The moon is made of ice. That was the revolutionary message that came to Austrian weirdo Hans Horbiger in 1894. Not wanting to be seen as ridiculous, he embarked on some detailed looking and concluded that it was definitely made of ice, and the stars were also made of ice. He cunningly noted how shiny they were and frankly it's hard to reach any other kind of conclusion. After a few more years of thinking, and looking at the moon, Horbiger decided that the Earth definitely sucked the ice moons into orbit and they eventually collided - thus explaining the biblical flood and the disappearance of Atlantis. Then the earth is left moonless until it finds another ice moon to pull in. He'd certainly spent a lot of time working it all out. It even had a proper name: Glacial Cosmogeny or Welteislehre ( World Ice Theory ). Well done Hans.Who would believe this kind of thing? None other than a certain German chancellor named Adolf. Yes, Hitler was also convinced that the moon was made of ice and made it official Nazi policy to believe it. It was better, he thought, than believing the more advanced theories of Jewish scientists, or crazy sympathisers like Einstein. He also suggested that the rather chilly spell in the early 1940s was also the result of that darn icy moon. I suppose in context it was actually one of the less ridiculous beliefs held within the Third Reich, though a survey apparently suggested that even by the mid 1950s over a million people still believed in Glacial Cosmogeny. Just shows, scientists are often wrong and fascists, always.
