Claim Filed For All Land On The Moon By Americans

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 53, 14 February 1949, Page 4

Claim Filed For All Land On The Moon By Americans

Two young men in Pennsylvania recently made one of the strangest claims on record. They have filed a claim tp all the land on the Moon! Charles HOnhold and Robert Eaton, of course, have.never been to the moon j but they have made the claim seriously, pointing out that if one day the moon is “colonised” somebody will probably claim it. They have decided that, if possible, land on the moon should become American property. Their claim set Mr Julius Krug, Secretary of the Interior, a problem, but he finally decided to reject it for three reasons: that America has no sovereignty over the moon; that Congress has not yet passed a law “authorising receipt of, and action upon, claims to the Moon or other planets”; and that Federal homestead laws, in any case, require a claimant “to inspect the area sought in person gnd 'to submit an affidavit as to his per- , sonal familiarity with the character of the land applied for.” When the possibility of a landing on the moon by scientists in a space ship was discussed in France two years ago, one of them declared : “The first party of explorers to reach the Moon could plant a flag and claim all of it, for there is no water dividing the moon into continents.” To most people the whole business would seem to be so much moonshine.