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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Mahatma Gandhi's face on 'Red Planet Mars'


Mahatma Gandhi has been spotted in an unlikely place – the surface of Mars. Italian space enthusiast Matteo Lanneo was scouring through images taken by Europe’s Mars Express probe and stumbled across a shot that, to some, looks like the profile of Gandhi.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mahatma Gandhi has been spotted in an unlikely place – the surface of Mars.
The U.K.’s Daily Mail believes so, as do the Indian newspapers that picked up the story. However, readers of U.K. tabloid the Sun would find that the image is actually of loudmouth cockney Alf Garnett, the fictional character played by Warren Mitchell in British sit-coms “Till Death do us Part” and “In Sickness and in Health,” which were broadcast from the 1960s through the ‘80s.
“GAWD Blimey! Legendary TV Loudmouth Alf Garnett puts in an unexpected appearance on Mars,” the Sun reports in typical style, while the Daily Mail goes with the headline: “It’s Mars-hatma Gandhi!” and claims that the outcrop on the Red planet bears “an uncanny resemblance to the father of the Indian nation.”

Screengrab from the Sun’s website
The Sun likened the image to fictional character Alf Garnett.
“The head appears to have a moustache and shaven head and prominent eyebrows, just like the political leader,” the Daily Mail continues, choosing to ignore that the “ear” is cauliflower, at best, the moustache belongs to a 19th century strongman and the “neck” is in desperate need of medical attention.
Sadly, neither report says what the discoverer Mr. Lanneo thought he saw. The odds are he recognized Gandhi, not the outspoken bigot Alf Garnett, whose global reach and legacy isn’t quite as strong as the Mahatma’s, even though his sit-coms do still reappear on British television from time to time.
The Gandhi-Garnett image is just the latest example of famous faces cropping up in strange places. Hardly a year goes by without a story of the Virgin Mary appearing in a potato salad orJesus Christ popping up in a Kit-Kat or on a chapatti. Even a house in the Welsh city of Swansea was said by some to look like Adolf Hitler, while there is a website devoted to cats that resemble the Fuhrer.
Personally, if I saw the Mars image anywhere on my body I’d scribble out a will and rush straight to hospital. But some folks are willing to pay a pretty penny for these apparitions. A Florida woman sold a decade-old cheese sandwich to a casino for $28,000 in 2004 after claiming that it bore the image of the Virgin Mary and had never gone moldy.
Mr. Lanneo will struggle to eBay his bit of the Red planet, but seeing Gandhi’s face up there probably beats seeing it in a Mars bar.
Do you think the image on Mars looks like Gandhi? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Follow Will Davies on Twitter @willmhdavies.

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