44 Years of Debating the First Words Ever Spoken on the Moon

Perhaps no recorded phrase has been so heavily analyzed, so dredged for missing information, as Neil Armstrong’s words when he took his first step on the Moon. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 40-odd years, they were (drumroll), “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Or at least, that’s how they sound to most people. The uncertainty arises over the fact, while NASA maintained, at least at first, that the word is missing from the mission recording “because of static.” Armstrong himself said he’d been “misquoted.”