Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hi brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here about the lunar landing, astronaut Neil
Speaker 1: Armstrong once said it would have been harder to fake
Speaker 1: it than to do it. On July twentieth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Edwin buzz Aldrin Jr. Became the first human
Speaker 1: beings to ever walk on the Moon during NASA's Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven mission. Orbiting above them at the time was the
Speaker 1: third number of their crew, aviator Michael Collins, who was
Speaker 1: piloting their command module. Together, these three entered the history books.
Speaker 1: The lunar landing was a defining moment, a technical achievement
Speaker 1: made possible by centuries of scientific progress and the hard
Speaker 1: work of more than four hundred thousand people. But according
Speaker 1: to a Pole seven million Americans think that the entire
Speaker 1: thing never happened, and a sixteen British poll found that
Speaker 1: more than half fifty two percent of Brits think that
Speaker 1: the Apollo eleven moon landing was faked, including an astonishing
Speaker 1: seventy percent of Brits aged twenty five to thirty four.
Speaker 1: On December eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine, four months and twenty
Speaker 1: five days after Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins returned to Earth,
Speaker 1: John Noble Wilford of The New York Times ran a
Speaker 1: story about a few stool warmers in Chicago bars who
Speaker 1: had gone on record to claim that all the Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven moonwalk footage was fake and must have been secretly
Speaker 1: filmed somewhere out in the Nevada Desert. The popularity of
Speaker 1: this misguided belief mushroomed during the Watergate scandal, an actual
Speaker 1: government conspiracy that seems to have left people more susceptible
Speaker 1: to believing other big government cover ups were plausible. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, writer Bill Casing self published a pamphlet
Speaker 1: called We Never Went to the Moon. Casing's writings alleged
Speaker 1: that any sort of lunar landing would have been impossible
Speaker 1: to carry out. In nineteen sixty nine, NASA, he concluded,
Speaker 1: staged the moonwalk in a makeshift studio and then swore
Speaker 1: the astronauts secrecy. Later, he added that the Challenger explosion
Speaker 1: wasn't an accident either. Casing accused NASA of sabotaging the
Speaker 1: spacecraft before the crew of seven got the chance to
Speaker 1: expose the Apollo eleven cover up. His pamphlet gave the
Speaker 1: so called lunar truther or movement its first manifesto. Deniers
Speaker 1: like Casing saw their cause enjoy a modern renaissance in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, when the Fox Network aired a documentary
Speaker 1: called Conspiracy Theory Did We Land on the Moon? A
Speaker 1: forty seven minutes special. The program featured interviews with Casing
Speaker 1: and other Apollo eleven skeptics. One of them was Bart's Sabrell,
Speaker 1: a filmmaker who has released two documentaries of his own
Speaker 1: on the subject. The Fox program enjoyed great ratings, as
Speaker 1: did a rebroadcast of the show that aired a month later. However,
Speaker 1: scientists overwhelmingly denounced the one sided special. The turn of
Speaker 1: the millennium also saw an explosion of Internet conspiracy sites,
Speaker 1: which further the spread of lunar trutherism. All that negative
Speaker 1: attention was bound to generate some uncomfortable moments for the
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven crew. In the year two thousand, Neil Armstrong
Speaker 1: was celebrating his seventieth birthday. One of the cards he
Speaker 1: received came from a school teacher who wrote, Dear Mr Armstrong,
Speaker 1: I would like to point out that you and the
Speaker 1: other astronauts are making yourselves a worldwide laughing stock thanks
Speaker 1: to the Internet. From there, the author encouraged Armstrong to
Speaker 1: visit a favorite conspiracy website. Armstrong forwarded the card to NASA,
Speaker 1: asking if the agency had ever publicly refuted these allegations.
Speaker 1: He said, I occasionally asked questions in public forums and
Speaker 1: feel I don't do as good a job as I
Speaker 1: might with more complete information. NASA had, in fact rebuffed
Speaker 1: the claims way back in seven that June, a press
Speaker 1: release from the organization dismantled casing's major arguments. After the
Speaker 1: two thousand one Fox special, the Space Agency reissued the document. Still,
Speaker 1: the dabters were not satisfied. While making one of his documentaries,
Speaker 1: Bart Sabrill and a cameraman ambushed Armstrong at a two
Speaker 1: thousand one aerospace event in New York City. James Smith,
Speaker 1: then the president of the event's sponsoring corporation, recalls its
Speaker 1: Sabrell held up a Bible and demanded that Armstrong place
Speaker 1: a hand on it and swear that he had really
Speaker 1: gone to the moon. The conspiracy theorist was swiftly ejected.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the only time Sabrell filmed himself accosting an
Speaker 1: appalled a veteran, he issued the same spontaneous Bible challenge
Speaker 1: too many other space travelers, including Apollo fourteens Edgar Mitchell, and,
Speaker 1: as Michael Collins told Aaron Space Magazine in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: the fringe theorist once tried to corner him in a supermarket.
Speaker 1: For the record, Collins says that he finds lunar hoax
Speaker 1: theories laughable. Buzz Aldrin, on the other hand, sure wasn't
Speaker 1: amused when Sabrill and a cameraman ran up to him
Speaker 1: outside of Beverly Hills Hotel in two thousand two. Sabrill
Speaker 1: had lured Aldrin there under the false pretenses of an interview.
Speaker 1: Once Aldren arrived with his stepdaughter in tow, Sabrill started
Speaker 1: poking him with a Bible and unleashed a torrent of insults. Finally,
Speaker 1: the seventy two year old had had enough. With a
Speaker 1: swift left hook, Aldrin punched Sabrill in the jaw. Sabrill,
Speaker 1: who quickly fled the scene, tried to sue Aldron for assault,
Speaker 1: but the charges were dropped. The filmmaker has since apologized
Speaker 1: for his behavior. In Armstrong Gave What was to be
Speaker 1: his last interview before his death at age two. During
Speaker 1: a taped exchange with Australian CEO Alex Malley, the First
Speaker 1: Man on the Moon talked about everything from his Ohio
Speaker 1: childhood to NASA's future. Perhaps inevitably, Armstrong was asked point
Speaker 1: blank if the moon landing had been a hoax. He replied,
Speaker 1: people love conspiracy theories. I mean, they are very attractive,
Speaker 1: but it was never a concern to me because I
Speaker 1: know that one day somebody is going to fly back
Speaker 1: up there and pick up that camera I left. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other out of
Speaker 1: this world topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com.