image credit BBC – article here

Expect hordes armed with shovels to descend on Finglas landfill dump in Dublin as the masses discover that a piece of Aplollo 11 moonrock worth around $5 million is hidden somewhere under the rotting detritus.

Via The BBC (and a hat tip to Mr Raccoon) an interesting little story of fraud, theft and sloppy record keeping :

The US space agency Nasa recently announced that many of the Moon rocks brought back to Earth from two Apollo space missions have gone missing. They were given as gifts to the nations of the world. So what happened to them?

Towards the end of the Apollo 17 mission on 13 December 1972, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt – the last men to have set foot on the Moon – picked up a rock.

Cernan announced: “We’d like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world.”

His wish was fulfilled.

President Richard Nixon ordered that the brick-sized rock be broken up into fragments and sent to 135 foreign heads of state and the 50 US states.

Each “goodwill Moon rock” was encased in a lucite ball and mounted on a wooden plaque with the recipient nations’ flag attached.

…

There were 370 pieces gathered for this purpose from the two missions. Two hundred and seventy were given to nations of the world and 100 to the 50 US states.

But 184 of these are lost, stolen or unaccounted for – 160 around the world and 24 in the US.

The rocks were distributed to countries ranging from Afghanistan to Trinidad and Tobago.

…

Then there is the mysterious tale of how – after a fire at an observatory in Dublin – Ireland’s Apollo 11 Moon rock ended up lying in a rubbish dump, after apparently being thrown out with the rest of the debris.

“It’s still there under a couple of tonnes of trash. That could definitely be worth over $5m (£3.1m). I’ll tell you where it’s at. It’s in the Finglas landfill dump in Dublin,” Gutheinz says.

Gentlemen, start your engines and get digging …