Moon rock display from U.S. back at National Museum of History

Taipei, March 11 (CNA) A display of a lunar sample that the late United States President Richard Nixon gifted to Taiwan in 1969 has returned to the National Museum of History after being away for decades, it said Monday.

The wooden case display, containing four moon rock fragments encased inside a piece of acrylic lucite semi-sphere, was first exhibited at the museum in Taipei in 1970, one year after Nixon gave it to Taiwan.

The display and moon soil samples that came with it were then relocated to Academia Sinica's Institute of Physics for safekeeping, before being given to Taichung's National Museum of Natural Science in 1994.

Those samples have returned to the Taipei museum and are now part of a show marking its reopening on Feb. 21 after a nearly six-year renovation. The show will run through April 28.

In the display, the lunar specimens are mounted above a flag of the Republic of China, Taiwan's legal name, which was flown to the moon and back on the Apollo 11 mission manned by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

It also features two plaques, one of which reads: "Presented to the people of Republic of China by Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America."

The other says: "This Flag of your nation was carried to the Moon and back by Apollo 11 and this fragment of the Moon's surface was brought to earth by the crew of that first manned lunar landing."

Aside from the lunar samples sent to Taiwan, several other displays were gifted as shows of goodwill from Nixon to countries friendly to the U.S.

Moon soil samples were also sent to all 50 U.S. states and its territories.