The Green Gables Inn goes to War

One of my very favourite War of the Worlds stories has to be that of the Green Gables Inn, and how a band of plucky regulars set out on the Halloween Eve of 1938 to battle the Martian Invaders. Henry Sears was just a youngster at the time, but listening to his radio that night, he was so worried that he took it downstairs for others to hear, rattling the drinkers so much that they took up their guns and headed off for Grover's Mill to fight the Martians. I'd made some efforts to find the Inn, and knew from one contact that it still existed but in a terrible state of repair, so I was delighted to receive a mail this week telling me that the Inn had been located and photographed. The full story can be found in the Newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking.

Astronauts land on Mars

After 8 months in space, 2 astronauts have walked on the surface of Mars. Well, I'd like to be writing that for real, but in fact it's a simulation running in Moscow, but it is true to say that the 2 astronauts and several other colleagues really have spent 8 months cooped up in a series of cramped chambers pretending to fly to Mars. It's all part of the Mars500 project, designed to test long duration missions. Full details and some pictures of the heroic astronauts on the "surface" can be found on the BBC website. Check back here in about the year 2030 and hopefully I can write that headline for real.