Why does neil armstrong have a hollywood star?

Armstrong's name is set into the Hollywood sidewalk, but not in the familiar pink-and-brass star. The Apollo 11 crew share four circular monuments, one at each corner of Hollywood and Vine, made to resemble the Moon in silver and grey on a pink background and carrying the mission name and the date of the landing, 20 July 1969. Each of the four names Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins together, so a visitor looking for a star with Armstrong's name alone will not find one.

The Walk of Fame honors motion pictures, television, recording, radio, live performance and sports entertainment, and normally asks for a minimum of five years' experience in the nominated category. The astronauts had none of that. The committee placed them in television, treating the live transmission from the lunar surface as their contribution to the medium, and the chairman, Johnny Grant, conceded that the fit was a bit of a stretch. Special awards exist for exactly this kind of case, and the Apollo plaques are the best known of them: the Chamber of Commerce was honoring an event the whole industry had carried, not a career in front of a camera.

The honoree was no entertainer. Born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on 5 August 1930, Armstrong flew 78 combat missions in F9F-2 jets as a naval aviator, joined NACA in 1955 as a research pilot, made seven flights in the X-15 and commanded Gemini 8 in March 1966 before becoming the first person to set foot on the Moon. He spent the rest of his life avoiding celebrity, which makes the sidewalk tribute an odd memorial, and died on 25 August 2012, aged 82.