On this page we have compiled a few of the secrets that didn't really fit into our other categories (in other words we didn't know where to put them .... Ed.). If you have any secrets to share that you think would fit in this section then please feel free to submit them here.

Did Neil Armstrong blow his lines?

It was rumoured that Neil Armstrong, when stepping onto the lunar surface, made a little blunder when reciting the lines he had rehearsed. What he actually said was,

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

The transmission quality is poor, with static and fading. What he meant to say was 'That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Although quite possible that he said the 'a' and we didn't hear it due to static or dropout, when we listen closely we feel that he indeed made an error. (Who wouldn't be nervous and preoccupied while standing on the moon?... Ed.). 'Man' without the preceding article means not one man but man in general, mankind. So what he actually said was, in effect, one small step for mankind and one giant leap for mankind, which is contradictory.

Don't get us wrong. We think that Neil Armstrong is one of the great heroes of this century. Going to the moon with today's technology would be risky enough (let alone Nasa's launch track record lately.... Ed.), and to make that journey 30 years ago is astounding. We can only imagine what fears or thoughts must have been running through his mind at that historic moment. What is harder to understand is why no one else reported this mistake. Maybe they purposely ignored it as it would appear they were 'raining on the parade'. Most newspapers and magazines of the time reported the quote as Armstrong said it but without comment. Life magazine didn't print the quote at all, which was highly unusual. Most modern encyclopaedia and similar reference media do give the corrected version of the quote, though also without comment.

Armstrong himself, a very private man, is quoted as saying that he 'intended to say 'a'. It is most probable that nerves and the weight of the moment all played a part in his error. What we find interesting is the fact that the whole thing became a historical coverup.

Listen for yourself by clicking on the picture below, if it doesn't autoplay for you. The movie itself will take a while to load, perhaps you could read the rest of the page first.

Armstrong Movie

(You will need the QuickTime browser Plug-In to see and hear the movie, though later versions of windows media player will play the audio track).

The Kennedy/Lincoln Coincidences.

This has got to be the strangest set of coincidences we have seen. Not only is it unusual to have so many similarities between two events, it is downright spooky. We leave it up to you to judge for yourself. Consider the following.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.

John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.

John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both their wives lost children while living in the White House.

Both presidents were shot in the head.

Both were shot in the presence of their wives.

The Secretary of each President warned them not to go to the theatre, and to Dallas, respectively.

Lincoln's Secretary was named Kennedy.

Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.

Both were succeeded by Southerners.

Both successors were named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.

Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.

Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by three names.

Both assassins names have 15 letters.

Booth ran from the theatre and was captured in a warehouse.

Oswald ran from the warehouse and was captured in a theatre

Both killers were assassinated before they could be bought to trial.

Food for thought isn't it?

Book Security Systems.

Have you ever been to your local library and wondered how they stop people just walking out with a book in their bag or pocket? How do they stop people shoplifting books down at the mall bookstore? Maybe you have seen the alarms at the exit in most libraries and bookstores. Although different brands and types, most look like anti-shoplifting alarms we see in clothing and other stores. The idea is that anyone walking out with a book that hasn't been checked at the front desk will trip the alarm and be caught red-handed. This would appear to be a foolproof system. When checking out a book, the librarian or shop clerk 'wipes' the spine of the book over a metal plate to 'deactivate' the sensor in the book. Once this has been done the book is safe to carry through the detectors at the door.

We checked some books out of our local library, and carefully examined books on the shelf at a local bookstore. We checked as many books as we could, and we found sensors on only about 5% of books, and these were the expensive 'reference' type books. The sensors themselves differ in appearance. Some are merely a small brown strip, somewhat like magnetic tape, while others are a bulkier metal plate, that look like a thin silver foil type material encased in a paper 'envelope'. Though the clerk or librarian wipe the spine of the book over the deactivation machine, we could find no evidence of sensors in the spine of the book. Most were placed on the inside front or rear covers, close to the spine. It appears that the 'scare' factor' is enough to deter would be book thieves. Our library, though only a medium sized establishment, contains an estimated 50 thousand books. It just isn't feasible to place sensors in every one of those books. The same holds for retail stores. Retailers are also loathe to stick a sensor into a book as they are very hard to remove and customers may object to having the sensor left in their purchase.

The sensor itself appears to be a magnetic device, and as such is probably easily 'deactivated' with a normal pocket magnet. The loud buzz we sometimes here from these deactivation machines would suggest a demagnetising process. It is merely part of the checkout routine that every book is passed over the machine, thereby reinforcing the myth that every book has a sensor hidden somewhere in it.

We suggest that people just buy or borrow the books from your library or store. Although this security system is easily beaten, this in no way condones theft or dishonesty.

Subliminal Stuff in Movies and Ads.

The use of subliminal advertising and other ways of influencing human behaviour has been around for many years. However, real cases of subliminal shots are quite rare, possibly due to laws being put in place to stop the practise.

In the 1950's, experiments were carried out in an American movie theatre. The technology used then was vastly different than today's computer animation and other digital techniques. The movies were projected separately and a machine called a Tachistoscope, a slide projector capable of flashing a still image onto the screen, was used to project two written messages onto the movie screen. The messages were; 'Hungry? Eat Popcorn' and 'Drink Coca-Cola'. The man involved, James Vicary, a marketing researcher, conducted his experiment for six weeks on an estimated 45,000 subjects. He concluded that these messages were getting through. Sales of popcorn rose 57.8 percent while Coca-Cola sales rose 18% (probably due to the fact that movie theatre popcorn is heavily salted to make you drink more soda.... Ed.).

These experiments caused a public outcry against subliminal advertising. What is not widely known is that Vicary's experiments have been all but discredited both scientifically and ethically. His messages appeared for a fleeting one-three-thousandth of a second. Psychology tests that showed that information could be conveyed at a subliminal level were conducted with the tachistoscope speed set at one-hundredth of a second, around thirty times slower than Vicary's tests. Other psychologists reasoned, quite rightly, that there was no control group, no ongoing study of audience behaviour and that the increase in consumption may well have been a random or seasonal fluctuation or perhaps even the result of expectant vendors pushing their products harder than normal.

Though discredited, the results on the public psyche were the same. There were almost no subliminal type ads in the following years. The National Association of Broadcasters (USA) banned all these types of ads on member stations. One ad, for a child's game ran around Christmas 1973 and was pulled due to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling. The ad featured the words 'Get it!' flashed for a split second. Whether this made the product any more popular is not known. Perhaps the furore caused by the ad gave them marketing spin-offs they didn't (or did) anticipate.

There have been a number of subliminal type shots in movies too. There is a limitation however. Movies are projected at a rate of 24 frames-per- second. Hence, any subliminal message can only be a minimum of 1 frame, or around one-twenty-fourth of a second. As we saw earlier, this is relatively slow and easy for the human eye to detect. How easy depends on the surrounding cinematography. You may have seen the circular scratches in some movies, normally in the top right corner of the screen. Normally we don't notice these, but if you want to look for them, you will see them. They are merely marks put on the film for projectionists, to warn them of an upcoming reel change or similar action. Most cinema goers will never see these marks, but we all can say we have seen them.

As far as movies with known subliminal shots go, there are very few. Avant-garde film makers have used these types of single-frame techniques for entire movies. One film, by Robert Breer Images by Images (1954) consists entirely of single-frame images. In a way, the film is entirely subliminal, with many images remaining in our memories after viewing. Similarly, Tony Conrad's The Flicker (1966) was all-black and all-white frames alternatively projected onto the screen. Claimed to be dangerous for epileptics (and probably psychopaths.... Ed.) the movie lived up to its name.

One famous movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) was rumoured to have subliminal techniques after Director Tobe Hooper alluded to this in an interview. He denied single-frame shots however, and if there is any hidden content in this film no one seems to have yet spotted it. (Bear in mind that using low frequency sound and other audio tricks can have a subliminal effect too. Most horror type films have 'eerie' soundtracks which make us feel uneasy and nervous. This is also subliminal).

Probably the only major movie with a genuine single-frame type shot is The Exorcist (1973). There is a two-frame 'demon face' in two parts of the movie. Though two-frame shots (one-twelfth of a second) are slow subliminally speaking, not many people who have seen the film actually remember seeing it. The first instance is where Father Karras dreams his mother is coming out from the subway and as she is walking up the steps the face is seen briefly. The second is later in the film when Karras tries to kill the possessed child and we see the face again. The face itself appears to be that of the actor who plays Karras with white face paint, red rimmed eyes and wearing a white shroud. A second rumoured instance involves the word PIG. The word appears as graffiti near the stairs behind the house. We looked and the scene is never on screen long enough to even catch sight of it.

So does all this make the film any scarier? The movies is freaky anyway, with many more disturbing scenes than a white face or the word PIG written on a wall. It is therefore questionable whether this has any overall affect on the audience, though it is possible that individuals may find those two-frame images disturbing.

Another movie with a true single-frame incident is Dark Star (1974). This film is now considered a cult classic, the first movie by noted director John Carpenter (The Thing, Them, Vampires). It was shot for six thousand dollars and features extremely cheesy special effects and ham acting. The single-frame shot is the words 'Fuck You Harris' on a computer panel. The Harris referred to is believed to be Jack H Harris, one of the backers of the film. A rift grew between Carpenter and Harris due to Harris' cost cutting ideas. Carpenter was, and still is, a perfectionistic film maker and this didn't sit well with Harris' methods. Apparently Carpetner and the films co-writer sabotaged the soundtrack so that the editing would have to be done at Metro Goldwyn Meyer instead of the discount suite that Harris booked for them. The movie is often shown on television. Presumably the stations are unaware of the shot. Regardless, the film is often heavily edited for television distribution anyway.

That's it for this section of Secrets You Should Know. If you have any good stories to tell then feel free to submit them here.

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