Once upon a time in America, there was an organisation called NASA, and the US of A was very proud of its achievements. In fact so proud of its achievements were they, especially as it had eclipsed the bad boys of the CCCP, that when it reached its peak and sent men to the Moon, they wanted to show the world of its prowess.
The question was how? Then some eager beaver in the US State Department noted the words of the crew of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (still incidentally the last men to have set foot on the Moon), picked up a rock and turning towards the cameras Cernan announced: "We'd like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world."
What better way they thought, to trumpet American technological and military superiority, than by handing out to various national leaders, little pieces of the very brick-sized rock that Mr Cernan had been holding in his hands? And so throughout the early 1970's, under the orders of President Richard Nixon, fragments of the rock were sent to 135 foreign heads of state, and the 50 US states. Each of these "goodwill Moon rocks" was encased in a lucite ball and mounted on a wooden plaque with the recipient nations' flag attached.
Truth be known they were rather tatty gifts .... but then this was the 1970's, when taste reached an all time low ...
Two hundred and seventy were given to nations of the world, and one hundred to the fifty US states. Not much thought was given to what happened to these rocks .... it was assumed that they had all gone to national and local museums, until one day in 1998 one of these rocks, the Honduras goodwill Moon rock, was offered up for sale to a NASA investigator. He had been hunting for fake 'moon rocks' which were being sold in various scams. The rock he was offered weighed 1.142g and the seller wanted $5m (£3m) for it, and the FBI recovered it in a sting operation.
The investigator then made it a personal mission to find out where all the bits of rock were .... he found attempts to sell both Spain's and Cyprus's moon rocks, and that the two Moon rocks Gaddafi's government was given are both missing. Romania is also missing its Apollo 17 goodwill Moon rock, as is the rock given to Malta. The Irish rock is under tons of waste on a landfill following a fire at its housing site.
In all the US gathered and distributed a large number of rocks to various national states, scientific institutions and domestic states ..... and a total of 160 of all the moon rocks gathered by the Apollo 11 and 17 missions are currently unaccounted for or missing (including 24 in the US alone). It has to be assumed that many of these were sold on the black market ..... the hunt is now on to find them all.
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| Apollo landings - the peak of US space achievements. |
The question was how? Then some eager beaver in the US State Department noted the words of the crew of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (still incidentally the last men to have set foot on the Moon), picked up a rock and turning towards the cameras Cernan announced: "We'd like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world."
What better way they thought, to trumpet American technological and military superiority, than by handing out to various national leaders, little pieces of the very brick-sized rock that Mr Cernan had been holding in his hands? And so throughout the early 1970's, under the orders of President Richard Nixon, fragments of the rock were sent to 135 foreign heads of state, and the 50 US states. Each of these "goodwill Moon rocks" was encased in a lucite ball and mounted on a wooden plaque with the recipient nations' flag attached.
Truth be known they were rather tatty gifts .... but then this was the 1970's, when taste reached an all time low ...
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| The Goodwill Moon Rock given to Britain. |
Two hundred and seventy were given to nations of the world, and one hundred to the fifty US states. Not much thought was given to what happened to these rocks .... it was assumed that they had all gone to national and local museums, until one day in 1998 one of these rocks, the Honduras goodwill Moon rock, was offered up for sale to a NASA investigator. He had been hunting for fake 'moon rocks' which were being sold in various scams. The rock he was offered weighed 1.142g and the seller wanted $5m (£3m) for it, and the FBI recovered it in a sting operation.
The investigator then made it a personal mission to find out where all the bits of rock were .... he found attempts to sell both Spain's and Cyprus's moon rocks, and that the two Moon rocks Gaddafi's government was given are both missing. Romania is also missing its Apollo 17 goodwill Moon rock, as is the rock given to Malta. The Irish rock is under tons of waste on a landfill following a fire at its housing site.
In all the US gathered and distributed a large number of rocks to various national states, scientific institutions and domestic states ..... and a total of 160 of all the moon rocks gathered by the Apollo 11 and 17 missions are currently unaccounted for or missing (including 24 in the US alone). It has to be assumed that many of these were sold on the black market ..... the hunt is now on to find them all.
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