Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were 38 and 39 years old, respectively, when they first hopped around on the Moon. With plenty of time ahead of them, they went on to have impressive, though very different careers, and fitted in a fight with a Moon landings denier as well as a legal battle with a hairdresser.
Armstrong, a little more camera shy than Aldrin, rarely gave interviews about his time on the Moon. He did not pursue any sort of celebrity life, and eventually left NASA to become professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
But when you're the first human on the Moon, celebrity status isn't something you can just moonwalk away from. It is simply of too much historical and scientific importance. For example, even the poop the two left behind on the Moon has been granted heritage status.
That was unfortunate for Armstrong, who had found himself a reliable barber who cut his hair once a month just the way he liked it. Armstrong was a regular at the Marx's Barber Shop in Lebanon, Ohio, for some time before he discovered that Marx Sizemore had collected his hair trimmings and sold them on to a private collector in May 2004.
Sizemore claimed that he had not been intending to do anything with Armstrong's hair, but had been contacted by John Reznikoff, a Connecticut resident with the world's largest collection of hair from historical figures.
Reznikoff owns hair from Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, King Charles I, and Elvis Presley, as well as various other non-bald celebrities, and clearly wanted to add to the collection (or complete his spell?) with hair from the first human to stand on the Moon.
"At first I told him no, I wasn't interested," Sizemore told Associated Press, per the Guardian. "He called me back; then he contacted me by mail."
When Reznikoff's agent offered $3,000 for the trimmings, however, he gave in and accepted the deal.
Armstrong found out and stopped visiting the barber. When Sizemore attempted to get the hair back from the collector, Reznikoff declined, and after that Sizemore received a letter from Armstrong's lawyers, arguing that he had broken local laws aimed at protecting celebrities, and demanding that he pay the $3,000 to a charity of Armstrong's choosing.
He did so, and the matter was settled. But it must be quite the transition to go from "man currently on the Moon" to "man who can't get a haircut without a little legal action". Careful what you wish for, I guess?
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