Man on the Moon

"On July 20, 1969, more than half a billion people watched a 38-year-old aeronautical engineer step onto the fine-grain surface of the moon. People heard the former test pilot, Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong, say these words:

"That's one small step
for man, one giant leap
for mankind."
Humans everywhere cheered. Grammarians everywhere grimaced. Surely the able astronaut meant to say:

"That's one small step for a man,
one giant leap for mankind."
Later, back on Earth, Armstrong basically said, "Uh, roger that, grammar control. I meant to say the a." Armstrong told his authorized biographer, history professor James Hansen, "Perhaps it was a suppressed sound that didn't get picked up by the voice mike. . . . Certainly the a was intended, because that's the only way the statement makes any sense." Otherwise, while it sounds heroic, it means "that's one small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind."

Now, it looks like Neil Armstrong may finally be vindicated. A former TV anchorman and current computer programmer named Peter Shann Ford says that he has discovered the a Armstrong left on the moon in 1969. Using off-the-shelf voice editing software, the multitalented Australian has produced sound wave graphs that he says unmistakably show an uttered a. Armstrong simply said it too fast to hear. (Armstrong admits he swallows syllables in his biography.)

It is the lost lunar vowel, says Ford, ready for reentry into the historical record. Armstrong says he has "reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it" and finds it "persuasive." NASA's own sound engineers say they'll review the tapes and make a ruling. Either way, there's no doubt about the words on the plaque that Apollo 11 left on the moon:

"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Michael Himick
October 5, 2006"

-from Knowledge News