Cabinet of Curiosities - Day 20

Today we have ... the Moon.

This is a rare Wightman Lunaglobe. It was produced in 1969-1971 in the wake of the Moon landings by a company called A J Wightman that was based in Penzance, Cornwall, where I happened to be living at the time.

I was just a child of eight when Apollo 11 made its historic first touchdown on the Moon. And, like all my school chums, I was allowed to stay up into the small hours to watch it happen live on our 1969 black and white TV set. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life and, indeed, for nearly all human beings on the planet that had access to a television. In fact, I can't think of another global televised event that has come near to being so impactful - although Live Aid comes a good second.

Moon fever gripped us all and the canny Arthur Wightman was quick to capitalise on it. He began to fabricate two products, the Lunaglobe and the Lunasphere. They came in three sizes - 8", 12" and 24" -  and the only difference between them was that the Lunasphere looked more like a traditional globe on a rig that allowed it to rotate, while the Lunaglobe came with a detachable cross-shaped stand. Both were textured with craters and came with painting instructions and a set of waterslide transfers with the names of the various 'seas'. There was also a set of coloured sticky dots that we could use the plot the sites of landings. The American unmanned 'Surveyor' and 'Ranger' landing sites were marked with yellow dots, the Russian unmanned 'Lunar' sites in red, and the manned 'Apollo' missions (11 and 12, both 1969) in blue. It was up to you to add further stickers and to, as the wording on the box suggested, 'Be up to date with the APOLLO adventures!' The Lunaglobe had some serious customers including the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, NASA and Frank Borman, captain of Apollo 8.  

Here's a short news film showing Arthur Wightman at work on his products.

Sadly, I long ago lost all the packaging and broke the stand but I did find these lo-res images online.

Now, the reason I have one, and the reason it's painted so well is due to the smart business-sense of Arthur Wightman. As I said earlier, I lived in Penzance as a kid (until I was 11 when we moved to Helston) and Dad was a police officer in the town. And while he was investigating an attempted burglary at Wightman's premises, he saw the globes in production. He got into conversation with the man himself, told him all about my fascination with the Space Race, and casually remarked that it was a shame most schools or individuals would probably never be able to afford one of his globes. At which point, Wightman said something like, 'I have one you can have cheap.' What he then produced was a 'second'; a globe that wasn't quite up to the standard of the ones he shipped to customers. Nevertheless, he had painted it and had been using it as a display model. Dad had timed it perfectly as he was about to bin it and replace it with a better-made one. Dad was happy and Wightman made a few quid on something he'd planned to throw away.

So that's what I got for Christmas in 1970. And I still have it hanging in my office 52 years later. It's a very special thing - not only as a link to my Dad but also because I know that this one was hand-painted by Arthur Wightman himself. 

I am just as fascinated by space exploration as I ever was and I will never forget the excitement of watching the Moon landings. 

All of which is why I get so cross with Moon landing deniers. 

The chap in the red shirt in the above photo is, of course, Buzz Aldrin (also in the shot, besides me, are legendary comedy producer John Lloyd, comedian Sarah Pascoe, Marc Abrahams - who created the Ig Nobel Prizes -  along with Jimmy Carr and Dan Schreiber, host of the QI podcast No Such Thing as a Fish). The photo was taken before recording a 2012 episode of the Radio 4 show, The Museum of Curiosity on which Dan and I worked and John hosted.

I got to spend a good few hours in the company of Dr Aldrin that day and we talked about many things. And, inevitably, the topic turned to Moon landing deniers. So I asked him, was there anything I could ever say to convince them that humans are clever enough to have put people on the Moon?

'To be honest, no,' he said. 'If their mind is made up nothing will change it. I've tried. Although I will say that I am constantly amazed at how little they know about the space programme. Some don't even realise that we went back to the Moon a further five times - would have been six if Apollo 13 hadn't had a problem. Do they think they're all fake? The other thing I would point out to you is that all of these deniers are young people, mostly under 40. They weren't around at the time. They don't understand the international tensions that existed back then. Russia, America and China all regarded each other as enemies. Everything was on a hair-trigger and war came so close several times. Do you honestly think that those countries weren't watching us every inch of the way, just hoping to be able to denounce America? Of course they were. But they never did and, to date, no other country has ever accused us of faking it. Sadly, the allegations come mostly from young Americans, which breaks my heart. And there's just one other thing to say; Apollo 11 was the culmination of a programme that began with the Mercury and Gemini programmes and then Apollo. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the work (Note: It's around 600,000 for Apollo alone). Are they all lying? Where are all the whistleblowers?  As Occam's Razor says, 'All things considered, the simplest solution is probably the correct solution'. And the simple answer is - we went to the Moon. We risked our lives to further human knowledge and it saddens me that so many people think we're all liars.'

That's more than enough for me. I'd much rather live in a world where human beings put aside their cynicism and used their intelligence, passion and resources to take humanity forward rather than drag it back into conflict and division. 

That's what the Moon landings did.