This story goes to show how the way you want to see, hear, or think about things changes the world. I remember being in gradeschool and being taught about the moon landings. My teacher’s taught us about how Incredible the U.S. was and how humility has always played a part in our dealings with the world. Specifically, I remember one teacher spending the entire day talking about how Neil Armstrong had said “One small step for man…” and not “One small step for a man…” or “One small step for America…”, I was really impressed and that lesson stayed with me. By not using the grammatically correct ‘a man’, Armstrong had included all humans in his moment of victory. He had taken the glory from himself and his country and put it on the entire world. Well, it was a nice way to view the world…it just wasn’t correct…
Like so many things in life, thinking about something differently than it actually is, can truly change it, just be careful not to let anyone tell you that you are fooling yourself….
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HOUSTON – That’s one small word for astronaut Neil Armstrong, one giant revision for grammar sticklers everywhere.
An Australian computer programmer says he found the missing “a” from Armstrong’s famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The story was reported in Saturday’s editions of the Houston Chronicle.
Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, “One small step for a man …” in the version he transmitted to
NASA’s Mission Control. Without the missing “a,” Armstrong essentially said, “One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind.”
The famous astronaut has maintained he intended to say it properly and believes he did. Thanks to some high-tech sound-editing software, computer programmer Peter Shann Ford might have proved Armstrong right.
Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong’s words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.
In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing “a” was spoken and transmitted to NASA.
“I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful,” Armstrong said in a statement. “I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word.”