(WYTV) — There are no dairy products on the moon–not yet, anyway.
So where did the expression “the moon is made of cheese,” or “green cheese” originate?
The earliest record comes from a Slavic fable back in medieval times in which a hungry wolf chases a fox, but the fox convinces the wolf that the moon’s reflection on a nearby pond is actually a block of cheese floating on the water. If the wolf drinks all the water, he’ll reach the tasty treat. The wolf drinks too much and bursts.
In 1546, we read the Proverbs of John Heywood, an English writer known for sayings and poems. Heywood gave us “the more, the merrier,” “a penny for your thoughts,” and “Rome was not built in a day.” And “the moon is made of green cheese.”
Green in this sense was not a color, but the fact that it hadn’t aged yet.
The English philosopher John Wilkins later wrote that anyone believing the moon is made of green cheese is a country peasant — in other words, gullible and ignorant.
Even NASA couldn’t resist. On April Fool’s Day 2002, the agency released an image with an expiration date printed on one of the moon’s craters.
