New York Daily News made a series of baffling errors in a retrospective article on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
The liberal New York City tabloid reported Tuesday that, "A few days before the historic walk on the moon, Apollo 11 took off from the earth—50 years ago on July 16."
That was all accurate, but the Daily News continued: "Four days later John Glenn would step onto the only other planet we have ever walked on, and uttered the famous words 'on [sic] small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.'"
Not including the typo, that sentence contained several glaring errors. Most obviously, Neil Armstrong was the first man to step foot on the moon. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, but he played no role in the Apollo 11 mission.
The second obvious error is the moon is not a "planet." It is a moon.
Lastly, Neil Armstrong's famous quotation upon taking his step on the moon did not end with "one giant step for mankind," but "one giant leap for mankind." There is also significant debate about whether Armstrong actually said "one small step for a man," or simply "for man."
The Daily News eventually stealth-edited the errors, but not before eagle-eyed readers screenshotted both the article and tweets using the same language. A Google search for the words used in the article confirms those screenshots are authentic.
So which dumbass in @NYDailyNews allowed the publication of a piece that 1) claimed John Glenn, not Neil Armstrong, was the first to walk on the moon; and 2) claimed that the moon was a planet? Does anyone with an "Editor" title actually do their job? pic.twitter.com/digmRtB7To
— Elliott Hamilton (@ElliottRHams) July 16, 2019
??????? pic.twitter.com/zPOBsKxqtt
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 16, 2019
The first few paragraphs now read: "The Apollo 11 took off from Earth 50 years ago on July 16. Four days later Neil Armstrong would step onto the moon and utter the famous words 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'"
Even that correction is inaccurate. "Apollo 11" was the name of the lunar mission, not the name of the actual Saturn V rocket.