Posted on 08/04/2023 9:00:42 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski
It's not green cheese, but it might as well be.
The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.
Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity.
"It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," she said. "We can laugh about it."
The museum acquired the rock after the death of former Prime Minister Willem Drees in 1988. Drees received it as a private gift on Oct. 9, 1969, from then-U.S. ambassador J. William Middendorf during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their "Giant Leap" goodwill tour after the first moon landing.
Middendorf, who lives in Rhode Island, told Dutch broadcaster NOS news that he had gotten it from the U.S. State Department, but couldn't recall the exact details.
"I do remember that (Drees) was very interested in the little piece of stone," the NOS quoted Middendorf as saying. "But that it's not real, I don't know anything about that."
He could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
The U.S. Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter.
The museum had vetted the moon rock with a phone call to NASA, Van Gelder said.
She said the space agency told the museum then that it was possible the Netherlands had received a rock: NASA gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries in the early 1970s, but those were from later missions.
"Apparently no one thought to doubt it, since it came from the prime minister's collection," Van Gelder said…
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
It is amazing that there used to be trees on the moon.
Who knew
So. Fake Landing, Fake Moonrock?
Search his house. He kept it.
This is an old story—I remember it—one of my favorites.
The fraud runs wide and deep—and the suckers are like ants at a picnic.
The moon is made out of wood?
Maybe the ‘original’ was stolen and was replaced with the fake one by an employee...................
Chester Gould knew. I used to read Dick Tracy.
The moon is made out of wood?
Petrified cheese.
The forests of the moon would still be there if it weren’t for Global Warming.
Some people still don’t fully believe we went to the Moon.
I am among them. I used to think it was preposterous, outrageously offensive ‘as an American’ to hear someone even bring up the topic as a serious discussion.
Now, knowing how our highly esteemed national agencies can be compromised and motivated to promote certain presumptions as fact, I do question many things we were told that summer day in 1969.
I’m not a science or engineering kind of person. For lucrative reasons, I wish I were, and I’m certainly not losing any sleep over it, but the doubts, they do persist.
No one knows how many forgeries are hanging as original masterpieces in the Louvre and other supposedly secure/meticulous museums either.
Wow, to think the US government lied.
Of course not. That rock is petrified cheese, not wood.
Still pushing your wacko fake moon landing stuff?
That’s an affront to the smart people who developed the technology and the brave men who strapped into the spacecraft.
You just give fuel to the fire of leftists who want to paint conservatives as wackos.
So, someone stole it? Moon rock is worth a lot of $$$, so, seems possible.
Actually I think I remember that episode. LOL
Oh, lord, is that why this was posted? That crap is as dumb as the flat Earth nonsense.
This poster posted a story very recently alleging the moon landings were faked:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4172056/posts
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