Odd beliefs call for giant leap..

Moon landing WHILE many dismiss evolution, other widely held beliefs include the 1969 Apollo moon landing being a hoax.

Conspiracy theorists reckon NASA staged it to win the space race, saying details in the photos – like odd shadows and the US flag rippling despite there being no air or wind – reveal the deception.

Another bizarre idea is that NASA then replaced Professor Stephen Hawking with a lookalike because the scientist actually died in 1985.

The author of A Brief History of Time – published in 1988 – lived until March last year, when he was 76.

And some still believe The King, Elvis Presley, faked his own death in 1977. He has been “sighted” everywhere in places from Argentina and Hong Kong to playing a cameo role in 1990 film Home Alone. CHIMPLY DAFT Darwin’s theory is still doubted IF Charles Darwin were still around, it really would make him go ape.

Almost 160 years after he defied the ignorance of his time by publishing the theory of evolution, explaining where humanity comes from, around 31 per cent of us still do not believe it.

A poll to mark Darwin Day today found only 50 per cent are “certain” his theory of natural selection, set out in 1859’s On the Origin of Species, is correct.

Four in 10 did not realise Darwin BY RUKI SAYID said we share ancestors with apes and just 66 per cent of 16 to 29-year-olds said they were aware of his work, compared with 84 per cent of over-60s.

Some 29 per cent had no idea the naturalist was famous for the theory of evolution and 9 per cent thought he was behind the theory of relativity – published by physicist Albert Einstein decades after Darwin’s 1882 death.

An astonishing 7 per cent thought Darwin wrote Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code while 13 per cent confused him with Oliver Twist author Charles Dickens. Worringly, 9 per cent had never heard of him.

The study, commissioned by Puffin Books for the launch of a kids’ adaptation of On the Origin of Species, also found 12 per cent of us believe in divine creationism, rising to 17 per cent for under-29s. Sabina Radeva, the author and illustrator of the Darwin picture book, said: “Darwin’s radical theories caused a stir. I wanted to create a retelling of this hugely important book that I would have loved to read as a child but that I would still appreciate today as an adult.” The Natural History Museum said: “Evolution theory is accepted as fact by the scientific community, on a level with the theory of gravitation or the round-Earth theory.” Charles Darwin