MOON LANDING FACTOIDS

It's been 40 years since Apollo 11 landed on Earth's moon, embedding a number of famous sound bites and images in the minds of billions. For many, it's hard to even hear the phrases, "One small step for man" or "Houston, we have a problem" without envisioning bobbing black-and-white moon footage or flight cams of burning rocket segments plummeting back through the atmosphere.

Yet outside of these purely iconic moments, a number of mundane, bizarre and interesting factoids are often forgotten. Sure, we all know that Alan Shepard hit a golf ball across the lunar strata with a six-iron, but what about the little-known nugget that a 3-inch (7-centimeter) aluminum space-man figurine was left behind by Apollo 15 in honor of fallen astronauts?

Join us now as we take a quick journey back to the moon, pausing to examine some of the lesser-known facts along the way.

Image: The monstrous Saturn V carries the crew of Apollo 11 through the atmosphere, generating a shock wave as it breaks the sound barrier. Credit: NASA

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