Long before Steven Spielberg made it into a movie and Tom Cruise starred in it, the War of the Worlds was influencing the greatest minds of our time: Robert H.Goddard, inspired by the book, invented both the liquid-fuelled rocket and multistage rocket, which resulted in the Apollo 11 Moon landing 71 years later.
H.G. Wells wrote this incredible story between 1895 and 1897 and it is said to be one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race.
"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us".
