The Apollo 11 Tapes

NPR has a fascinating story about video footage shot on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission that was lost (possibly even destroyed) by NASA itself accidentally:

Lebar and others spent hours and hours in a vast government storage facility known as the Washington National Records Center, a place that Lebar compares to the giant warehouse at the end of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The search team combed through “racks of documents, tapes, all kinds of things from NASA and other agencies,” says Nafzger.

The search wasn’t limited to that one place — the searchers went everywhere from storage businesses to private homes. They pored over logbooks, memos and all kinds of 40-year-old handwritten records.

The story also includes the original broadcasted video that has been re-mastered for a better picture, but the clearest images seem to have been lost forever.