On 23rd May 2007,
author Luca Scantanburlo followed up a strange rumour.
A man living in Rwanda had, some years
before, been part of a NASA project which proved beyond any doubt that alien
life had existed on the moon.
Curious, he tracked down and interviewed William Rutledge, an
American astronaut, now retired but formerly part of the Apollo 20 crew who
took part in a top secret mission to the moon during 1976.
The
mission, launched from Vanderberg Air Force Base, had been made jointly by the
USA and USSR, the crew members including Rutledge, astronaut Leona Snyder and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
They
landed near Guyot Crater where Rutledge and Leonov took photos and videos of an ancient
but now ruined, civilisation.
During subsequent interviews, Scantanburlo learned that the crew
found and brought back to Earth, many artefacts and incredibly, the remains of
a humanoid female.
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| Humanoid nicknamed Mona Lisa |
All this was immediate put under the strictest security, the
crew warned not to speak to the media and the whole mission subject to total
deniability.
However, 31 years
down the track, Rutledge had decided to go public and having made copies of the
videos taken on the moon, promised the author
he’d upload them to You Tube,
which he did. They can still be seen today.
Luca Scantanburlo wrote a book about the mission, the
extensive interviews with Rutledge and the incredible finds on the moon.
The only problem? The
whole thing was a hoax.
It’s hard to discern from Scantanburlo’s website whether he
was fooled by Rutledge; who mixed fact with fiction so that some parts of the
story were verifiable; or in league with the hoaxer.
His book was a best-seller but to date he is
still listed as ‘a clerk in the hospitality industry’ and his website is mainly
conspiracy theories.
Thierry Speth also wrote, in 2017 about the supposed mission.
"143 pictures from the mission .In 1971, Russian Probes and the Apollo 15 mission photograph a gigantic starship wrecked on the dark side of the Moon.
Worthy of Ripley's Believe it or Not!
*******
On October 16, 1869, two labourers, digging a well on a farm near Cardiff, New York, hit stone.
Carefully they examined their find. Buried amid tangled tree roots and looking old and worn was a giant figure.
‘I declare,’ said one, ‘looks like an old Indian has been buried here.'
The Syracuse Daily Standard declared it 'a new wonder’ and the latest in a long line of fossil finds for which Cardiff was well known.
People came from far and wide; so many that Farmer Newell (known at ‘Stub’) erected a tent over the figure and began charging admission.
Two thousand five hundred people came to look (and pay) in the first week alone.
Then a man named George Hull arrived and Newell, who had rejected several offers to buy the fossilised man who stood (or lay) approximately 10 ft, heard from Hull that a syndicate of businessmen were offering $30,000 for a three quarter stake in the phenomenon. He accepted.
Several experts opined it was simply a statue rather than a human body, petrified by the limestone in the surrounding water but still, when the syndicate took it on tour, thousands came to look.
Showman P T Barnum, always a man to recognise the way to bring in ‘the suckers and the dollars’, offered to buy the giant. When refused, he had a replica made and exhibited it as the real thing.
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| P T Barnum circus poster |
He covered all bases with his posters which read :
What is it?
Is it a Statue? Is it a Petrification? Is it a Stupendous Fraud?
Is it the Remains of a former Race?
Barnum’s giant drew such huge crowds, far more than had flocked to the original, that he had several more made, touring in different areas of the USA.
Then suspicions began to be aroused when a few people in Cardiff remembered George Hull and how he’d been seen in town a year before, transporting a large crate.
The men originally hired to dig the well speculated that it was a strange place to have a well and anyway, there was other access to water on the Newell farm.
Reporters did a little digging of their own and discovered a bank transfer to Hull from Newell, shortly after the $30,000 payout.
A respected palaeontologist from Yale Univesity, Prof. Othniel Marsh, came to look at the original giant and scoffed, “It’s of very recent origin and a most decided humbug.” (fraud)
Once exposed, George Hull was even able to make capital out of that, boasting how much money he'd made from ‘fooling the world’.
He went on to try the trick again in 1877 with another buried giant, this time with a tail but was quickly exposed.
He died penniless and in obscurity in 1902.
