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Some 45 years after tee off, a golf ball, believed to have been the very same ball Alan Shepard shanked on the Moon was found washed up along the coastline in Grays Harbor, WA. This ball is now on display at The Museum of Flight for a very limited time.

The commander of Apollo 14 wanted to do something special while on the moon. In late 1970, he contacted a local golf pro in Houston, who connected the head of a Wilson six-iron to the shaft of a piece of rock collecting equipment. Shepard then covered the club with a sock so it wouldn't be discovered.

Only a handful of people in NASA knew of Shepard's plan when, on February 6, 1971, after an extended excursion on the lunar surface, he pulled out the club, dropped two balls on the moon and proceeded to strike. He shanked the ball so hard that it left lunar orbit and entered a Trans-Earth trajectory. It's likely that ball simply kept orbiting the Earth in an unstable orbit until it finally collided with the atmosphere. Scientists are still a bit unclear about its exact time of re-entry.

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The ball will be on display in the main lobby this weekend only, April 1 and 2.