News Story on Neil Armstrong Slips on an Onion

By Nancy Atkinson - September 5, 2009 at 12:43 PM UTC | Site News
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Two newspapers in Bangladesh have issued a retraction after publishing an article taken from the popular but satirical website "

The Onion

" which claimed Neil Armstrong had been convinced by conspiracy theorists that the Moon landings were faked. The Daily Manab Zamin said Armstrong had shocked a news conference by saying he now knew it had been an "elaborate hoax." The New Nation then picked up the story, and only later did they realize the Onion was not a genuine news site.

Both have now apologized to their readers for not checking the story. "We thought it was true so we printed it without checking," associate editor Hasanuzzuman Khan told the AFP news agency.

"We didn't know the Onion was not a real news site."

The article said Armstrong had told a news conference he had been "forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos and reading several blog posts" by a conspiracy theorist.

Of course, like everything else on The Onion, the story was completely made up.

The two newspaper articles drew a lot of attention in Bangladesh, and was one of the top articles getting hits on the papers' websites.

Here's the Onion's article.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com