Learn how the moon was viewed by those who lived 200 years ago
Does your grandmother understand technology or answer the remote when you ring the phone? If even today we realize the difficulty of people living with the modernity of everything, imagine how things were centuries ago!
There was a time when man thought the earth was boring, that right after the end of the ocean came a frightening free fall that led us to some sort of limbo. And the moon, which we know today is a beautiful natural satellite, without its own light, full of phases and craters, has been seen in a completely different way in the past, you know?
Complaint! There is life on the moon!
Boing Boing published a story about how the moon was viewed in 1836. People at that time believed there was life there. But we are not talking about a life similar to Earth, but a little more mythical, full of hairy, winged people, unicorns, and naked ladies who looked like insects.
The scenario described above looks more like a fantasy movie script, but believe me, that was the thinking of people who inhabited the earth for almost 200 years and historically this is not that long, right?
A taxi to the lunar station
The Smithsonian Institute of Image and Collection in Washington, DC, comments on a series of drawings from that era intended to announce the discovery of life on the moon. British astronomer Sir John Herschel had discovered life on the moon.
The supposed lunar life included the aforementioned winged men, who, by the illustrations, resemble batlike ones - would come the idea of creating Batman? -, and extravagant, Dantesque forms. The idea at that time was to create an expedition to the moon using a ship (!) That would be suspended by hydrogen balloons. That simple.
