Neil Armstrong Converted to Islam

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/12/false-persistent-rumor-that-neil-armstrong-converted-islam/

Washington Post

12 October 2018

The false, but persistent, rumor that Neil Armstrong converted to Islam

By Sally Tyler

[…] A less familiar story for most viewers is a persistent urban legend about the first human to reach the lunar surface. I first encountered it in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in the 1990s, when I was traveling alone for the first time. A Somali named Abdullah, who had come to Indonesia to purchase sarongs to sell in his store back in Mogadishu, […] told me, matter of factly, that when Armstrong was visiting the Middle East several years after his Apollo flight, he heard the call of the muezzin and asked what it was. Upon being informed of the sound’s source, the story went, Armstrong said he had heard the very same sound on the moon. In the legend, he converted to Islam on the spot. […]

That was my first exposure to an urban legend that held sway in parts of the world for decades. […]

Richard Nixon: “Damn it, if I were a Black man today I’d be a revolutionary, too!”

Jet, vol. 38, no. 21, 27 August 1970, p. 5.

Carl T. Rowan, “Campus Advisors Look for ‘Real Nixon.’” San Antonio Express and News, 9 Aug 1970, p. 6-H.

[…] Privately, Nixon expresses a commendable understanding of the frustrations of students and the plight of blacks. He sounds like a President determined to act with wisdom and compassion.

But turn a television camera on him and you see a President chiding campus advisors, antagonizing students, and placating Strom Thurmond and the Hard Hats by reverting to pro-white backlash policies that have come to be known as the “Southern strategy.”

A Cabinet member informs me that at a recent cabinet session, attended by the President’s two campus advisors, chancellor Alexander Heard of Vanderbilt University and President James E. Cheek of Howard University, the President listened with compassionate interest.

At one point he slammed the table with his fist and said, “Damn it, if I were a black man today I’d be a revolutionary too!”

At meeting’s end, press secretary Ronald Ziegler rushed among those present to warn: “If that comment goes into the press, we’re dead.” […]