Irish moon landing stamp spells 'moon' wrong Published duration 23 July 2019

image copyright An Post image caption The postal service apologised for the spelling error

The Republic of Ireland's postal service has apologised for spelling "the moon" wrong in Irish on its new commemorative stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing.

The postal service, known as An Post, launched the stamps last week.

Four astronauts with Irish ancestry are featured on the stamps.

The Irish word for moon is "gealach". But the stamp spelled "gaelach", which means being Gaelic, Irish or relating to the Scottish Highlands.

Instead of reading "The 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing", it now reads "50th Anniversary of the First Landing on the Irish".

The mistake was spotted on social media in recent days.

"While the original Irish text was correct, the transposition of letters in a later draft was not picked up during final proofing, ahead of the printing and release of the stamps on July 4th last," An Post said.

"During the design process for the recent Space Exploration stamps, the letters 'a' and 'e' were transposed in the Irish language title on two of the four stamps."

image copyright An Post image caption Cady Coleman is one of four astronauts featured on the stamps

An Post has said that it has made arrangements to ensure that such errors will not happen again.

Retired Colonel, US Air Force and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman launched the stamps.

She is one of four astronauts featured on the stamps, along with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Eileen Collins.

Related Topics Republic of Ireland