The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines more than a half million words and it took more than seventy years to research and write the original “twelve tombstone-size volumes.” It is the gold standard of the English language.

On August 14, 1879, Scottish polymath James Murray was given the go-ahead by the Philological Society of England to begin the work of tracing the history of every single word in the English language and providing a definition faithful to its meaning. As the editor of the OED, he had the task of finding all the words as used in classical and standard written works in English. His historical starting point was the year 1150 AD.

Murray was a “self-educated country boy” from the Scottish Borders village of Denholm. He had to leave school at fourteen for lack of funds, but he continued learning on his own, with a special interest in etymology — “He was captivated by words and strange languages.”

Murray mastered Spanish, French, Catalan, Italian and Latin and, “to a lesser degree”, Portuguese, Vaudois, and Provençal, as well as other various dialects. He also acquired a working knowledge of Gaelic, Dutch, German, Danish, Slavonic and Russian. He knew Hebrew and Syriac well enough to sight read the Old Testament and picked up to a lesser degree Coptic, Phoenician and Arabic. He taught school and worked in a bank as an administrator in London, but his real passion was language.

By 1879, at the age of forty-two, James Murray began his real life’s work creating the Oxford English Dictionary. All eleven of his children lived to maturity and they, his wife, and eventually, grandchildren all helped in the project. He was permitted to use an iron shed on the property of the school where he taught, which he had outfitted with a thousand pigeon-holed rack to hold the quotations slips for the words.

Before long, the “scriptorium” was ready and the project was begun. Through the Philological Society he issued “An Appeal to the English-Speaking and English-Reading Public” in Great Britain, America and the British Colonies, asking for a thousand readers for the next three years to supply him with good quotations, thus determining how various English words were used over the centuries. They were to avoid Bible Concordances, Shakespeare, and Edmund Burke — sources already combed.

Dictionary slips and their sorting became a major part of life for the Murray family. People from all over the world sent in slips with the desired information. Several sub-editors and the children sorted through them and into the pigeon holes they went. One of Murray’s sons provided 27,000 quotations on his own, according to the introduction in the first volume.

The entire story is amazing — the perseverance, erudition and dedication of Murray became legendary, as did some of the characters that sent in quotes. One of the best, most erudite and apparently brilliant contributors turned out to be a murderer from America, locked up in a prison for the criminally insane in England! (As recounted in “The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester).

When William Chester Minor heard about the project, he heavily got involved with it. At that point in his life, the former American army surgeon was a patient at Broadmoor (an asylum). William had murdered a stranger named George Merrett in 1872 due to paranoia. The assailant thought that his victim had broken into his room. The court ruled that William was not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was sent to the psychiatric facility in Crowthorne, Berkshire.

In fact, William got a pension for his military service and was not adjudged to be dangerous. Therefore, he had access to comfortable housing and a plethora of books at the facility. This is why it is not surprising that he became one of the biggest contributors to the dictionary. He sent in more than 10,000 entries! It is true that the widowed Mrs. Merrett used to visit him and bring him books on his list. Even though Winchester’s writing suggests that they could have had an affair, the author did say he was unsure about this facet of the surgeon’s life.

Winchester further said this about the man— “Minor concentrated very hard, and some synapse(s) in his brain presumably fired in such a way as to eliminate his symptoms of schizophrenia.” All this time, James had no idea about William’s past. However, when he finally learned the truth, their relationship was unaffected. The lexicographer even described the “madman” as “a fine Christian gentleman, the same as myself.”

However, in 1902, William’s paranoia became worse. He had delusions wherein he was being abducted every night and was made to go as far as Istanbul to commit sexual assaults on children. Therefore, he cut off his own penis. By 1910, James campaigned for William’s release as well. Winston Churchill was the home secretary then and ordered that the patient be deported back to America.

There, William was admitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington D.C. (which is where his schizophrenia was diagnosed). He passed away in 1920 in Hartford, Connecticut. James had passed away in 1915 due to pleurisy. Up until that point, however, he continued to work hard on the dictionary come hell or high water. The year before his death, he was awarded an Oxford honorary doctorate. Moreover, despite being knighted for his efforts in 1908, James continued to be a relative outsider at the university.

After reading all the quotations sent in for a particular word, Murray would write the “concise, scholarly, accurate, and lovingly elegant definition for which the Dictionary is well known.” The task was enormously difficult but for thirty-five years Murray stuck to it till the day of his death.

The dictionary was completed after the two passed away, however, their contributions to the book cannot be ignored. Did you know that in the end, all the information was compiled in 10 volumes? There were 414,825 words that had been defined, and 1,827,306 citations were used to illustrate their meanings.

The magnificent story of this singular Christian lexicographer was finally told by Murray’s granddaughter K.M. Elizabeth Murray in “Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary,” (1977).

Words have meaning, but when a culture redefines the fixed understanding of words, demagogues take advantage of the uncertainty and chaos that results, to change the culture itself. We must be wary of the malleable ways that enemies of the original intent of words, deconstruct meaning, to the destruction of morality and truth.

Did you know that the book “The Professor and the Madman” was made into a movie with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn? The script was adapted from Simon Winchester’s book called ‘The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words.’ (It was, however, renamed ‘The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary’ for the audiences in America and Canada).

CHRISTMAS CARDS -The tradition of sending Christmas cards originated in the mid-1800s when a few people began to design handmade cards to send to family and friends. A man named John Calcott Horsley is credited as being the first to actually print Christmas cards. The card depicted a family enjoying the holiday, with scenes of people performing acts of charity. The card was inscribed: “Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to You.” Some of the other cards of the era were rather bizarre!!!

CHRISTMAS GIFT! –

A greeting used on Christmas morning, with the first person saying it traditionally receiving a gift. The custom, which has been traced back to as early as 1844, is no longer observed but ‘Christmas gift!’, which used to be a far more popular Christmas greeting than ‘Merry Christmas!’, is still heard among older people.”

CHRISTMAS PICKLE – Pickle ornaments were considered a special decoration by many families in Germany where the fir tree was decorated on Christmas Eve. It was always the last ornament to be hung on the Christmas tree, with the parents hiding it in the green boughs among the other ornaments. When the children were allowed to view the tree they would begin gleefully searching for the pickle ornament. The children knew that whoever first found that special ornament would receive an extra little gift left by St. Nicholas for the most observant child.

EPIPHANY – January 6 is known in western Christian tradition as Epiphany. It goes by other names in various church traditions. In Hispanic and Latin culture, as well as some places in Europe, it is known as Three Kings’ Day. Because of differences in church calendars, mainly between the Eastern Orthodox and the western Catholic and Protestant traditions, both Christmas and Epiphany have been observed at different times in the past.

Epiphany is the climax of the Christmas Season and the Twelve Days of Christmas, which are counted from December 25th until January 5th. The day before Epiphany is the twelfth day of Christmas, and is sometimes called Twelfth Night, an occasion for feasting in some cultures. The term epiphany means to show” or “to make known” or even “to reveal.” In Western churches, it remembers the coming of the wise men bringing gifts to visit the Christ child, who by so doing “reveal” Jesus to the world as Lord and King.

GOD SPEED THE PLOUGH; PLOUGH MONDAY – God speed the plough, ‘a wish for success or prosperity,’ was originally a phrase in a 15th-century song sung by ploughmen on Plough Monday; the first Monday after the Twelfth Day, which is the end of the Christmas holidays, when farm laborers returned to the plough, soliciting ‘plough money’ to spend in celebration.

HARD CANDY CHRISTMAS – A bleak Christmas — one where the family is so low on money that everyone gets hard candy for Christmas instead of gifts. The phrase is the title of a song written by Carol Hall and sung by Dolly Parton: “Lord it’s like a hard candy Christmas.I’m barely getting through tomorrow.But still I won’t let Sorrow bring me way down.I’ll be fine and dandy.

MERRY CHRISTMAS – England of the Anglo-Saxon period and the Middle Ages was not a very happy place to be, let alone ‘merrie.’ So why the phrase “Merrie Christmas” indicating revelry and joyous spirits, as if England were one perpetual Christmastime? The answer is that the word ‘merrie’ originally meant merely ‘pleasing and delightful,’ not bubbling over with festive spirits, as it does today.

The same earlier meaning is found in the famous expression, ‘the merry month of May.'” Note: In “A Royal Duty,” Paul Burrell said the Queen preferred “Happy Christmas” because she believed “Merry Christmas” implies drunkenness.

SANTA CLAUS – Today, people around the world are familiar with the popularized depiction of Santa Claus: a chubby old gnome with a snow-colored beard, eight tiny reindeer, and an army of freckle-faced elves who leap at his beck and call.

Though commonly thought of as an American folk legend, Santa Claus owes most of his existence to old religious customs that came to this country with immigrants from Europe. Interwoven in our holiday tradition are the traditions of Spain, Germany, Italy and, above all, the Dutch Netherlands, where one of the clearest connections to the Santa tradition can be found.

Before becoming known in America as Santa Claus, this magical gift bearer was commonly referred to as “Sinter Claes” or “Sinterklass,” a Dutch language corruption of both the name and the religious title of Saint Nicholas, a fourth century bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church. And as Dutch tradition tells it, Sinterklass doesn’t travel by sled or live at the North Pole. He also doesn’t dress up in a red velvet suit trimmed with faux polar bear fur, or manage a year-round sweatshop staffed by toy-making elves.

Making a list and checking it twice to keep an accurate record of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice throughout the year is a monumental task, even for a magical old dude like Sinterklass. So assisting him with his gift-giving enterprise is Zwarte Piet (literally “Black Peter”), a Moorish youth with an old school feathered cap on his head and 24-karat “bling” in his earlobes.

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XMAS – “The X abbreviation of ‘Xmas’ for ‘Christmas’ is neither modern nor disrespectful. The notion that it is a new and vulgar representation of the word ‘Christmas’ seems to stem from the erroneous belief that the letter ‘X’ is used to stand for the word ‘Christ’ because of its resemblance to a cross, or that the abbreviation was deliberately concocted “to take the ‘Christ’ out of Christmas.” Actually, this usage is nearly as old as Christianity itself, and its origins lie in the fact that the first letter in the Greek word for ‘Christ’ is ‘chi,’ and the Greek letter ‘chi’ is represented by a symbol similar to the letter ‘X’ in the modern Roman alphabet.

Hence ‘Xmas’ is indeed perfectly legitimate abbreviation for the word ‘Christmas’ (just as ‘Xian’ is also sometimes used as an abbreviation of the word ‘Christian’). None of this means that Christians (and others) aren’t justified in feeling slighted when people write ‘Xmas’ rather than ‘Christmas,’ but the point is that the abbreviation was not created specifically for the purpose of demeaning Christ, Christians, Christianity, or Christmas — it’s a very old artifact of a very different language.

SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS – American retailer H. Gordon Selfridge (1856-1947) coined this expression ” __ shopping days until Christmas” while working for Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago. Later he coined the slogan “the customer is always right” when he opened Selfridge’s in London.

Marshall Field & Company gained notoriety for a number of unique promotions and features, like the Great Tree, which was a part of the store’s Christmas celebrations. In late fall, the phrase “looking ahead to the holidays” appeared in ads, with a full Christmas promotion following after Thanksgiving. “The Store of the Christmas Spirit,” “A Gift from Field’s Means More,” and “Christmas isn’t Christmas without a day at Marshall Field & Company” were advertising lines used to promote the store during the holidays.

Families lined up to eat under the Great Tree, visit “Cozy Cloud Cottage” and admire elaborate window displays, telling the story of “Uncle Mistletoe” and “Freddy Fieldmouse” which were creations of the store’s promotion department. Notably, one of the store’s windows displayed a beautiful crêche for Christmas, in addition to the commercial promotions that were popular along State Street.

If you or a loved one has ever served in our nation’s military, you know that November 11 is far more than just a day off of work or school. Veterans Day, the nationally recognized holiday often confused with Memorial Day, pays tribute to all who have served in America’s Armed Forces.

Although Memorial Day also commemorates the sacrifices of our country’s service members, it is a much older holiday established in 1868 and celebrated on the last Monday in May. It pays special tribute to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country, commemorating military members who have died while serving. Veteran’s Day has a different significance.

The Short History of Veterans Day

Originally called “Armistice Day,” Veterans Day was intended to serve as a time that would remind nations to always strive for peaceful relationships. Over the decades, the date took on new significance as more worldwide conflicts erupted into war. The twists and turns in the holiday’s history include:

November 11, 1918– The Allied Nations and Germany agree to put an end to World War I with an armistice on “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.”

June 28, 1919 – WWI officially ends with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in France.

November 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson proclaims November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. Celebrations include parades and public gatherings as well as a brief cessation of business activities beginning at 11:00 a.m.

May 13, 1938 – An Act is approved in the United States that designates November 11 an annual legal holiday known as “Armistice Day.” At this time, the day is intended to honor World War I veterans.

June 1, 1954 – In the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, the 83rd Congress amends the Act of 1938 and replaces the word “Armistice” with “Veterans.” This allows November 11 to honor all veterans. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the legislation.

October 8, 1954 – President Eisenhower issues the first “Veterans Day Proclamation”

June 28, 1968 – The Uniforms Holiday Bill assigns the fourth Monday of October as Veterans Day to make it one of four three-day weekends for federal employees. Many states disapprove and continue to celebrate the holiday on November 11.

October 25, 1971 – The first Veterans Day under the new law is observed, but not without widespread resistance and confusion.

September 20, 1975 – President Gerald R. Ford signs Public Law 94-97 to return the annual observance of Veterans Day to November 11, beginning in 1978.

If November 11 falls on a Saturday or Sunday, we celebrate the holiday on the previous Friday or Monday. This policy honors the intentions of the Uniforms Holiday Bill while also respecting Americans who feel strongly about the holiday’s significance.

The Veterans Day National Ceremony commences precisely at 11:00 a.m. every November 11th at Arlington National Cemetery. A wreath is laid at the tome of the Unknowns, and celebrations continue inside the Memorial Ampitheater to thank and honor all who have served in the United States Armed Forces.

Veterans Day holds great historical and patriotic value for many in our country, and by marking the date annually, we reinforce our national values of duty, honor, selflessness, civic responsibility, and passion for our country.

The homess Marine who received an honorable burial from his fellow Marines

Lance Corporal Andrew Mauney, a former infantryman with Camp Lejeune’s 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, died in January 2015 at the age of 53. He was from Virginia and served three years in the Marines before being honorably discharged in 1983.

At the time of his death, he was homeless on the streets of Wilmington and without family. No one claimed his body, but one family, the Thompsons, took him in like one of their own. When he died, the family said they did all they could to give Mauney a proper burial, but his body wasn’t allowed to be released to them as they weren’t next of kin.

After all paths had been exhausted by The Missing in America Project to find Mauney’s relatives, it was decided that he would be laid to rest by his brothers in arms. That’s because once a Marine, always a Marine, and for veterans and active duty Marines, the term “unclaimed” is unacceptable.

“He’s our brother,” said Retired Marine Bill Holsclaw. “We don’t know him by face, we don’t know him by name, we don’t know him by actions, but we know one thing…we’ve walked in his boots and he’s walked in ours.” Mauney was laid to rest with full military honors in early November 2015.

The veteran who took an Honor Flight almost 50 years after serving in Vietnam

Jerry Snyder was 20 in 1966 when he entered the war. He lost two classmates who were close friends, four men from his unit were killed and he was significantly wounded six months into his tour. He then returned home to slurs and insults. Now at 69, Snyder was about to receive the long overdue gratitude and appreciation for his service to his country that was missing 49 years earlier.

At the Springfield-Branson National Airport, Synder and his daughter, Stephanie McKinney, were joined by 74 other war veterans and their guardians to take a journey to Washington, D.C. on one of 132 established hubs in the Honor Flight Network. (The Honor Flight gives priority to World War II, Korean, Vietnam, and terminally ill veterans who are flown to view their memorials at no cost.)

Escorted by police officers on all four sides of their charter buses, Jerry’s group began its journey at the World War II Memorial. Stops would also include the Korean War Memorial, Marine Corps Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. But the one Jerry and Stephanie were most anticipating was the Vietnam War Memorial. As her dad approached the structure, Stephanie said his demeanor changed.

“We got up to the wall, and I saw a totally different person,” she said. “He had this resolve, squared his shoulders back, and his pace sped up.” “I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s a humbling experience,” Jerry said. “Everyone says you get closure, but if you’ve been to Vietnam and seen all of that, you don’t ever really get closure.”

The volunteers who helped a WWII widow fix up her house

Eighty-three-year-old Normena Welcome is amazed that people who don’t know her are helping make her life easier, just because she’s the widow of a World War II veteran. “She’s lives alone,” said Rob Demerski, a department manager at Home Depot in Greenfield, Massachusetts. “We were all concerned with her well being when we heard about her.”

A few months ago, Welcome attended a presentation at South Deerfield Senior Center by Upper Pioneer Valley Veterans Services. After that presentation, she mentioned to Sue Corey, program assistant at the senior center, that she desperately needed a raised toilet seat—she has problems with mobility—and wondered if UPVVS might be able to help.

Corey contacted Mark Fitzpatrick, a service officer with the Veterans Agency, and they checked out her home. They soon realized she needed more help than initially she let on. The house hadn’t been updated in four decades, so 25 volunteers, many of whom are local Home Depot employees and members of VetNet, a veteran-based, community-centered nonprofit, gathered for two days to clean and update her property.

Normena was married to Percy Welcome, one of seven brothers from Charlemont who were drafted at the same time during World War II. They all returned safely, she said. Her husband died in 1993. “This was as much for Percy as it was for Normena,” said Fitzpatrick.

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Veterans Personal Stories

Find out about veterans who are living productive lives with visual impairment or blindness.

Veterans Personal Stories

Born in 1799, Mary Anning — the dirt-poor woman said to have inspired the tongue-twister “She sells seashells by the seashore” — would spend her entire life uncovering and piecing together the fossils of one never-before-seen monster after another: organisms that had been hidden away for nearly 200 million years in the cliffs up and down England’s southern coastline.

In short, she provided raw material to the scientists — all male — that would be instrumental in forming their evolutionary theories. Stephen Jay Gould later remarked that Anning is “probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology” yet Anning’s place in history happened quite by accident.

By birth, Anning never should have become an influential fossil hunter and geologist. She was marginalized not only by her family’s poverty but also by her sex, her regional dialect, and her nearly complete lack of schooling. But she enjoyed one natural advantage: the very good fortune of having been born in exactly the right place at the right time, alongside some of the most geologically unstable coastline in the world; it was — and still is — a place permeated with fossils.

After her father died in 1810, young Mary’s family was in dire financial straits. In order to put food on her table, she was forced to run the shore’s gauntlet of high tides and landslides to hunt for curiosities that she could sell to seafaring tourists. If she hadn’t, her family very well could have starved.

Her first discovery, made in 1811 when she was only 12 years old, was of the fossil of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile about four feet in length with flippers like a dolphin and a chest like a lizard. At first people thought it must be a crocodile. In time, though, the specimen attracted massive crowds to museums in London, where many soon realized the skeleton was of a creature never before seen.

The strange fossils found along England’s southern shoreline had baffled the locals for as long as anyone could remember. They came in all forms and sizes — including what later were determined to be bivalves, ammonites, belemnites, and brachiopods — and sometimes even the fragments of giant critters never heard of before.

Her discovery of a nearly intact long-necked plesiosaur (Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus) in 1823 was so incredible that even the celebrated French anatomist Georges Cuvier did not believe it could be valid. It was only after British geologist William Conybeare defended Anning’s find — and verified that the neck did indeed boast at least 35 vertebrae — did Cuvier admit he was wrong. Eventually he pronounced Anning’s fossil a major discovery.

As Anning aged, and began working alongside Britain’s clique of male geologists — most of them Anglican clergymen — there were countless attempts to use biblical stories to explain the new knowledge about the natural world that resulted from her fossil discoveries. For example, Anning’s friend and associate William Buckland — the well-known English geologist and first professor of geology at Oxford — believed that the fossils found at high altitudes proved that a great flood had once covered the planet, just like the Flood described in the Bible.

Anning’s views on the flood and the disparate theories of the male scientists of her era are not known. But in 1833, she was visited by a tourist, the Reverend Henry Rawlins, and his six–year-old son, Frank. Rawlins believed that God created the world within a week, but Anning described to young Frank how the fossils purchased by his father had been found by her at all different levels in the cliffs, explaining that this meant the creatures possibly had been created and had lived at different times. According to Frank’s journals, his father refused to discuss the issue after they left Anning’s home.

One can only imagine how frightening it must have been for Anning to find the fragments of these exotic creatures — with their bat-like wings, snake-like necks, and big, bulging eye sockets — and wonder if perhaps the live versions were not about to fly out of the sky or come up out of the sea to terrorize her.

Anning tried to reconcile what she was unearthing with her belief in God’s omnipotence, a belief she apparently held until her death from breast cancer at the age of 47. Some of her letters to friends suggest that she grew to accept that there had been a progression of living things. A few years before she died, she remarked that — from what she had seen of the fossil world — there is a “connection of analogy between the Creatures of the former and present World.” From most accounts, it seems she continued to believe in God throughout her life, but that she also came to accept that evolution was part of God’s plan. Toward the end of her life, she copied into her journals many poems and passages laced with religious overtones.

At the Natural History Museum in London, as well as a small museum in Lyme Regis, Anning is recognized as having laid the groundwork for the theory of evolution, not to mention nearly two centuries of discoveries in the still evolving worlds of paleontology and geology. Today thousands of people continue to go hunting for fossils along England’s so-called Jurassic coast — a 95-mile stretch of shoreline declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2001. And, to this day, real and startling discoveries are still being made, such as the skeleton of a 195-million–year-old Scelidosaurus, the earliest of the armored dinosaurs, in Anning’s hometown of Lyme Regis a few years ago.

With over 700 species of dinosaurs already identified and named, reminders of the prehistoric past just keep on surfacing, thrilling paleontologists. But there are plenty of people who are still unsettled by the signs of the completely different world that must have existed on earth before humans arrived — even if they also are able to marvel at the possibilities. It is most likely a feeling that — nearly two centuries ago — Anning would have shared.

Written by: Shelley Emling

Shall we harken back to 1879, the year of Edison’s light bulb patent? He liked to demonstrate the magic of his new creation and entice investors with it every chance that he got. His bulbs always garnered widespread excitement with plenty of “Oohs” and “Ahhs.” That Christmas was no different, when he decorated his Menlo Park lab with his new lights, bringing spectators from near and far to see the winter magic. Inside or out, nothing adds more of a magical accent to the Holidays than bright, colorful and soothing lights.

Before electric Christmas lights, families would use candles to light up their Christmas trees. This practice was often dangerous and led to many home fires. Edward H. Johnson put the very first string of electric Christmas tree lights together in 1882. Johnson, Edison’s friend and partner in the Edison’s Illumination Company, hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and wound them around his Christmas tree. Not only was the tree illuminated with electricity, it also revolved on a base!

Christmas lights were not mass-produced until 1902, when General Electric, a company founded by Edison in the 1880’s, brought the holiday lights to select consumers. The lights were quite expensive and not available to the mass market until a few decades later. Advertisements that boasted a safer and odorless way to decorate for the holidays stimulated sales for the lights.

To this day, a large Christmas tree shines bright in the Thomas Edison’s Glenmont mansion in New Jersey every Holiday Season, which is now decorated by park rangers.

Mrs. Edison’s touch was everywhere during the Holidays, with her special Christmas trees set up in the conservatory for her house workers to enjoy. A favorite was the Swedish candle box tree. Many decorations were lovingly placed around the house…and of course a formal printed menu for the big dinner she held every year for family and friends, usually totaling 30 people! That and her husband’s Christmas lights made it all the more memorable.

Though the Apollo lunar modules were built for the sole purpose of landing two men on the surface of the Moon, their usefulness didn’t end after ascending from the lunar surface. While on the moon, the astronauts placed seismic censors and NASA used the spent spacecraft for science, directing these modules for controlled crashed into the Moon. These crashes caused moonquakes, and scientists measured the vibrations moving through the Moon and found it rings like a bell.

The real goal of the seismic experiments was to figure out the Moon’s internal structure. Measuring how long the reverberations last, how powerful they are, and how big the waves get can reveal what the Moon is made of. Remote seismic stations were instrumental in this investigation, and they were deployed as part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages that astronauts set up on the Moon on Apollos 12, 14, 15, and 16; different versions were deployed on Apollos 11 and 17.

From when they were first set up to when they were remotely shut down in 1977, these ALSEPs recorded all kinds of seismic activity. The data was sent back to receiving stations on Earth where the signal was magnified by 10 million so scientists could interpret the signal.

But something interesting happened on Apollo 12. After Pete Conrad and Al Bean landed at the Ocean of Storms on November 14, 1969, they left the lunar surface 142 hours into the flight. Eight hours later, they were reunited with Dick Gordon in the command module and sent their spent lunar module back to the Moon. It impacted about 40 miles away from the Apollo 12 landing site with the force of one ton of TNT. The resulting shockwave built up and peaked in just eight minutes. Then it took an hour to fully dissipate.

Something similar happened on Apollo 13. The S-IVB impacted the Moon 85 miles from Apollo 12’s ALSEP — CMP Jack Swigert joked at the time that it was the only thing on that mission to go right. It hit with the force of 11 and a half tons of TNT. This translated to a seismic impact peaked after seven minute with shockwaves 30 times greater and four times longer than those from Apollo 12’s LM impact.

The vibrations from these two impacts lasted longer than scientists expected, far longer than any equivalent vibrations last on Earth. It was almost as if the Moon was ringing like a bell. This strange result forced scientists to think differently about the Moon and its composition.

It turns out that these impacts were characteristic of one of four types of moonquakes scientists studied from ALSEP data. Some moonquakes originate deep below the surface because of lunar tides, some are thermal quakes caused by the Sun thawing the frozen surface at the start of a new lunar day, and others are caused by impacting meteors. The fourth kind of moonquake is a shallow moonquake occurring roughly a couple of tens of miles below the surface. The lunar module and S-IVB both produced this kind of vibration, and these are the most violent types of moonquakes.

Between 1972 and 1977, scientists recorded 28 shallow moonquakes registering as high as 5.5 on the Richter scale. On Earth, that will move heavy furniture and crack plaster, but the vibrations usually die down in a matter of minutes.

It all comes down to water. There’s moisture in the materials that makes up our planet, expanding their structure. As energy from an earthquake moves through our planet, that damp material acts like a sponge, absorbing the energy of the waves and ultimately deadening their effects. But the Moon is dry, cool, and rigid, more like a solid rock than a sponge. So even if a moonquake is less intense, there’s nothing to deaden the vibrations. They just go back and forth through the body until the solid stone eventually stops them. The “ringing bell” is the shock waves reverberating through that stone.