When Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969, everyone back on Earth heard the following crackle over their televisions and radios:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
But since "man" in this context (without a "the" or an "a") means all human beings, his sentence really says: "That's one small step for everybody, and one giant leap for everybody."
It's certainly not what the Apollo 11 commander intended. More important, he later insisted it's not what he said. When Armstrong got back home and saw the mission transcript (as well as some newspaper and magazine coverage of his adventure), he told reporters that he had been misquoted.
NASA concluded the "a" got lost in atmospheric static, the official record was changed and many news organizations ran a correction, including the New York Times on page 20 of its July 31, 1969, edition. After pointing out that Armstrong had requested the revision, the paper embraced the extra word without qualification: "Inserting the omitted article makes a slight but significant change in the meaning of Mr. Armstrong's words, which should read: 'That's one small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.'"
Wait a minute. Small step, giant step? Is this right? Nope. It turns out that while publishing a five-paragraph correction outlining why an "a" was being added to a line that will be cited for generations, the Times turned "giant leap" into "giant step" by mistake. A slight stumble, to some. An astronomical bungle, to others.
Meanwhile, many people continue to say and write "man" not "a man" when quoting Armstrong, either because of habit or because that's what their ears hear when the tape is played. Several big-name reference books, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, have settled for square brackets:
"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
