(FoxNews) – A bag of moon dust from NASA’s Apollo 11 mission – which a
woman bought for $995 in 2015 — sold for $1.8 million at a Sotheby’s auction
this week following an intense court battle.

The bag, filled with moon dust by astronaut Neil Armstrong during the first
manned mission to the moon in July 1969, had previously been misidentified
and mistakenly sold at an online government auction.

NASA’s attempt to retrieve the bag failed after a federal judge in December
ruled it legally belonged to a Chicago-area woman who bought it two years
ago.

The buyer in Tuesday’s auction declined to be identified. The pre-sale estimate
was $2 million to $4 million.

Pictured, astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July of 1969.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

The battle began on this day in 1861 at Manassas Junction, VA.
and the Confederates won the battle.

The "Monkey Trial" ended on this day in 1925 in Dayton, TN. John T. Scopes
was convicted and fined $100 for violating the state prohibition on teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. The conviction was later overturned on a legal technicality because the judge had set the fine instead of the jury.

John T. Scopes

That first war ended on this day in 1954.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)

Ernest Hemingway was an American modernist author whose most
famous works include The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms,
and For Whom the Bell Tolls. A Nobel Prize-winning author associated
with the "Lost Generation," Hemingway became known for both his
adventurous lifestyle and his eloquently sparse literary aesthetic.