After Apollo 11, Richard Nixon had NASA make 250 commemorative plaques, each holding about four rice-sized specks of moon dust mounted next to a flag that had flown to the moon and back. In 1970, one went to Cyprus, along with all 135 other countries, all 50 US states, and the UN.
A second gift followed the Apollo 17 mission: a 1.14-gram fragment of lunar basalt nicknamed the "Goodwill Rock," sealed in acrylic and sent to the same 135 countries in 1973. Cyprus's Apollo 17 rock never actually reached the government. It was being held at the US embassy in Nicosia when a 1974 coup and Turkish invasion hit the island, and American staff evacuated without it.
The display vanished. It resurfaced years later on the black market, in the hands of the son of a former US diplomat. NASA's Office of Inspector General finally recovered it in 2010 and prepared to re-gift it. Cyprus's original Apollo 11 moon-dust display, the one from 1970, is still missing — nobody knows where it is.
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