I was looking up old news clips about the moon landing and found a poll number that stopped me cold.

It was a 1970 Gallup poll showing only 33% of Americans were sure we really went to the moon, with 46% unsure. I found it in a digital archive of a local paper from my hometown. That's a huge chunk of people who had doubts right from the start, not just something that grew later. Makes you wonder what the talk was really like back then. Anyone else find early numbers that surprised them about a big event?

3 comments

3 Comments

kelly_schmidt26d ago

Actually, that poll was asking if people thought the moon landing was staged for TV... not if we really went. The unsure group was about the broadcast, not the mission itself.

willowadams26d ago

Oh man, I totally read that wrong then. I guess I'm part of the problem, jumping to conclusions about the poll before reading the fine print. My bad, I just saw "moon landing" and "staged" and my brain went straight to the usual argument. So they were just asking if the TV part was fake, not the whole trip? That's a way more specific kind of doubt.

kaibell26d ago

Yeah I did the exact same thing last week with a headline about "Mars rover footage." I got all worked up about conspiracy theories before realizing the article was just debating if some colors in the photo were edited for clarity. My brain just sees the trigger words and fills in the rest. It's wild how often we react to the idea of the argument instead of the actual question.