There were a lot of firsts during the initial lunar landings, especially during the very first Apollo 11 mission. There was, of course, the obvious first famous moon walk by Neil Armstrong, the first country to land on the moon, the first word spoken from the moon, and so on. A new genesis of gestures and representations of life in an otherwise dead as they come space rock. Here’s a fun little fact, though, one that few people but Apollo 11-nerds know about — the first man to pee on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, the Lunar Module pilot and the second man to ever set foot on the moon.
Of course, he didn’t actually pee on the moon, Aldrin took his lunar leak into a special bag in his space suit, before trying to climb the Apollo 11 lander’s ladder.
“Everyone has their firsts on the moon, and that one hasn’t been disputed by anybody,” he said in the 2007 Apollo-program documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.
Aldrin, a U.S. national hero by all accounts, is now retired and is enjoying the quiet simple life, going on book tours (he co-authored a number of books, including his most recent one “Magnificent Desolation”), getting a facelift and performing his very own rap song. Hats off to you, sir!