated in Rangoon until the age of 15 and continued her studies at the Delhi University when she accompanied her Ambassador mother to New Delhi. She completed her BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at St. Hugh's College, Oxford University, and was elected Honorary Fellow in 1990.

From 1969 to 1971, Suu Kyi was the Assistant Secretary to the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions of the United Nations Secretariat in New York. In 1972, she worked as the Research Officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bhutan, and got married to a British scholar Dr. Michael Aris. She has two sons, Alexander and Kim.

In 1988, she returned to Burma to attend to her ailing mother. When nationwide mass demonstrations for democracy started that August, Aung San Suu Kyi took a leading role in the movement, addressing half a million people at the famous Shwedagon Rally on August 23.

In 1988, the National League for Democracy (NLD) was founded with Suu Kyi as General Secretary, following an announcement by the military, which took control of the country in a September 18 coup, that "fair and free" elections would be held on May 27, 1990.

In asserting control, the military gunned down hundreds of demonstrators and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council.Following the coup and until July 1989, Suu Kyi as NLD leader delivered over a hundred public addresses, encouraging people to fight for their rights despite their fears, and extensively toured the country.

In 1989, the military placed Suu Kyi under house-arrest. Amnesty International declared Daw Aung San Suu Kyi a prisoner of conscience. Despite her continuing detention, and the arrest of other NLD leaders, their party won the election by a landslide victory, securing 82 per cent of the seats, but the military rulers refused to honour the election results.

Suu Kyi's arrest and confinement, which ended after six years in July 1995, drew national and international attention to the situation in Myanmar. She refused military offers that would allow her to leave the country because she would not be allowed to return. While under house-arrest, Suu Kyi was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

After her release, Suu Kyi continued the struggle for democracy in Myanmar despite being barred from leading the NLD by the military government. The military increasingly restricted Suu Kyi's movements during 1996 as it cracked down on NLD meetings and other activities.

She was banned from travelling outside Yangon, but she defied the order and was again put under house-arrest in September 2000. Suu Kyi was released from house-arrest a second time, in May 2002. The military government indicated the release was unconditional and that Suu Kyi was free to pursue her political activities as leader of the NLD.

However, at the end of May 2003, she was arrested again. After a period of imprisonment and undergoing an operation in September, she was placed under house- arrest in Yangon in which state she continues to live.

ANCL TENDER- Platesetter

www.hemastravels.com

www.singersl.com

http://www.mrrr.lk/(Ministry of Relief Rehabilitation & Reconciliation)

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

www.peaceinsrilanka.org

www.helpheroes.lk


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