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It has no formal name other than "The Moon" although it is occasionally called Luna (Latin for moon) to distinguish it from the generic "moon".
A 5,000 year old rock carving at Knowth, Ireland may represent the Moon, in which case it is the earliest depiction yet discovered.
In many prehistoric and ancient cultures, the Moon was thought to be a deity or other supernatural phenomenon. One of the first persons in the Western world to offer a scientific explanation for the Moon was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, who reasoned that the Sun and Moon were both giant spherical rocks, and that the latter reflected the light of the former. This novel idea was one cause for his imprisonment and eventual exile.
Monday gets its name from Mani (Old English Mona), the Germanic Moon god.
By the Middle Ages, before the invention of the telescope, more and more people began to recognize the Moon as a sphere, though they believed that it was "perfectly smooth".
In 1609, Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in his book Sidereus Nuncius and noted that it was not smooth but had craters. Later in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi drew a map of the Moon and gave many craters the names they still have today.
In 1835, the Great Moon Hoax (a series of six articles that appeared in the New York Sun beginning on August 25, 1835 about the supposed discovery of life on the Moon) fooled some people into thinking that there were exotic animals living on the Moon. Almost at the same time, however, astronomers Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler firmly established that the Moon has no bodies of water nor any appreciable atmosphere.
During the Nazi era in Germany, the Welteislehre theory, which claimed the Moon was made of solid ice, was promoted by Nazi leaders.
Though several flags of the United States have been symbolically planted on the moon, the U.S. government makes no claim to any part of the Moon's surface. The U.S. is party to the Outer Space Treaty, which places the Moon under the same jurisdiction as international waters (res communis). This treaty also restricts use of the Moon to peaceful purposes, explicitly banning weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear weapons) and military installations of any kind. A second treaty, the Moon Treaty, was proposed to restrict the exploitation of the Moon's resources by any single nation, but it has not been signed by any of the space-faring nations.
Several individuals have made claims to the Moon in whole or in part, though none of these claims are generally considered credible. One person sells one-acre plots on the Moon's surface, though it is clear these have no legal standing.
In astrology, the Moon is thought to be associated with a person's emotional make-up, unconscious habits, rhythms, memories, and moods. It is also associated with emotions in general, the mother, maternal instincts or the urge to nurture, the home, and the past. In Chinese astrology, it represents Yin (the darker element in Yin and Yang).
The "Man in the Moon" is a figure resembling a human face, perceived in the full Moon in some cultures. The figure is composed of large dark areas (the lunar maria, or seas) on the Moon's surface. The figure's eyes are the Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis, its nose is the Sinus Aestuum, and its open mouth is the Mare Nubium and Mare Cognitum.
Other silhouettes to be found in a full moon include a woman and a rabbit .
The words 'lunacy", "lunatic", and "loony" are derived from the latin word "Luna" because of the folk belief in the moon as a cause of periodic insanity.
There have been lots of studies over the years, some of which have purported to show that there really is such a thing as a "lunar effect," a theory that claims that criminal and violent activity increases during a full moon. For example, one study claimed that an unusual number of traffic accidents occurred during the evenings right around the full and new moons (Templer, Veleber, and Brooner, 1982). However, researchers showed that during the time period studied, a disproportionate number of full and new moons fell on weekends when traffic accidents are always higher. Another study of homicides in Dade County, Florida (Lieber and Sherin, 1972) claimed to have found there was an upsurge in killings in the 24 hours before and after the full moon. Other researchers, however, found that the Dade County researchers had used dubious statistical methods. When the figures were reevaluated using proper methods, the alleged pattern disappeared. Just to make sure about all this, a pair of admittedly skeptical scientists (Rotton and Kelly, 1985) did what they called a "meta-analysis" of 37 studies of the moon's effect on things like psychiatric admissions, suicides, crime, etc. They found that the moon accounted for no more than 3/100 of 1 percent of the monthly variation.
The moon has been the subject of many works of music, art, poetry and literature and the inspiration for countless others. It is a motif with a strong association to mystery, mysticism and romance.
Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon is the first novel about travel to the moon.
The moon has been an endless source of inspiration for musicians of all kinds: Ludwig Von Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Debussy's Au Clair de Lune ("By The Light of The Moon"), Rodgers and Hart's Blue Moon, Benny Goodman's Moonglow, Henry Mancini's Moon River, Creedance Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising, Van Morrison's Moondance, Neil Young's Harvest Moon, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and countless others.
Between 1969 and 1972, the U.S. Apollo program sent twelve men to land on the Moon, the first of whom were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in Apollo 11. The first men sent to the Moon were Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, in Apollo 8. Before and since that time, the Moon has been the target of numerous landing and orbiting space probes, starting with the Soviet Luna 1 in 1959.
