Another World

I have a hard time getting excited about pictures of rocks in a flat desert beneath a beige sky, even if they are from Mars. Back in 1920, the usually staid New York Tribune had much more exciting news about the red planet: "Scientists, Agreeing Martians Are Super-Race, Believe That Planet May Be Signaling to Us." I bet that headline sold a few papers.

Martians weren't just hypothetical bacteria back then. They had "very large noses and ears and immense lung development,
because of the rarefied atmosphere," which gave some of them an odd resemblance to caricatures of Lyndon Johnson, as shown in the Trib's illustration here.

(via boing boing)