Moon-rock dealers have a strange affinity for Denny's

Lowering the Bar has a two-part series on a pair of US fed moon-rock busts; one involving a Honduran colonel, both involving Denny's restaurants, and both involving a moon rock. It's the fast-food/extraterrestrial contraband caper coincidence of the century!

In 1994, a man who was in Honduras on business "learned from a friend that a retired colonel from the Honduran military was seeking to sell a moon rock," which he said he had received "as a gift after a coup d'etat sometime around 1973." Despite the fact that this gift presumably had great sentimental value, the colonel was "quite anxious to sell it." Since there's nothing remotely suspicious about this kind of offer, and after he learned that a few specks of lunar dust had recently sold at auction for $500,000, the man returned to Honduras the next year and arranged to buy the item.
So far, this is just your run-of-the-mill buy-a-moon-rock-from-a-retired-Honduran-military-officer transaction, but here it gets a little weird. The seller arranged to have someone bring the moon rock (and the plaque on which it was mounted) to Miami for the exchange. As the reader pointed out to me, "the meeting took place at a Denny's restaurant near the airport." (Emphasis added.)

Feds Seize Alleged Moon Rock in California

Denny's Lunar Connection?

(Image: Fake Moon Rock, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from lumachrome's photostream; Old Denny's sign, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from cmartin82's photostream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Anonymous

http://storiesandnovels.com/moon-rock
Ugly Canuck

Here’s a link to a song about moon rocks.
It is called “Moon Rocks”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR7TWHfogAY
Caroline

Reading this after the Isaac Asimov letter above, I can only think of his short story “The Singing Bell.” Moon rocks and crimeâ€¦too bad that story doesn’t have a Denny’s involved.
Anonymous

so…I’m not allowed to sell my legitimately acquired moon rock?
what the hell? its mine dammit! and it has no real value to society, it can’t be used for industrial or medicinal purposes…it isn’t even pretty. It’s just a mildly irradiated lump of aluminum, iron and other random junk.

Just kidding.
webmonkees

Reminds me of the Rocky & Bullwinkle Upsadasium story arc. Complete with the little space guys walking around a Denny’s.
Antinous / Moderator

Back when I was in extreme politics, Denny’s is exactly the sort of place that we would have held a secret meeting. Wearing disguises, no less!
- Mister44
  
  What is extreme politics? Do you vote using a half-pipe, or maybe repel from a helicopter? ;o)
  
  Also – they are obviously there for the space themed Moon Over My Hammy.
Antinous / Moderator

I was in one of the above-ground splinter groups of the WUO.
- abstract_reg
  
  This calls for story-time!
- fnc
  
  So you were in the Weather Aboveground?
  
  Were the other splinters always counting on you guys to, pool your resources?
  
  Yeah, there’s probably a better one but that’s all I got on a Friday afternoon.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Splinters are noted for being sharp and trying to get under your skin. Pooling resources would be as likely as the Rome Pope and the Avignon Pope getting together for drinks.
Mister44

re: “But the U.S. did give away moon-rock fragments (on plaques) to all U.S. states and most foreign countries in the 1970s…”

IIRC, a Missouri senator who recently retired found his moon rock on a plaque in a stack of papers in his office.
irksome

Denny’s seems to be frequented by alien space creatures; where’s the mystery?
Anonymous

Denny’s is NOT fast food! Formulatic, institutional food, yes… fast? Um, no. McDonalds? Yup – fast. Denny’s? More than once I’ve had to wait over 30 min for my order… (oh, well – at lest they are open at 3am on a holiday… everyplace else I’d be waiting ~28 hours for my order! lol)
gradv

Their is a diner in New York I used to frequent called the Moon rock diner that has a rock in a glass case but I don’t think its an actual moon rock. Good French Onion Soup if I remember correctly.
Anonymous

“Here on the moon, our weekends are so advanced, they encompass the entire week.” – Ignignokt