The canals of Mars
A translation slip gave Mars its canal-building Martians
Giovanni Schiaparelli mapped a network of dark lines on Mars and called them canali, 'channels'. English readers took it as 'canals', something built, and for decades the public believed in Martian engineers. The lines turned out to be an optical illusion.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
An Arizona observatory was built to study Martian canals. Millionaire Percival Lowell founded it in 1894 to observe the Martian civilisation. There were no canals, but in 1930 the observatory discovered Pluto. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 16 years earlier
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 10 years earlier
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 8 years earlier
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — same year
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — 1 year earlier
Africa
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 8 years earlier
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — 2 years later
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 8 years later
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — 8 years later
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 9 years later
Asia
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 24 years earlier
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 9 years earlier
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — 1 year earlier
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 6 years later
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 8 years later
Americas
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — 10 years earlier
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — 8 years earlier
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 1 year earlier
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 2 years later
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — 11 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 16 years later
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 16 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 68)
- Karl Marx (aged 59)
- Queen Victoria (aged 58)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 56)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 49)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 43)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 37)
- Thomas Edison (aged 30)
- Vincent van Gogh (aged 24)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 21)