What did Neil Armstrong really say when he took his first step on the moon?
Millions on Earth who listened to him on TV or radio heard this :
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
But after returning from space, Armstrong said that wasn't what he had planned to say. He said there was a lost word in his famous one-liner from the moon: "That's one small step for 'a' man." It's just that people just didn't hear it."
During a 30th anniversary gathering in 1999, the Apollo 11 commander acknowledged that he didn't hear himself say it either when he listened to the transmission from the July 20, 1969, moon landing.
"The 'a' was intended," Armstrong said. "I thought I said it. I can't hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on Earth, so I'll be happy if you just put it in parentheses."
While it seems no one heard the "a," some research backs Armstrong. In 2006, a computer analysis of sound waves found evidence that Armstrong said what he said he said. NASA has also stood by the moonwalker.
Armstrong, who died in 2012 at age 82, said he came up with the statement himself. In a 2001 NASA oral history, he said NASA discouraged coaching astronauts, a position reflected in a NASA memo. It cited how "the truest emotion ... is what the explorer feels within himself."
"I thought about it after landing," Armstrong said about his famous line. "And because we had a lot of other things to do, it was not something that I really concentrated on, but just something that was kind of passing around subliminally or in the background. But it, you know, was a pretty simple statement, talking about stepping off something. Why, it wasn't a very complex thing. It was what it was."
Retired professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra faces charges after Pennsylvania State Police said a trooper found drugs and paraphernalia in his possession during a traffic stop on New Year's Day.
Dykstra, 62, was a passenger when the vehicle was pulled over by a trooper with the Blooming Grove patrol unit in Pike County, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Scranton, where Dykstra lives.
Police said in a statement that charges will be filed but did not specify what they may be or what drugs were allegedly involved.
Matthew Blit, Dykstra’s lawyer, said in a statement that the vehicle did not belong to Dykstra and he was not accused of being under the influence of a substance at the scene.
“To the extent charges are brought against him, they will be swiftly absolved,” Blit said.
Dykstra's gritty style of play over a long career with the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies earned him the nickname “Nails.” He spent years as a businessman before running into a series of legal woes.
Dykstra served time in a California prison for bankruptcy fraud, sentenced to more than six months for hiding baseball gloves and other items from his playing days. That ran concurrent with a three-year sentence for pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement. He claimed he owed more than $31 million and had only $50,000 in assets.
In April 2012, Dykstra pleaded no contest to exposing himself to women he met through Craigslist.
In 2019, Dykstra pleaded guilty on behalf of his company, Titan Equity Group, to illegally renting out rooms in a New Jersey house that it owned. He agreed to pay about $3,000 in fines.
That same year a judge dropped drug and terroristic threat charges against Dykstra after an altercation with an Uber driver. Police said they found cocaine, MDMA and marijuana among his belongings. Dykstra's lawyer called that incident “overblown” and said he was innocent.
And in 2020 a New York Supreme Court judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit that Dykstra filed against former Mets teammate Ron Darling over his allegation that Dykstra made racist remarks toward an opponent during the 1986 World Series.
Justice Robert D. Kalish said Dykstra’s reputation “for unsportsmanlike conduct and bigotry” had already been so tarnished that it could not be damaged further.
“Based on the papers submitted on this motion, prior to the publication of the book, Dykstra was infamous for being, among other things, racist, misogynist, and anti-gay, as well as a sexual predator, a drug-abuser, a thief, and an embezzler,” Kalish wrote.
FILE - Former baseball player Lenny Dykstra sits during his sentencing for grand theft auto in Los Angeles, on Dec. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
