10 Reasons the Moon Landings Could Be a Hoax

The theory that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia, is something which has grown in popularity over time.

Recent polls indicate that approximately 20% of Americans believe that the U.S. has never landed on the moon. After the Apollo missions ended in the seventies, why haven’t we ever been back? Only during the term of Richard Nixon did humanity ever land on the moon, and after Watergate most people wouldn’t put it past Tricky Dick to fake them to put America in good standing in the Cold War.
In this list I have presented some of the proposed evidence to suggest that the moon landings were hoaxes. I tried to include NASA’s explanations to each entry to provide an objective perspective.


10 - The Waving Flag

Conspiracy theorists have pointed out that when the first moon landing was shown on live television, viewers could clearly see the American flag waving and fluttering as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted it. Photos of the landing also seem to show rippling in a breeze, such as the image above which clearly shows a fold in the flag. The obvious problem here is that there’s no air in the moon’s atmosphere, and therefore no wind to cause the flag to blow.
Countless explanations have been put forward to disprove this phenomenon as anything unusual: NASA claimed that the flag was stored in a thin tube and the rippled effect was caused by it being unfurled before being planted. Other explanations involve the ripples caused by the reaction force of the astronauts touching the aluminum pole, which is shown to shake in the video footage.




9 - Lack of Impact Crater

The claim goes as follows: had NASA really landed us on the moon, there would be a blast crater underneath the lunar module to mark its landing. On any video footage or photograph of the landings, no crater is visible, almost as though the module was simply placed there. The surface of the moon is covered in fine lunar dust, and even this doesn’t seem to have been displaced in photographic evidence.
Much like the waving flag theory, however, the lack of an impact crater has a slew of potential explanations. NASA maintains that the module required significantly less thrust in the low-gravity conditions than it would have done on Earth. The surface of the moon itself is solid rock, so a blast crater probably wouldn’t be feasible anyway – in the same way that an aeroplane doesn’t leave a crater when it touches down on a concrete airstrip.






8 - Multiple Light Sources

 

On the moon there is only one strong light source: the Sun. So it’s fair to suggest that all shadows should run parallel to one another. But this was not the case during the moon landing: videos and photographs clearly show that shadows fall in different directions. Conspiracy theorists suggest that this must mean multiple light sources are present -suggesting that the landing photos were taken on a film set.
NASA has attempted to blame uneven landscape on the strange shadows, with subtle bumps and hills on the moon’s surface causing the discrepancies. This explanation has been tossed out the window by some theorists; how could hills cause such large angular differences? In the image above the lunar module’s shadow clearly contradicts that of the rocks in the foreground at almost a 45 degree angle.



7 - The Van Allen Radiation Belt

In order to reach the moon, astronauts had to pass through what is known as the Van Allen radiation belt. The belt is held in place by Earth’s magnetic field and stays perpetually in the same place. The Apollo missions to the moon marked the first ever attempts to transport living humans through the belt. Conspiracy theorists contend that the sheer levels of radiation would have cooked the astronauts en route to the moon, despite the layers of aluminum coating the interior and exterior of the spaceship.
NASA have countered this argument by emphasizing the short amount of time it took the astronauts to traverse the belt – meaning they received only very small doses of radiation.




6 - The Unexplained Object

After photographs of the moon landings were released, theorists were quick to notice a mysterious object (shown above) in the reflection of an astronaut’s helmet from the Apollo 12 mission. The object appears to be hanging from a rope or wire and has no reason to be there at all, leading some to suggest it is an overhead spotlight typically found in film studios.
The resemblance is questionable, given the poor quality of the photograph, but the mystery remains as to why something is being suspended in mid-air (or rather lack of air) on the moon. The lunar module in other photos appears to have no extension from it that matches the photo, so the object still remains totally unexplained.

5 - Slow-Motion Walking and Hidden Cables

In order to support claims that the moon landings were shot in a studio, conspiracy theorists had to account for the apparent low-gravity conditions, which must have been mimicked by NASA. It has been suggested that if you take the moon landing footage and increase the speed of the film x2.5, the astronauts appear to be moving in Earth’s gravity. As for the astronaut’s impressive jump height, which would be impossible to perform in Earth’s gravity, hidden cables and wires have been suggested as giving the astronauts some extra height. In some screenshots outlines of alleged hidden cables can be seen (the photograph above supposedly shows a wire, though it is extremely vague).




4 - Lack of Stars

One compelling argument for the moon landing hoax is the total lack of stars in any of the photographic/video evidence. There are no clouds on the moon, so stars are perpetually visible and significantly brighter than what we see through the filter of Earth’s atmosphere.
The argument here is that NASA would have found it impossible to map out the exact locations of all stars for the hoax without being rumbled, and therefore left them out – intentionally falling back on an excuse that the quality of the photographs washes them out (an excuse they did actually give).
Some photographs are high-quality, however, and yet still no stars are shown. Certainly eerie, considering you can take pictures of stars from Earth in much lower quality and still see them.



3 - The “C” Rock

One of the most famous photos from the moon landings shows a rock in the foreground, with what appears to be the letter “C” engraved into it. The letter appears to be almost perfectly symmetrical, meaning it is unlikely to be a natural occurrence. It has been suggested that the rock is simply a prop, with the “C” used as a marker by an alleged film crew. A set designer could have turned the rock the wrong way, accidentally exposing the marking to the camera.
NASA has given conflicting excuses for the letter, on the one hand blaming a photographic developer for adding the letter as a practical joke, while on the other hand saying that it may simply have been a stray hair which got tangled up somewhere in the developing process.




2 - The Layered Cross-hairs

The cameras used by astronauts during the moon landings had a multitude of cross-hairs to aid with scaling and direction. These are imprinted over the top of all photographs. Some of the images, however, clearly show the cross-hairs behind objects in the scene, implying that photographs may have been edited or doctored after being taken. The photograph shown above is not an isolated occurrence. Many objects are shown to be in front of the cross-hairs, including the American flag in one picture and the lunar rover in another.
Conspiracy theorists have suggested NASA printed the man-made objects over a legitimate photograph of the moon to hoax the landings – although if they really planned on doing this, then why they used cross-hairs in the first place is a mystery.




1 - The Duplicate Backdrop


The two photos from the Apollo 15 mission shown above clearly have identical backdrops, despite being officially listed by NASA as having been taken miles apart. One photo even shows the lunar module. When all photographs were taken the module had already landed, so how can it possibly be there for one photo and disappear in another? Well, if you’re a hardcore conspiracy theorist, it may seem viable that NASA simply used the same backdrop when filming different scenes of their moon landing videos.
NASA has suggested that since the moon is much smaller than Earth, horizons can appear significantly closer to the human eye. Despite this, to say that the two hills visible in the photographs are miles apart is incontrovertibly false.





Bonus

 

The Stanley Kubrick Theory

This loose extension of the popular conspiracy theory states that acclaimed film director Stanley Kubrick was approached by the US government to hoax the first three moon landings. There are two main branches of this somewhat implausible theory: one group of believers maintain that Kubrick was approached after he released 2001: A Space Odyssey (released in 1968, one year before the first moon landing), after NASA came to appreciate the stunning realism of the film’s outer-space scenes at that time; another group contends that Kubrick was groomed by the government to film the moon landing long before this, and that 2001: A Space Odyssey was a staged practice run for him.
So what evidence might support such claims? Well: apparently, if you watch The Shining (another Kubrick picture), you can pick up on some alleged messages hidden by Kubrick to subtly inform the world of his part in the conspiracy. The most obvious is the child’s Apollo 11 shirt worn in only one scene. Another supposed gem is the line written on Jack Nicholson’s character’s typewriter: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, in which the word “all” can be interpreted as A11, or Apollo 11.


If you aren’t convinced yet, Kubrick made the mysterious hotel room in the film number 237. Guess how many miles it is from here to the moon: 238,000. So divide that by a thousand and minus one, and you’ve got one airtight theory right there.

10 Completely Mysterious Deaths We’ll Probably Never Solve

There’s been no shortage of speculation around these 10 stories. However, the passage of time only serves to take us further away from events, and the world of speculation will likely be the final resting place of these mysterious deaths.

10 - Tom Thomson

Canadian painter Tom Thomson was last seen setting out on a fishing trip in a canoe on July 8, 1917. When his body was found floating in Canoe Lake eight days later, the circumstances behind the young artist’s demise became one of Canada’s most infamous mysteries.
There were two unusual aspects of the body that led many to believe he hadn’t simply fallen overboard: A piece of fishing line was wrapped 16 times around Thomson’s left ankle, and there was a wound on his temple. Some investigators agree with the accidental drowning theory, but if it was an accident, what caused it? It’s possible that Thomson’s canoe simply hit a piece of floating debris from a nearby logging operation. Some have even suggested the unlikely—but technically possible—scenario that he was hit by a sudden tornado.
Others have suggested that Thomson received a blow to the head, possibly from a paddle. There’s also the possibility of suicide—that Thomson purposely drowned himself, using the fishing line to tie a weight around his ankle.
The murder theories are even more numerous. Among the proposed suspects are American draft dodgers hoping to stay anonymous and poachers going to desperate lengths to hide their activities. Perhaps enemy spies or saboteurs were hiding in the woods, planning to attack the nearby train tracks used to transport goods bound for the war effort in Europe. None of them would have wanted Thomson to report spotting them.

9 - The Missing Body Of Frederick McDonald

On April 15, 1926, former Australian MP Frederick McDonald disappeared and was never seen again. His body was never found, but a suicide note was. No one was ever questioned about or charged with the disappearance, but one person frequently receives the finger of suspicion—Thomas John Ley.
Ley became a member of Australia’s federal parliament in 1925, and his ambition was matched only by his reputation as an awful person. Shortly after he gained his federal seat, he was investigated for bribery, having apparently offered McDonald £2,000 to back out of the next election. Then, before the hearing, McDonald apparently decided to kill himself.
Another of Ley’s enemies, Hyman Goldstein, “committed suicide” by throwing himself off a cliff in 1928. Goldstein was another MP who had been tricked into investing in a scam company set up by Ley. Goldstein set up a committee to investigate his fellow politician, but before the investigation could take place, Goldstein’s body was being dragged out of the sea by a fishing trawler.
Ley’s willingness to murder was proven in 1946, by which point he had moved to England. He’d become convinced that his mistress was having an affair with a young barman named John Mudie, so he had Mudie strangled and dumped in a chalk pit. Ley was convicted and died of a stroke after one year in a hospital for the criminally insane. It’s likely that he took the secret of McDonald’s fate with him.

8 - The Blazing Car Murder

In 1930, Alfred Rouse attempted to fake his own death by bludgeoning a man over the head with a mallet and burning the body in his car. He was spotted fleeing the scene and was eventually hanged for the crime. However, the identity of his victim was unknown.
For a long time, it was thought that the victim may have been William Thomas Briggs. Briggs had gone missing on his way to a doctor’s appointment around the time the murder took place. He was similar in appearance to Rouse and would have made an ideal victim for the hoax.
At the start of 2014, members of Briggs’s family arranged to have DNA tests done to finally put the mystery to rest. But when the results came back, the DNA didn’t match, opening up two separate mysteries. Who was the man murdered by Rouse, and what actually happened to Briggs? While the latter question will probably never be answered, DNA technology may eventually lead to the identification of the murder victim.

7 - Julia Wallace

The 1931 murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool has fascinated British crime writers for decades. It’s been called an unparalleled mystery that compares only to the infamous murders perpetrated by Jack the Ripper.
On January 20, 1931, a man calling himself R.M. Qualtrough called Liverpool Central Chess Club with a message for one of its members, William Herbert Wallace. The club’s secretary took the call and passed on the request for Wallace to go to 25 Menlove Gardens East the following evening. Wallace worked as an insurance agent, so such things weren’t particularly unusual.
When Wallace got to the area the following evening and tried to find the road, he found that there was a North, a South, and a West Menlove Gardens—but no East. Assuming someone had played a prank, he made his way back home, where he found his wife brutally murdered in the living room.
William Wallace was convicted of the murder, but the verdict was overturned after an appeal. Two other suspects have been considered. One was 22-year-old Richard Parry, who’d lost his job working for Prudential Insurance when William Wallace caught him fudging the books. Another was Joseph Marsden. Julia Wallace had been paying Marsden for sex, a fact he wanted to keep secret as he was about to marry into a wealthy family.
Several books have been written about the murder, and each new writer has been convinced that they’ve finally solved it—yet none of them actually agree on the outcome.

6 - Laetitia Toureaux

When Laetitia Nourrissat Toureaux boarded a metro that left Porte de Charenton station in Paris at 6:27 one evening in May 1937, she was the only person in the first-class carriage. When it pulled into the next station just a minute later, three people boarded through the doors on both ends of the carriage. Toureaux was still the only person there, but now she was slumped forward with a dagger protruding from her neck.
It’s partly the impossibility of the murder that makes Toureaux’s death so fascinating, but she also lived an unusual life. By day, the Italian widow worked in a glue factory. At night, she frequented seedy nightclubs and worked as a surveillance and message-delivery specialist for a private detective agency. This eventually led to her becoming a paid informant for the Parisian police, a position that definitely came with enemies.
She is also believed to have been having an affair with Gabriel Jeantet, a prominent right-wing journalist. Jeantet was also an arms smuggler for the most powerful underground organization in Paris at the time, a terrorist group called the Comite secret d’action revolutionnaire. Their nickname was the Cagoule, literally “hooded,” as they wore hoods to protect their identities.
The group was funded by the city’s social and financial elite, and it waged a campaign of terror in an attempt to break trade unions and other left-leaning organizations. They were responsible for seven confirmed murders, two bombings, and the formation of a militia. They even stockpiled weapons and built an underground prison.
In 1937, two members of the group were placed under interrogation. They claimed that Toureaux’s murder had been committed by their chief assassin, Jean Filliol. One of the men later changed his story, and the other man had been beaten prior to giving the information, so it’s hard to be certain how much they actually knew.
In any case, World War II soon put a halt to the investigation, and by the mid-1940s, Filliol had fled to Spain. Other rumors suggest that Toureaux was killed because she knew too much about a plot involving Mussolini, as the dagger-in-the-neck technique was popular with professional assassins from Italy. By the time police were in a position to resume their investigation, there were too many obstacles in their way, leaving Toureaux’s murder a mystery to this day.

5 - Harry Oakes

The richest man in the Bahamas was found dead on the morning of July 8, 1943. He’d been beaten in the head with a spiked club, doused in gasoline, and covered with feathers from a pillow. The murderer had then tried to set him on fire, but the blaze hadn’t taken.
Harry Oakes had made his money in the gold mines of Canada before moving to the Bahamian capital of Nassau to escape taxes. The governor of the islands at the time was the Duke of Windsor, formerly the King of England. He’d been friends with the recently deceased Oakes and, rather than allowing the local police to investigate, he called in two detectives from Miami whom he knew personally.
It wasn’t long before Oakes’s son-in-law, Alfred de Marigny, was arrested and charged. Oakes had never liked de Marigny, and the young man stood to inherit a large fortune if Oakes died. That gave de Marigny two motives, so when his fingerprint was found at the crime scene, he was immediately put on trial. The defense showed that the duke’s private detectives had planted the fingerprint in order to bring an end to the situation as soon as possible, and de Marigny was acquitted.
Another key suspect was Oakes’s business partner, Harold Christie, who had been staying at the house that night. Christie claimed that he’d been asleep and had heard nothing around the time Oakes was killed. He had a motive, as he owed Oakes money that he couldn’t pay. De Marigny himself wrote after his trial, “In my mind there is no doubt whatsoever that Harold Christie should have been tried and hanged for the murder of Sir Harry Oakes.”
Witnesses later claimed to have seen Christie out of the house around the time the murderer would have expected the body to be going up in flames, even though he denied ever leaving. Christie was never really investigated, and never received a trial. Others have blamed the Mafia, who had hoped to organize a gambling racket in the Bahamas (possibly in cahoots with the Duke of Windsor) but had run into opposition from Oakes.

4 - The Atlas Vampire

 

Lilly Lindestrom was a 32-year-old divorcee living in Stockholm in the 1930s. She lived in a small apartment and made her living as a prostitute. On May 1, 1932, she was discussing plans for the evening’s May Day celebrations with her friend Minnie Jansson, a 35-year-old woman who lived on the same floor and made her living in the same way. Lilly was nicknamed the “call girl” because she was the only person in the building with a phone.
Lilly received a call from a potential client, asking if he could come over. Lilly agreed, and Minnie left her to it. Minnie only saw her friend alive again briefly later that day, when the younger woman called to borrow condoms. When Minnie knocked on Lilly’s door several hours later, there was no answer. Minnie thought that perhaps Lilly had gone to the celebration with the man.
It wasn’t until three days later that the police were finally called. When they broke down the door, Lilly was found facedown on her bed, completely naked, with a condom still in her anus. She’d been killed by three blows to the head from a blunt object. Her clothes were neatly folded nearby.
Yet there was an even more disturbing and sinister aspect to this murder. In the room was a bloodstained gravy ladle. Further inspection revealed that the blood had been drained from Lilly’s body, and the killer had used the ladle to drink it. Despite the authorities’ best efforts, the story leaked, and the local press nicknamed the unknown killer the Atlas Vampire, due to the area of the city in which Lilly lived.
Eighty of Lilly’s customers were investigated, but no suspects were revealed. Minnie hadn’t recognized the voice on the phone from what she’d heard, but she commented that the man had seemed sober and polite. There didn’t seem to be any fingerprints on any of the suspicious items at the scene. One theory was that the killer was a police officer who had bludgeoned Lilly with his truncheon and knew how to cover his tracks. Either way, Lilly’s final customer was never found.

3 - Mary Money

Late in the evening on September 24, 1905, the mutilated body of a young woman was found in the Merstham railway tunnel in southeast England. At first, police believed that it may have been suicide, but an examination of the body found a scarf which had been stuffed down the woman’s throat. The body was warm, and had likely not been there long—maybe less than 30 minutes—by the time a railway worker stumbled across it.
Shortly after a description was released, the victim was identified as Mary Money by her brother Robert. Police set about retracing her last steps. Around 7:00 PM, she’d told a friend that she was going for a walk and would be back soon. Her body was found around 10:55 PM.
Two witnesses claimed to have seen her at the local train station that evening. Others noted that they’d seen a young woman in a first-class compartment with a man. The train in question would’ve passed through Merstham tunnel at around 10:19. One witness said he saw the man leave the train alone. Was he a boyfriend who had thrown Mary out of the moving carriage? The police investigated every man in Mary’s life, but all had solid alibis.
Later events suggested that Mary’s brother may have been less than honest with the police. He was found dead in 1912, having murdered two women and three children before committing suicide. The women were sisters, and Robert had married them both without the other’s knowledge. Having proven himself very capable of deceit and murder, a role for Robert in his sister’s murder doesn’t seem unreasonable.

2 - YOGTZE

Gunther Stoll was found severely injured in his car in the early hours of the morning in 1984. The car was in a ditch on the side of the autobahn. He’d been out drinking the previous night, and the case seemed like nothing more than a simple traffic accident. Unfortunately, he died on the way to hospital before he could give an explanation for the accident. The subsequent examination of Stoll’s injuries led authorities to conclude that he’d been run over before being placed back in his vehicle.
Another puzzle came from a note found beside Stoll. On a scrap of paper, he had written “YOGTZE.” It’s not a word in any language that anyone has been able to find. It may be an acronym or possibly an encryption, but if that’s the case, nobody’s cracked the code. The day before he died, Stoll had declared to his wife, “Now I get it!” before he made the note and left the house.
Two decades later, the death and the note both remain a mystery. People have speculated that it may have been YO6TZE, a Romanian radio call sign. It could also be a reference to the yogurt flavoring TZE (Stoll worked as a food technician). Neither of those ideas, however, give any insight into how Stoll ended up apparently murdered in his own car, and the case remains unsolved.

1 - Charles Bravo

The death of Charles Bravo is another case that many modern sleuths claim to have solved, each one with a different story. Bravo was a barrister who died of antimony poisoning in 1876. His painful death was strung out over several days, yet Bravo remained calm and unwilling to tell anyone who may have put the poison into his bedside water glass. Many at the time took this ambivalence to be a sign that Bravo had poisoned himself as a means of suicide, though we now know that his behavior could have simply been a symptom of the poisoning.
There were four main suspects. The first was Florence, Charles’s wife of four months, who had started to loathe her husband’s intense sexual advances. Then there was Dr. James Gully, Florence’s former lover (and the suspect thought most likely by Agatha Christie). On the other hand, the maid, Mrs. Cox, had heard she was to be fired and may have held a grudge against Bravo. Finally, there’s a theory that the murderer was actually Charles Bravo, and he accidentally poisoned himself while trying to kill his wife.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that it wasn’t murder at all—just an accident. Like many heavy metals, antimony was used to treat various illnesses in the 19th century. The case that ruined the lives of its suspects—Gully’s career was in tatters and Florence drank herself to death within 18 months—may have been nothing more than a botched home remedy.

Alan is blaming every single one of these on Jessica Fletcher.