NASA landed astronauts on the moon in 1969. By the 1970s, a bizarre conspiracy emerged — that the moon landing never happened. 

The conspiracy was described in a 1976 self-published book, "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle," and a 1978 movie, "Capricorn One." Even as late as 2001, there was a Fox documentary, "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?" that gave air time to the claims that the whole Apollo moon-landing program was faked. 

There are plenty of debunkings of the various moon hoax claims(opens in new tab), and then there's the issue of the hundreds of pounds of moon rocks that have been studied around the world and verified as being of extraterrestrial origin. How did NASA get the rocks if not during a moon landing? Why would scientists from around the globe willingly participate in the American space agency's hoax? 

Many astronauts have been offended by the implication that they faked their accomplishments. In 2002, when conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel confronted Buzz Aldrin and called him a "coward and a liar" for faking the moon landings, the then 72-year-old punched Sibrel in the jaw.