Just realized my local news had the moon landing story all wrong for 30 years

Last week I was digging through old newspaper archives at the library in Austin for a school project. I found a 1969 article from our local paper saying the Apollo 11 landing was faked because the flag was waving in a vacuum. It took me 3 hours of research to find the real science behind why the flag moved (it was the astronauts bumping the pole). My history teacher laughed and said the paper never printed a retraction. Has anyone else found old media that just never corrected a bad story?

2 comments

2 Comments

carter.julia8d ago

the paper never printed a retraction" yeah that tracks, local papers hate admitting they messed up. My advice is check if your library has a "letters to the editor" archive from that week, sometimes the real corrections got buried in there.

the_joseph8d ago

Is this really something to get worked up about, though? A small Texas newspaper flubbed a science story fifty years ago and nobody noticed or cared enough to demand a fix. It seems like a pretty minor mistake in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to all the stuff that gets corrected these days without anyone reading the follow-ups.