Buzz Aldrin is renowned across the world as the second man to ever walk on the Moon and one of only four people alive today to have done so.
It seems there’s still plenty of life left in the 95-year-old, as we saw back in 2023 when he got married for the fourth time to Dr Anca Faur.
Despite an estimated 600 million people tuning into the first Moon landing back in 1969, and various scientists and experts proving that it happened, there are still conspiracy theorists out there who believe it was all fake. We can even see the Earth reflected in Aldrin’s helmet, for goodness sake!
At 8.17pm on 20 July, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew – consisting of Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins – successfully landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on Earth’s only natural satellite, and they took pictures including a footprint on the Moon and Aldrin saluting the US flag.
Nearly 56 years on, and some still argue about the very real landing’s legitimacy on the internet.
We’ve already managed to shut Flat Earthers up using basic science but Aldrin opted for a more physical approach when a stranger on the street accused him of being a ‘liar’ and a ‘coward’ back in 2002.
Even at the age of 72, the former astronaut wasn’t afraid to stand up for himself.
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Buzz Aldrin in the 90s (Mark Sennet/Getty Images)
Given the intense training Aldrin would have gone through to prepare himself for one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs in history, it must be pretty insulting to be told that it never happened.
So, when Aldrin, who was the inspiration behind the name of the beloved Buzz Lightyear character in the Toy Story series, encountered ‘Moon truther’ Bart Sibrel in Los Angeles, he didn’t hold anything back.
Sibrel approached Aldrin while he was outside a restaurant with his stepdaughter and repeatedly asked him to ‘swear on the Bible’ that he had been to the Moon.
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Responding to the hostility, the former astronaut raised his voice and asked him to ‘get away from me’. To which Sibrel replied: “You’re a coward and a liar and a thief…”
Aldrin then punched Sibrel square in the jaw, which quickly shut him up
While Sibrel attempted to press charges against Aldrin, the case was thrown out as the court found the conspiracy theorist to be the instigator.
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At the time, deputy district attorney Elizabeth Ratinoff said: “Ultimately, Sibrel called Aldrin a thief, liar and coward. Video depicts Aldrin striking Sibrel once in the face with a fist. Sibrel immediately turns to the camera crew present and appears to twice state, ‘Did you get that?’
“Based on the totality of the circumstances it is unlikely a jury would find Aldrin guilty of a misdemeanor battery charge.”
Speaking about conspiracy theorists following the incident, Aldrin told Fox News: “I don’t pay any attention to them, really. They’re out for themselves to make a name.”
Featured Image Credit: EuropaNewswire/Gado/Getty Images
Once mankind had learned to put a living being into space, we then had to figure out how to get them back down to the ground safely.
Sadly, space travel sometimes ends in tragedy, as it did in 1967, with the Soyuz 1 mission where cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died when his craft slammed back down to Earth.
Komarov had already successfully made it to space and back in the 1964 Voskhod 1 mission, and three years later, he was selected to command the Soyuz 1 mission.
His backup pilot would be Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and he was to take the spacecraft on its first crewed flight where he would orbit Earth numerous times.
Prior to the mission launch, Komarov and Gagarin raised a number of concerns about the Soyuz 1, and previous uncrewed missions with the craft had been a failure.
Vladimir Komarov was the first man to die as a result of journeying to space. (Getty images / ullstein bild)
During his mission to space, Komarov signalled an alert that one of his craft’s solar panels had failed to deploy, while on his re-entry attempt the Soyuz 1, his parachute failed to deploy properly.
What followed is disputed, but since the crash, experts have had one major question they wish they could have known the answer to, which is why Komarov didn’t use the Soyuz 1’s ejection system to bail out of the plummeting spaceship.
It would seem to be the most likely course of action for someone entombed inside a crashing craft, but if a certain version of events is to be believed, then he might have tried it.
According to 2011 history book Starman, US listening posts in Turkey picked up a furious conversation between the plummeting cosmonaut and Alexei Kosygin, a high ranking official in the Soviet Union.
The book claims that Komarov shouted: “This devil ship! Nothing I lay my hands on works properly!
According to the official version as his spaceship crashed back down to Earth the cosmonaut said: “I feel excellent, everything’s in order. Thank you for transmitting all of that. [Separation] occurred.”
He is then supposed to have said ‘thank you, tell everyone it happened’ before the rest of his transmission became unintelligible.
Experts wondered why he didn’t eject from his craft, but there had already been a number of failures with his spaceship. (ullstein bild via Getty Images)
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While Komarov’s final transmission is a matter of some dispute, what happened next isn’t, as his Soyuz 1 craft slammed into the ground at high speed and then exploded, leaving the man inside it a charred ‘lump’ whose only remaining recognisable body part was his heel bone.
Featured Image Credit: Getty images / ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Despite the many trips to the Moon that preceded it, the Apollo 11 moon landing still holds a lot of fond memories for people – especially those who were apart of it.
It all began when former President Richard Nixon set his sights on winning the space race with the Soviet Union, who had beat them to getting a man into space and orbiting Earth one year prior.
Speaking to Congress in 1961, Nixon said : “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth
“No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
“We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft.”
It would be a mission they accomplished and on July 16, 1969, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to walk the moon on a NASA mission.
However, there was another member that accompanied them – and he is often regarded as the ‘forgotten astronaut’.
The Apollo 11 team successfully landed on the moon in 1969 (Space Frontiers/Getty Images)
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That ‘forgotten astronaut’ was Michael Collins, who successfully piloted the spacecraft and got his crew safely back to Earth.
Collins stayed in orbit for over 20 hours on his own as his colleagues landed on the moon.
And while it may seem lonely, it was humbling for Collins.
When he was on the craft, and staring at the giant moon, there was only one thing he could keep his eyes on – Earth in the distance.
Speaking to PBS News Hour in 2019, he explained: “The moon was nothing compared to my view of the home planet.”
Collins explained what he couldn’t stop looking at Earth (YouTube/PBSNewsHour)
The astronaut explained that when he would look out of the window, all he could see was Earth and even if he put his ‘thumb over to obscure it from view’, it would ‘pop back out’ because it was as though ‘it wanted to be seen.’
“It was gorgeous. It was tiny, shiny, the blue of the oceans, the white of the clouds, little streak of rust colour that we call continents. It just glowed.” Collins said.
“Having gone out 240,000 miles and seeing it gives me a much greater sense of fragility, a much greater urge to do something to protect that fragility as we go along.” he added.
Despite never leaving the aircraft, Collins had no regrets about the decision.
Speaking to 60 Minutes Australia back in 2019, he said: “Did I have the best seat on Apollo 11? No. Was I happy with the seat I did have?
“Yes – I really was, and to be any small part of that suited me very, very well.
“And, besides, I was their ticket home – they couldn’t get home without me.”
In 2021, Collins died after a ‘valiant battle with cancer’ at age 90.
I’m sure most of you will be familiar with Pavlov’s dog experiment, which famously tested out the concept of conditioning by training canines to expect food whenever they heard a bell.
Safe to say the experiment was a success, as it found the dogs would eventually begin to salivate upon hearing the sound of a bell.
But it turns out that this ‘conditioning’ type of experiment was also tried out on people too, including a nine-month-old baby.
Known as the ‘Little Albert experiment’, psychologist John B. Watson sought out to find evidence of classical conditioning in humans in 1919 by creating fear with a rat.
But what happened to the little boy, known as Little Albert’ or ‘Albert B’, in what has since been dubbed as arguably one of the ‘most unethical experiments‘ ever?
Watson used a white rat to condition a fear response in Little Albert (Getty Stock Image)
The experiment, conducted by Watson and grad student Rosalie Rayner, exposed the little boy to various stimuli, such as a rabbit, monkey, a white rat, and burning newspapers, to gauge his reaction.
Given Albert hadn’t seen any of these things before, he showed no fear when they were first presented to him.
But then Watson made a change. The next time he put a rat in front of the baby, Watson would make a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer, which would make Albert cry.
Watson repeated this until eventually the rat’s appearance alone became enough to make Albert break into tears.
But since the experiment came to an end, researchers have desperately tried to find out what became of little Albert.
One of these researchers was Hall Beck at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina – and what Beck found was tragic.
Watson’s papers said that Albert B was the son of a wet nurse who worked at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where the experiment had been conducted.
After years of researching and eventually using facial analysis, Beck concluded in 2009 that little Albert must have been Douglas Merritte, the son of hospital employee Arvilla, who was born on the same day.
But this was a tragic conclusion because it turns out that this Douglas had died age six of hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. This condition even led Douglas to blindness at some points in his life.
They also used a rabbit, monkey, and dog as part of the initial experiment (Getty Stock Image)
But despite the revelation, some psychologists weren’t so convinced by Beck’s findings.
Russ Powell at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, and his colleagues reinvestigated, only to find that Beck had missed another potential candidate.
It turns out that a woman named Pearl Barger also had a baby at the same hospital, who was not only born on the same day as Albert B, but was also named William Albert Barger.
Powell’s team also claimed they found greater consistencies between their newfound candidate and Albert B, leading them to believe this was in fact who they had been looking for.
And the story of this Albert B was a far happier one, as he lived a long, happy life until his death in 2007, according to his niece.
She said he never knew anything about the experiment, but interestingly, noted that he did have an aversion to animals during his life.
The man that was the most irradiated human in history was kept alive for 83 days after his horrific accident for one reason.
Japanese nuclear plant worker Hisashi Ouchi went through a terrifying accident on 30 September, 1999, at the Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant.
When he showed up for work that day, all seemed normal, but when those in charge decided to try and streamline processes by skipping steps – not the most ideal thing to try at a nuclear power plant -, it all quickly spelled disaster.
Ouchi, along with colleagues Masato Shinohara and Yutaka Yokokawa, were tasked with mixing uranyl nitrate in a huge metal tank at the plant, using their hands instead of the regular automatic pump. It didn’t end well.
Ouchi was closest to the tank when the uncontrollable reaction took place (YouTube/Peaked Interest)
The trio hadn’t had much experience in using their hands to handle the dangerous substance known as uranium.
The uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction resulted in all three being exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation and gamma rays, which were released into the atmosphere.
Ouchi absorbed the most, at 17,000 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation, as he was by the tank.
Anything more than 20 mSv of radiation in a year is dangerous – but the other two were exposed to 10,000 and 3,000 mSv. For reference, 5,000 mSv is considered fatal, and emergency responders at the infamousChernobyl disaster were only exposed to 20 to 500 mSv.
But this is where the horror began.
After the incident, Ouchi lost consciousness before violently vomiting, and suffering from serious radiation burns.
He was kept alive for one brutal reason (YouTube/Peaked Interest)
He was transferred to Tokyo University Hospital with Shinohara, and put into specialist care as he was in a serious condition.
Despite the radiation completely destroying his DNA and killing all of his white blood cells, doctors did everything they could to keep him alive for as long as possible.
But this was all due to one reason, as it was reported that he went through blood transfusions, skin grafts, and stem cell transplants to keep him alive, despite him begging medical professionals to stop.
“I can’t take it any more! I am not a guinea pig,” he begged, but due to the request of his family, Ouchi was kept alive for almost three months.
In fact, on his 59th day in care, he suffered three heart attacks, but his family insisted that they keep doing what they can to keep him alive.
Ouchi’s DNA was destroyed following the accident (YouTube/Peaked Interest)
Dr Kazuhiko Maekawa, who was working to help him survive, admitted at the start of the December 1999 that his chances of recovery were ‘very slim’ at best following what is now known as one of Japan’s biggest nuclear accidents.
After weeks of suffering, on 21 December 1999, Ouchi fianlly passed away after a number of his organs failed, aged just 35.
Shinohara, his colleague, passed away in 2000 from multiple organ failure as well, aged 40.
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Peaked Interest
