Word: canali
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (an uncle of the present-day Paris couturiere) reported actually observing canali linking dark areas on Mars. Although the Italian word can simply mean channels or grooves, it was promptly translated into English as canals, which suggested that they were artificially made. That inspired an erstwhile American diplomat named Percival Lowell (of the Boston Lowells) to take up astronomy and establish an observatory near dry, cloudless Flagstaff, Ariz., principally to study Mars. Lowell spotted hundreds of "canals" on the Martian surface and contributed the theory that they were the work of an advanced civilization. Belief...