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It may be 40 more years until #StarTrek #FirstContactDay 🖖 but our collections contain a rich history of human interest in space travel, UFOs & extraterrestrial communication. There's lots to see in this 🧵, from a 17th century moon mission to a current Library/@NASA team-up! 
Advances in earthly science tend to boost curiosity about extraterrestrial matters. As such, on the heels of Galileo’s telescopic moon observations came Francis Godwin’s "The Man in the Moone" (1638), a tale of a man's space travel in a bird-powered craft. go.loc.gov/zzyq50NB8wV
As telescope quality improved & astronomers were able observe the geography of Mars, they took what they saw as evidence of civilizations. By the 1830s, many believed Mars & other planets were inhabited. Take a look at this page from an 1831 textbook. go.loc.gov/CwPQ50NB8wT
