First Man on the Moon

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo Moon landing, The Telegraph has this depressing bit of news for us:

Some people believe that Buzz Lightyear, the fictional cartoon character from the film Toy Story, was the first man on the moon.

In a survey, which reveals "deeply worrying" levels of ignorance about the Apollo space programme, which sent three men to the moon forty years ago this month, 11 out of 1009 people surveyed thought Buzz Lightyear was the first person to step onto the moon. A further 8 people thought it was Louis Armstrong, with less than three-quarters correctly answering that it was Neil Armstrong.

The survey, undertaken on behalf of E&T magazine, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, also revealed that over a quarter of all people do not believe the astronauts actually landed on the moon.

I feel quite priviledged to have had the opportunity to look at some of the moon rocks in thin section when they were on loan to OSU when I was an undergrad, and I can say with a fair degree of confidence there's no way they came from Earth. Nor do any meteorites have the bizarre combination of crystalline igneous rocks, brecciation, and glass.

This just reinforces my pessimistic side.

Sigh...