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| Poe's diagram of the model of the Victoria |
What an odd little tale, printed in
The New York Sun in 1844. According to the
Poe stories web site the short piece of speculative fiction appeared as if it was a news story rather than a tall tale. I don't suppose that Poe or his readers could have known that the temperature at 25,000 feet is in the region of -50 degrees Celcius. There's something of Jules Vernes in the gentleman characters but
Around The World in Eighty Days wouldn't be published for almost 30 years (in 1873). And the response of readers, turning up at the newspaper office brings to mind the reports of hysterical responses to Orson Welles's 1938 broadcast of
The War of the Worlds.
