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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hi brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here about the lunar landing, astronaut Neil

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Speaker 1: Armstrong once said it would have been harder to fake

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Speaker 1: it than to do it. On July twentieth, nineteen sixty nine,

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Speaker 1: Armstrong and Edwin buzz Aldrin Jr. Became the first human

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Speaker 1: beings to ever walk on the Moon during NASA's Apollo

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Speaker 1: eleven mission. Orbiting above them at the time was the

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Speaker 1: third number of their crew, aviator Michael Collins, who was

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Speaker 1: piloting their command module. Together, these three entered the history books.

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Speaker 1: The lunar landing was a defining moment, a technical achievement

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Speaker 1: made possible by centuries of scientific progress and the hard

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Speaker 1: work of more than four hundred thousand people. But according

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Speaker 1: to a Pole seven million Americans think that the entire

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Speaker 1: thing never happened, and a sixteen British poll found that

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Speaker 1: more than half fifty two percent of Brits think that

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Speaker 1: the Apollo eleven moon landing was faked, including an astonishing

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Speaker 1: seventy percent of Brits aged twenty five to thirty four.

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Speaker 1: On December eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine, four months and twenty

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Speaker 1: five days after Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins returned to Earth,

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Speaker 1: John Noble Wilford of The New York Times ran a

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Speaker 1: story about a few stool warmers in Chicago bars who

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Speaker 1: had gone on record to claim that all the Apollo

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Speaker 1: eleven moonwalk footage was fake and must have been secretly

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Speaker 1: filmed somewhere out in the Nevada Desert. The popularity of

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Speaker 1: this misguided belief mushroomed during the Watergate scandal, an actual

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Speaker 1: government conspiracy that seems to have left people more susceptible

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Speaker 1: to believing other big government cover ups were plausible. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, writer Bill Casing self published a pamphlet

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Speaker 1: called We Never Went to the Moon. Casing's writings alleged

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Speaker 1: that any sort of lunar landing would have been impossible

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Speaker 1: to carry out. In nineteen sixty nine, NASA, he concluded,

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Speaker 1: staged the moonwalk in a makeshift studio and then swore

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Speaker 1: the astronauts secrecy. Later, he added that the Challenger explosion

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Speaker 1: wasn't an accident either. Casing accused NASA of sabotaging the

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Speaker 1: spacecraft before the crew of seven got the chance to

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Speaker 1: expose the Apollo eleven cover up. His pamphlet gave the

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Speaker 1: so called lunar truther or movement its first manifesto. Deniers

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Speaker 1: like Casing saw their cause enjoy a modern renaissance in

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Speaker 1: two thousand one, when the Fox Network aired a documentary

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Speaker 1: called Conspiracy Theory Did We Land on the Moon? A

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Speaker 1: forty seven minutes special. The program featured interviews with Casing

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Speaker 1: and other Apollo eleven skeptics. One of them was Bart's Sabrell,

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Speaker 1: a filmmaker who has released two documentaries of his own

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Speaker 1: on the subject. The Fox program enjoyed great ratings, as

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Speaker 1: did a rebroadcast of the show that aired a month later. However,

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Speaker 1: scientists overwhelmingly denounced the one sided special. The turn of

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Speaker 1: the millennium also saw an explosion of Internet conspiracy sites,

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Speaker 1: which further the spread of lunar trutherism. All that negative

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Speaker 1: attention was bound to generate some uncomfortable moments for the

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Speaker 1: Apollo eleven crew. In the year two thousand, Neil Armstrong

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Speaker 1: was celebrating his seventieth birthday. One of the cards he

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Speaker 1: received came from a school teacher who wrote, Dear Mr Armstrong,

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Speaker 1: I would like to point out that you and the

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Speaker 1: other astronauts are making yourselves a worldwide laughing stock thanks

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Speaker 1: to the Internet. From there, the author encouraged Armstrong to

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Speaker 1: visit a favorite conspiracy website. Armstrong forwarded the card to NASA,

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Speaker 1: asking if the agency had ever publicly refuted these allegations.

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Speaker 1: He said, I occasionally asked questions in public forums and

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Speaker 1: feel I don't do as good a job as I

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Speaker 1: might with more complete information. NASA had, in fact rebuffed

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Speaker 1: the claims way back in seven that June, a press

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Speaker 1: release from the organization dismantled casing's major arguments. After the

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Speaker 1: two thousand one Fox special, the Space Agency reissued the document. Still,

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Speaker 1: the dabters were not satisfied. While making one of his documentaries,

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Speaker 1: Bart Sabrill and a cameraman ambushed Armstrong at a two

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Speaker 1: thousand one aerospace event in New York City. James Smith,

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Speaker 1: then the president of the event's sponsoring corporation, recalls its

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Speaker 1: Sabrell held up a Bible and demanded that Armstrong place

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Speaker 1: a hand on it and swear that he had really

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Speaker 1: gone to the moon. The conspiracy theorist was swiftly ejected.

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Speaker 1: This wasn't the only time Sabrell filmed himself accosting an

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Speaker 1: appalled a veteran, he issued the same spontaneous Bible challenge

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Speaker 1: too many other space travelers, including Apollo fourteens Edgar Mitchell, and,

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Speaker 1: as Michael Collins told Aaron Space Magazine in twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: the fringe theorist once tried to corner him in a supermarket.

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Speaker 1: For the record, Collins says that he finds lunar hoax

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Speaker 1: theories laughable. Buzz Aldrin, on the other hand, sure wasn't

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Speaker 1: amused when Sabrill and a cameraman ran up to him

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Speaker 1: outside of Beverly Hills Hotel in two thousand two. Sabrill

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Speaker 1: had lured Aldrin there under the false pretenses of an interview.

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Speaker 1: Once Aldren arrived with his stepdaughter in tow, Sabrill started

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Speaker 1: poking him with a Bible and unleashed a torrent of insults. Finally,

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Speaker 1: the seventy two year old had had enough. With a

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Speaker 1: swift left hook, Aldrin punched Sabrill in the jaw. Sabrill,

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Speaker 1: who quickly fled the scene, tried to sue Aldron for assault,

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Speaker 1: but the charges were dropped. The filmmaker has since apologized

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Speaker 1: for his behavior. In Armstrong Gave What was to be

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Speaker 1: his last interview before his death at age two. During

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Speaker 1: a taped exchange with Australian CEO Alex Malley, the First

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Speaker 1: Man on the Moon talked about everything from his Ohio

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Speaker 1: childhood to NASA's future. Perhaps inevitably, Armstrong was asked point

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Speaker 1: blank if the moon landing had been a hoax. He replied,

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Speaker 1: people love conspiracy theories. I mean, they are very attractive,

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Speaker 1: but it was never a concern to me because I

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Speaker 1: know that one day somebody is going to fly back

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Speaker 1: up there and pick up that camera I left. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tristan McNeil.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other out of

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Speaker 1: this world topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com.