Buzz Aldrin took Holy Communion on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 mission

Buzz Aldrin was the second person to set foot on the moon, but he was the first to do something else on Earth’s only natural satellite: take Holy Communion. Before departing on the Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin, who was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster, Texas, received permission to bring wine and bread to space. While he and Neil Armstrong prepared for their moonwalk, he told the world, “I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

Aldrin wanted his Communion to be broadcast live, but NASA, which had recently been sued for a religious display, chose to keep it quiet. “I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me,” Aldrin later wrote. “In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.” Webster Presbyterian and other churches still celebrate Lunar Communion Sunday, but Aldrin came to wonder if partaking in a Christian ritual was appropriate for an event of global significance. “We had come to the moon in the name of all mankind — be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists,” he wrote in his book Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon. “But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience than by giving thanks to God.”

By the Numbers

Did you know?

The first meal eaten on the moon was bacon.

Taking one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind builds an appetite. And so Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did what anyone would do after completing history’s first moonwalk: They ate a well-earned meal. The first meal on the moon included bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple grapefruit juice, and coffee. Given that the entire menu was either freeze-dried or dehydrated and then reconstituted with water, it's likely that none of these menu items, each of which was scheduled in advance, was especially gourmet. Bacon had proved popular throughout the entire Apollo program, however, with astronauts particularly enjoying the bacon squares for breakfast. They would be saddened to learn that bacon is no longer on the menu for astronauts, alas, as it was phased out in 2002.