How’s that for a headline? It ran in the New York Times Sunday magazine on Aug. 27, 1911: Canals a thousand miles long and twenty miles wide are simply beyond our comprehension. Even though we are aware of the fact that … a rock which here weighs one hundred pounds would there only weigh thirty-eight pounds, engineering operations being in consequence less arduous than here, yet we can scarcely imagine the inhabitants of Mars capable of accomplishing this Herculean task within the short interval of two years. The Times was relying on Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a dying...