The Canals of Mars
From an observatory in Arizona, an astronomer drew hundreds of straight lines across Mars, and believed they were canals built by a dying civilisation.
What was reported
In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli drew a network of straight lines on Mars, which he called canali, 'channels'. In English, the word became 'canals', which implied someone had built them.
The American businessman and astronomer Percival Lowell built an observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894 to study them. He mapped hundreds of canals, and wrote books arguing that Martians had built them to carry water from the polar caps across a drying planet.
Explanations offered
Other astronomers with large telescopes saw no canals. They were an optical illusion: the eye tends to join faint, scattered markings into lines. In 1965, NASA's Mariner 4 sent back the first close-up pictures of Mars, showing craters and no canals. Lowell Observatory later helped discover Pluto.
- When
- 1877–1965
- Where
- Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
- Witnesses
- Astronomers looking through telescopes
- Status
- Never existed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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