Typo Tarnishes Irish Postal Service's Moon Landing Stamps

By Joseph Myers

Thanks to heteronyms, homographs, homonyms and homophones, English can prove a head-scratching language that leads to numerous typos. Who among us, for example, has typed “form” when meaning “from”? Well, it appears that Irish can be equally troublesome, especially when it comes to proofreading, as two stamps that commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing include the language’s word for “Irish” instead of “moon.”

An Post unveils space stamps to mark Apollo 11 anniversary https://t.co/56bwq7WgYF via @newstalkfm

— An Post (@Postvox) July 18, 2019

Currency and postage gaffes tend to be big news because of how often people use the products to go about their lives, leaving the guilty parties to offer embarrassing apologies. In this case, An Post, the state-owned provider of postal services in the Republic of Ireland, is saying, "Oops, we goofed," thanks to the commemoratives honoring Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, members of the crew that made that historic trip in 1969.

Hoping to have the stamps boast “50th anniversary of the first moon landing,” An Post instead printed “50th anniversary of the first Irish landing.” The mistake came down to the swapping of two letters, as the stamps should have included “gealach” but instead featured “gaelach.” The face-palm moment is not likely going to ascend to legendary status like other past miscues we've covered, but they are worth noting because of their role in further promoting the important historical event.

An Post had hoped to put forth the stamps to celebrate the aforementioned astronauts and fellow space travelers Cady Coleman and Eileen Collins, all of whom have Irish ancestry. While the ladies’ stamps escaped the typo ahead of their July 4 issuance, the dissemination of the gentlemen’s products is, on account of the “ea/ae” swap,” probably going to make collectors very happy.

An explanation of the matter from The Irish Times noted that An Post had made “one giant spelling error as it marks one small step for man.”

In terms of snarky comments, that one ranks up there with the best of them.