Rocket Ship To The Moon

Ive just read that Neil Armstrong has died, aged 82, of complications following heart-surgery.

In the floor of St Paul's Cathedral, under the centre of the dome, these words are inscribed:

Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond ninety years, not for his own profit but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you. Died 25 Feb. 1723, age 91.

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A Kind Of Immortality

A while back I wrote a piece about someone having landed on my blog looking for info on Eugene Cernan leaving his daughter's initials scratched in the lunar surface. At the time, because of similarities in the search terms, the comparative obscurity of the bit of trivia that it concerned, and the fact that one of the searches seemed to be predicated on an opinion that it was untrue, I was more concerned with the apparent scepticism than the trivia itself. (It turns out that it had been mentioned in a popular American sit-com, by the way.) It got me to thinking, though…

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Initially Sceptical?

[Edit, 22^nd May: Since searches for "eugene cernan initials" and the like are still landing many visitors on this page, I should point out that the article below was based on a a misunderstanding by yours truly. The short of it is: yes he did do it. He mentions it in this article. For those interested in my view on the subject, I posted a more thoughtful piece on it a few days later.]

Since a couple of regular, completely unspammy comments got inexplicably marked as spam the other week, I've been checking my site stats a lot, even when I don't have time to reply to comments and so on, so as to catch such errors early. Which means that I notice a lot more, now, when a trend appears in search-terms that lead to a particular item. Which means that I spotted a weirdness which I shall now share with you, Gentle Reader.

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