For quite some time now, the social media, especially the Facebook, is abuzz with images and short duration videos unfolding the events that made ‘unsinkable’ Titanic ship to sink in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Basically, the sinking of the ‘unsinkable’ yet again became major news feed of international media outlets, especially the social sites when Titan, a submersible created and operated by OceanGate imploded on June 18, 2023 while transporting five tourists to visit the wreckage of the Titanic ship. The wreck lies at a depth of about 3,810 metres and since its discovery, it has been a destination for research expeditions and tourism.
However, the kind of pleasurable attention given to the Titanic wreckage resting at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean with a burden of more than 1500 killings of its passengers, is ‘someone’s irony is someone’s joy’ like situation. Now, the perishing of five human lives in the implosion of the Titan submersible has become the first diet of social media influencers and are more busy in dishing out their own theories than mourning the loss of precious lives. A mad race is visible among social media influencers who are busy in producing sensational videos of the incident to woo more and more people into subscribing to their channels. It’s notable that any video crossing a threshold limit of views are subscribers on social media becomes an earnings stream for its producers. They leave no stone unturned to turn any untoward incident with loss of human lives into a money minting event by presenting the incident with their own ‘unverified’ sensational theories through various social media channels. There is negligible sympathy shown towards the dead in the incident.
As the Titanic wreckage stands propagated massively after more than 111 years of the incident and is losing steam in terms of viewership on the social media sites, it’s now the moon landing which is currently dominating major news feeds on these platforms. The images, videos and the written content about the first moon landing on July 20, 1969, is flooding the walls of the browsers. The reaction of netizens is adding flavor to these posts with mixed reaction to the event that led the humans to land on the moon.
Some time back, I came across an amazing video clip on Facebook showing ‘incredible images arriving from Mars’. The clip was posted by someone from Birmingham, United Kingdom. It was mind blowing to have a glimpse of Mars in the video, which is about 300 million miles from the earth. The caption of the video clip mentioned that it takes 7 months to reach the planet travelling at a speed of 24600 mph!
As I shared the video clip on my FB wall, one of my friends responded with a ‘conspiracy theory’ and labeled the Mars footage fake. Let me share what he exactly wrote: “There isn’t a single reason to believe the authenticity of the video clip. NASA has already be-fooled the world long back claiming that Neil Armstrong had put steps on the moon and that’s till date unauthenticated.”
During our childhood days, we used to get fascinated to listen to the stories of the first ever moon landing by astronaut Neil Armstrong. We never imagined that even after more than 54 years of the event, there would be people who still insist that it never happened and call it hoax perpetrated by the US government. For decades, the conspiracists’ claim has been making rounds at regular intervals that it was all a Hollywood-like cinematic production shot on Earth.
Interestingly, I had read a post on Facebook justifying that the moon landing by Neil Armstrong was faked by NASA. Let me reproduce the post which claimed that “in the photos from the Moon, the American flag looks like it’s flapping in the wind. That would be impossible because there’s no air up on the Moon.”
The statement seemed based on logic as in absence of air how can a flag flap! In a way it was convincing on this premise that moon landing was ‘faked’. Out of curiosity, I tried to lay hand on other opinions on the subject by browsing the Internet. I found innumerable questions raising doubts about the moon landing. Though, there were clarifications posted by some responsible agencies and individuals rubbishing the “fake moon landing’ claim. But the theories put forward in support of ‘the moon landing actually happened’ were not elaborate and convincing. However, the issue was too big for a commoner like me to peep into it. Precisely, it was none of my subject to do a fact check of claims and counterclaims. I simply took the issue out of my mind.
However, after a gap of a few years, I came across an amazing book, ‘85 Years of Great Writing’. The book by the TIME INC. HOME ENTERTAINMENT was published to celebrate 85th anniversary of the TIME Magazine. The book gathers a selection of the finest articles from TIME’s archives since its founding in 1923. World leaders from Churchill to Gandhi to John F Kennedy, momentous events like Watergate and 9/11 attacks, wars, scientific breakthroughs, artistic achievements, etc. – all are chronicled in the book with the vividness, flair and authority that have distinguished TIME writing. The book has, precisely, drama, human interest, history, entertainment and classic stories from TIME’s most brilliant writers. Simply, without any doubt, a delightful read.
The book contains an article “A Giant Leap for Mankind’ published in the TIME magazine on July 25, 1969 authored by Leon Jaroff. It has covered even minutest details of the Moon landing by Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969. The very first sight of the article immediately took me back to the controversies around the Moon landing for decades. With a curious mind, I keenly went through the article and found logical answers to the queries which were calling the Moon landing by Neil Armstrong as fake and equating it with Hollywood drama.
For instance, let’s come back to the flag hoisting episode on the Moon. In absence of air, how come the photograph was showing the American flag flapping on the Moon? This is the most common question asked by those who have vowed not to believe that Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon and reject the event as fake.
The article “A Giant Leap for Mankind’ which was published just five days after the historic Moon landing event and the queries were yet to be raised about the authenticity of the event has mentioned about the flag hoisting episode on the Moon. It says: “Armstrong moved the still-operating camera to its panorama position on a tripod aimed at the lunar module. During the next two hours, the astronauts went busily about their appointed tasks, moving in and out of the camera’s view. They planted a 3-ft. by 5-ft. American flag, stiffened with thin wire so that it would appear to be flying in the vacuum of the moon.”
To conclude, revisiting historical events – be it a human tragedy like the sinking of ‘unsinkable’ Titanic or a landmark achievement like stepping on the moon – by using advanced technology should be presented in the right perspective. We should not take pleasure out of tragic events and at the same time we need to be brave to acknowledge the accomplishments of others.
The views are of the author & not the institution he works for)