Page 14 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

May 1969 National Geographic

Being a writer, I know what it is to labor over words. I want to always choose the correct word to
express a matter. You can be certain that a major publication the size of National Geographic, when
covering a story as important as the Apollo missions, also pays great attention to the words chosen
for their articles. This is especially true in the titles of the articles.

The word “Fantastic” stood out immediately to me. I recognized that one of the meanings of the
word is “a work of fantasy.” The dictionary provides the following additional definitions.
“imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality.” Was someone at National Geographic in on the hoax
and using subtlety to acknowledge it? In December of 1969 National Geographic devoted an entire
magazine to the Apollo 11 landing. In the magazine were five major stories, all of them focused on
Apollo 11.