Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (47 page)

THE FLUTTERING FLAG:
In 1990 a New Jersey man named Ralph Rene was reviewing old footage of the moon landing. As he watched the American flag fluttering in the airless atmosphere of the moon, it suddenly dawned on him: How can there be a breeze if there is no air? Rene’s suspicions led him to research inconsistencies in the moon landing story, and to publish a book called
NASA Mooned America
. The fluttering flag was just the beginning.

PHONY PHOTOS:
A close look at the thousands of excellent still photos from the moon landings reveal some very odd features. For one thing, they are a little too good. The astronauts seem to be well lit on all sides, regardless of where the sunlight is coming from, almost as if there were some artificial light source.

 •   Defenders claim that light was reflected from the lunar surface, bouncing back to light the shadow side of the astronauts. Oddly, that same reflective light does not illuminate the dark side of lunar rocks, which are even closer to the ground.

 •   Shadows seem to fall in different directions and look to be different lengths even for objects of a similar height, such as the two astronauts. This leads some to conclude that there were multiple light sources—possibly some man-made ones.

 •   Even when everything else is in shadow, the American flag and the words
United States
are always well lit, and sometimes seem to be in a spotlight. Was someone trying to squeeze extra PR value out of fake photos?

STARLIGHT, STAR BRIGHT:
Some skeptics cite the absence of stars in photos of the lunar sky as evidence that they were not taken on the moon. After all, in the dark sky of the moon with no atmosphere, stars should be clearly visible.

 •    Experts agree—to the naked eye, stars in the sky of the moon should be magnificently clear. But, the experts say, stars wouldn’t show up on film that was set to expose the much brighter lunar surface. On the other hand, why were there no pictures taken of the stars in the lunar sky? Surely how the stars look from the moon would have interested many people. Was it because astronomers could spot the fake photos too easily?

WHERE’S THE DUST?
One of the most memorable images NASA released from
Apollo 11
was the imprint of Buzz Aldrin’s boot in the lunar dust. But the lunar landing module apparently had less of an impact on the moon’s surface.

 •   Moon photos show no visible disturbance from the high-powered thrust engines the
Eagle
landing module used to land, nor is there any dust in the landing pads.

 •   If the
Eagle
blew away all the dust, as some speculate, how did Aldrin make such a nice footprint?

DEADLY RADIATION:
In a recent press conference, a NASA spokesman said that radiation is one of the biggest obstacles to space travel. Wouldn’t it have been a problem 30 years ago?

 •   Two doughnut-shaped rings of charged particles, called the Van Allen Belts, encircle Earth. To get to the moon, astronauts would have had to pass through the belts, exposing themselves to deadly radiation unless they had a lot more protection than the thin shield the Apollo spacecraft provided.

 •   Once outside the radiation belts and Earth’s protective atmosphere, astronauts would have been exposed to solar radiation. Expert opinions differ as to whether this exposure would have been life-threatening. But inexplicably, not one of the astronauts from the seven lunar missions got cancer, a well-known result of overexposure to radiation.

 •   Even more sensitive to radiation is photographic film. On all those beautiful moon photos there is absolutely no sign of radiation damage. Why not?

FOLLOW THE BOUNCING ASTRONAUT:
What about the movie footage showing the astronauts demonstrating the moon’s low gravity by bouncing around the surface? Skeptics say that could have easily been faked. In the moon’s gravity—a sixth of Earth’s—the astronauts should have been able to leap 10 feet in the air. But they didn’t. In fact, in the movie footage they don’t get any farther off the ground than they could on Earth.

And if it looks like they are moving in slow motion—that’s because they are—half speed to be exact. Bill Wood, a scientist who worked for the NASA subcontractor responsible for recording Apollo signals and sending them to NASA headquarters in Houston, explains that the original film footage, shot at 30 frames per second, was transferred to video, which runs at 60 frames per second. If the film of the astronauts walking on the surface of the moon is viewed at regular speed their movements look remarkably normal.

MOON ROCKS:
Besides the photos and film footage, the only physical evidence we have that astronauts actually went to the moon is lunar rocks.

 •   NASA points to the fact that scientists around the world have examined the rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and have no doubt that they originated on the moon. But the moon isn’t the only place to find such rocks.

 •   In the ice of Antarctica, scientists have found remnants of lunar rocks blasted off the moon by meteoric impacts. Numerous expeditions have explored the continent for rock samples from the moon, Mars, and comets.

 •   In 1967, two years before the Apollo mission, such a group visited Antarctica, including ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, by then working for NASA. Why would a rocket scientist be sent to look for rocks? Was he collecting fake evidence?

WHY FAKE IT?

These anomalies in the “information” given to the public about the Apollo moon missions have caused many to question whether we really did send anyone to the moon. But if the moon landings were faked, how was it done, and why?

The why is fairly easy to understand. The 1960s were the height of the cold war. The Space Race was on, and the Soviet Union had already beat the United States by launching the first satellite to orbit Earth, the first man—and woman—in space, and the first space walk, among other important achievements. The United States was clearly behind. In 1961 President Kennedy issued a challenge: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving a goal, before this decade is out, of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

The Apollo program was born, and five months before the end of the decade, NASA displayed pictures of Americans on the moon, proof that we had beat the Russians to the most important prize. We won. Mission accomplished. But was it accomplished by actually sending men to the moon, or just making it look that way?

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE MOON

Investigative journalist Bart Sibrel claims to have found a mislabeled NASA film showing multiple “takes” of a scene shown to the public as part of the “live” broadcast of the
Apollo 11
flight. In the footage the astronauts appear to be rehearsing the lines the public heard. Sibrel claims to have spent half a million dollars investigating the moon landings, and produced a video called
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon
.

In 2002 Sibrel, backed by a Japanese film crew, confronted Buzz Aldrin outside a Beverly Hills hotel and challenged him to swear on a Bible that he had really gone to the moon. Aldrin responded by punching Sibrel in the face.

And what about those marvelous still photos? Many believe they were staged, perhaps in a secret location in Nevada, or even in a giant geodesic soundstage in Australia. Either way it would have been much easier to manipulate the lighting to get the results shown in the moon landing photos.

Would such a monstrous hoax have been easy to pull off? Certainly not. But to some people it seems more possible—and cheaper—than actually sending someone to the moon and back. Consider these statistics: Of the seven manned missions to the moon, only
Apollo 13
had trouble, which is an 86 percent success rate. In the years since, 25 unmanned crafts have been sent to Mars. Only
seven have succeeded—a 28 percent success rate. Which figure seems more realistic?

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE

Before you get too comfortable with the idea that the government created a huge hoax because we couldn’t have possibly gone to the moon, keep in mind that there are also people who believe the film is fake, but that we actually did go to the moon. So why fake it? Maybe to cover up what we really found there. But that’s another story.

Killer Bee Hunter.
Your mission: Track down Africanized “killer” bees, which are migrating north from Central America, and destroy them before they can take up residence in North America.

Chicken Shooter.
Fire dead chickens out of a cannon at aircraft to see what kind of damage occurs.

Mother Repairer.
It’s not what you think. It actually entails repairing metal phonograph record “mothers” (the master from which records are pressed) by removing dirt and nickel particles from the grooves.

Anthem Man.
A unique profession: King Alfonso of Spain was tone deaf . . . he employed one man whose job was to alert him when the Spanish national anthem was playing (so he would know when to salute).

Worm Collector.
Get ready to crawl through grass at night with a flashlight, to catch the best worms for fishing. Tip: Grab them in the middle to avoid bruising.

Pig Manure Sniffer.
Workers try to recognize chemical markers in manure so researchers can determine which foods make pig manure so foul smelling. Women only, because estrogen increases sensitivity to smell.

Sewage Diver.
Put on a diving suit and plunge into a sewage-containment vat.

Who thought of identifying people with fingerprints? When were blood types first discovered? When did Quincy go on the air? Soon, you will know all
.

F
orensics is the science of whodunit. When a crime is committed, forensic scientists pore over physical evidence to discover who did it, when it was done, and how it happened. It’s just like the board game Clue, except with more expensive detection equipment, and at the end, someone goes to prison. Like any good science, the science and practice of forensics didn’t happen overnight. While the practice of forensics in crime-solving has exploded in recent years, with everything from DNA typing to forensic accountants poring over insider trades, some very basic forensic ideas have been kicking around for years—long before CSI, Crossing Jordan, or even Quincy. Come with us as we pursue the trail of forensics through history, from China to Los Angeles.

A.D. 700:
The Chinese use fingerprints on documents and on clay sculptures. Some time before this, ancient Babylonians were also pressing thumbprints into clay documents for business transactions. So at least a few civilizations out there are clued into the idea of fingerprints as identifying marks.

1248:
We’re in China again—this time for the publication of a book entitled
Hsi Duan Yu (The Washing Away of Wrongs)
, which told its readers how to tell the difference between someone who had been strangled and someone who had been drowned. What makes this such a big deal is that it offers medical reasoning instead of just saying something like “if they’re floating in the water, there’s a good chance they’ve drowned.” It’s the first time anyone records the medical reasoning being used to solve crime.

1609:
The first stirrings of forensic accounting occur when François Demelle of France publishes the first treatise on systematic document examination.

1784:
In Lancaster, England, some guy named John Toms had a torn piece of newspaper in his pocket. The bad news for him was that the torn newspaper nicely fit another torn bit of newspaper found in a pistol that was used to commit a murder. The law puts them together—the first instance of physical matching—and Toms is convicted.

1810:
Master criminal Eugène François Vidocq is on his way to the Big House when he has an idea. He’ll use his criminal skills for the good of mankind instead! In addition to providing generations of comic book, movie, and TV show hacks a durable plot idea, he also forms the first detective force in the history of the world: the Sûreté of Paris. All of the detectives, like Vidocq, are former criminals. Among Vidocq’s forensic innovations: making plaster casts of footprints and shoeprints, using ballistics, and competent record-keeping (on index cards, no less).