re: #78 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

They hate Buzz Aldrin for having no time or patience for Fake Moon Landing CTs, now they can add the late Neil Armstrong to the list…

I just learned something about the Armstrong quote that I never knew before. And after all the time since, I don’t know how I never heard this.

From WikiQuote - Neil Armstrong

Words said when Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon (20 July 1969). In the actual sound recordings he apparently fails to say “a” before “man” and says: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This was generally considered by many to simply be an error of omission on his part. Armstrong long insisted he did say “a man” but that it was inaudible. Prior to new evidence supporting his claim, he stated a preference for the “a” to appear in parentheses when the quote is written. In September 2006 evidence based on new analysis of the recordings conducted by Peter Shann Ford, a computer programmer based in Sydney, Australia, whose company Control Bionics helps physically handicapped people to use their own nerve impulses to communicate through computers, indicated that Armstrong had said the missing “a”. This information was presented to Armstrong and NASA on 28 September 2006 and reported in the Houston Chronicle (30 September 2006). The debate continues on the matter, as “Armstrong’s ‘poetic’ slip on Moon” at BBC News (3 June 2009) reports that more recent analysis by linguist John Olsson and author Chris Riley with higher quality recordings indicates that he did not say “a”.

I wish “a” man had been more clearly stated or stated clearly if Armstrong missed it. It adds some punch to the quote as it makes his singular step on the moon a more powerful representation of mankind. “Man” alone is a collective statement and just doesn’t have that contrast.

Apparently that was Armstrong’s intention all along.