the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli inflamed the world's imagination with his claim to have seen long, straight ...

posited that Mars had a series of canals running across the planet. In 1894, the public became excited by the idea too, after ...

In the 19th century, the idea of men on Mars ... Schiaparelli observed straight lines on Mars, which he called canali. This means channels, but it was wrongly translated into English as canals ...