The United States planned to build a weapons system on the Moon to attack the Earth.
The plan, known as Project Horizon, was part of a 100-page document produced in 1959 before President Kennedy launched the US to the Lunar surface. It is not to be confused with the Dorking-based road maintenance project of the same name). Elements of the project have been public for decades, but new info was released to mark the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11.
The Dr Evil-style project would have also seen the US create a Moon-to-Earth surveillance system to "facilitate communications with and observation of the Earth".
Elements of that vision have since come true - the US does have satellites in near-permanent orbit around the Moon, and has successfully trialled laser-based communications with those spacecraft.
Needless to say the recommendations of the report were in the main ignored. The US did eventually launch itself to the Moon, successfully landing on its surface 45 years ago. It sent a total of 12 astronauts there over four years of exploration.
But since 1972 it has not been back to the Lunar surface, and several plans drawn up to build bases on the Moon have stalled in favour of continued expansion of the International Space Station, and remote exploration of other worlds.
There are plenty of other crazy conspiracies about the Moon that have turned out to not be true after all. Can you sort the truth from the fiction? The answers are below.
Here are the answers
1) True -- the US planned to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon in 1959.
2) True -- Nasa tested a laser which is capable of 622 megabits a second - faster in practice than most home broadband.
3) True
4) True
5) True -- in some opinions.
6) True -- though it was an unmanned probe.
7) True - on the equator, sometimes.