I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW . . .

I bet you didn't know that there is someone buried on our moon - the Moon.  There is.  His name is Eugene Merle Shoemaker.  He was a geologist and physical scientist.  Gene is considered one of the founders of planetary science.  No, I don't know why you never heard of him.

Here's the scoop.  Mr. Shoemaker was born in 1928 in Los Angeles.  He and his wife and a friend discovered the comet named "Shoemaker-Levy 9".  Sure, the other guy's name was Levy.  This comet doesn't really exist any more since it collided with Jupiter in 1994.  You see, comets do sometimes collide with planets.  Keep a wary eye out.

We're getting ahead of ourselves.  Gene had degrees from Cal Tech and Princeton.  He enrolled at Cal Tech in 1944 (age 16) and got his science degree at the age of 20.  He did some work for the US Geological Survey referencing uranium deposits and their relationship to volcanos.   He got his PhD from Princeton with his dissertation concerning planetary craters.  He ended up directing, for our government, the first geological survey of our moon.

Now we're getting there.  Shoemaker got involved in training our astronauts who were hoping to make a lunar landing.   He received numerous awards for his work from our government and various scientific organizations.  He died in an automobile accident in the Australian Outback in 1995.  In 1997, some of his ashes were taken to the Moon on our unmanned mission called Lunar Prospector.  The little Prospector deposited his ashes in a capsule in one of the craters he studied.  He is the only human being buried outside our planet.

[Older readers may remember that on the "Honeymooners" Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) always warned Alice (Audrey Meadows) that he was going to "POW! Send her to the moon." He never did.]
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