It was believed by Ancient Hindus that the world was a sphere and rested on the back of four elephants, which stood on a turtle.

A meteor has only destroyed one satellite, which was the European Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.

In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered.

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