1959: First photos taken of the dark far side of the Moon, by Luna 3. (It wasn’t dark til Pink Floyd came along in 1973)
1849: Edgar Allan Poe died.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
Mike, surely you actually know better than to call it the DARK side of the Moon?
You’d think… I was so busy checking the Pink Floyd reference and looking up a Poe line about the Moon that I didn’t stop to wonder how Luna could have taken any photos of the “dark side.”
Well, it was, and is, dark for a small part of every month.
Morris Keesan writes:
Well, it was, and is, dark for a small part of every month.
About half, on the average.
Though it would be equally true to say that there is only a small part of every month when no part of the far side of the Moon is dark.