Did Neil Armstrong muff his historic line or didn’t he? When I along with half a billion others witnessed the first human step on the moon on July 20, 1969, I swear I heard Armstrong say, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” What he meant to say, of course, was “one small step for a man.” In leaving out the “a,” he destroyed the sense of the statement and in essence said, “One small step for humans, one giant leap for humans.” OK, so we all make mistakes. Every encyclopedia I’ve consulted, however, corrects the error. In recent years I’ve even heard recordings of his famous line–purportedly from the original tape–that also include the “a,” making sense of the statement. Did NASA or someone else doctor up the tape to save Armstrong’s (and the U.S.’s) face in the eyes of posterity? Or am I going loony? –James Hulin, Madison, Wisconsin
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I like the cut of your jib, lad. However, your spelling sucks. According to my trusty American Heritage Dictionary (how can you not like a dictionary that illustrates “decolletage” with a picture of Marilyn Monroe?), the participle of “queue” is “queuing”–four vowels. But fear not. An alternate spelling of the verb “meeow” is “miaou”; thus we can have cats “miaouing”–count ’em, five vowels. As for illegitimate words–well, there’s always “heeeeere’s Johnny.”
