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On July 20, 1969, at 10:56 PM, eastern time, television images of Neil Armstrong were broadcast world wide as he put his foot on the lunar surface. But there is far more to the program that represented mankind's first extra-terrestrial steps than that first one. And one mission is perhaps more forgotten than others, because of the coincidence of history.
One of the great questions of antiquity is what ancient knowledge might have been lost with the destruction of the famed Great Library of Alexandria. We can only guess at the answer, but the question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the library- what it was, where it was, why its was, and what happened to it.
In the US alone souvenir shops sold more than 21 billion dollars of merchandise in 2022. It is human nature to try and preserve memories, and one of the many ways we do that is to purchase keepsakes, mementos, or souvenirs - that remind us of where we’ve been. And evidence of that human instinct goes way back, well before anyone “exited through the gift shop”.