Anyone who wants to learn about a true hero

Once again, I am happy to present the newest editions to the ‘Ordinary People Change the World’ series!

At sixteen, Neil Armstrong got his pilot’s license before his driver’s license.

He knew that every journey begins with a first step.

I learned a lot about Neil Armstrong from this book, but the fact I got the most joy out of was that he grew up in Wapakoneta, Ohio. This proves that the best people come from Ohio.

NASA came up with a lot of weird tests to check if you could handle being in space:

Test 1: Shooting ice water into your ear to see how you’d react to the cold.

Test 2: Putting you in a black room with no clocks to test if you could judge time without tools.

Test 3: Putting you in a hot room where it got up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

Test 4: Spinning you around really fast to let you feel the speed of reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

I don’t know about you, but some of these seem more like forms of torture than training.

When my mom was eighteen, she worked at Sea World in Ohio in the water ski show. Mike Douglas broadcasted there for a week, and one of his guests was Neil Armstrong, so my mom got to meet him. My mom also got to water ski with a baby elephant. That has nothing to do with Neil Armstrong. I just wanted to mention it.

Sonia Sotomayor is the third woman and first Hispanic Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

She is proof that with opportunity comes justice.

This book doesn’t dwell on the details of the justice system and is explained in the least complicated way possible so that anyone can understand. The parts I liked most were the short stories about Sonia’s childhood. It’s fun to learn what someone was like as a kid. I’m happy this book exists because I learned about an amazing, inspiring woman who worked hard for everything she has accomplished.

Billie Jean King fought for women in sports to get the same recognition as men, and for girls to get the same athletic opportunities as boys.

She is a champion for equality.

Like Billie Jean King, my mom was a top sportsman and never got any recognition. Thanks to Billie Jean, women now earn college scholarships for excelling in sports. She played such an essential role in the fight for women’s equality that her world-famous tennis match against Bobby Riggs, The Battle of the Sexes, was made into a movie.

This week’s Weird but True Facts about Outer Space, the U.S. Supreme Court, and Tennis

An astronaut’s heartbeat slows down in outer space.

The U.S. supreme court building in Washington, D.C., has a basketball court on its top floor.

Hundreds of years ago, people played tennis with their bare hands – no racquet required!