From a recent post on Adam Curtis’ BBC blog, a recollection of a British man who convinced many in the 1950s that he had a special connection to the good people of Mars:

“To celebrate today’s successful landing on Mars I thought I would show a film of a man who claimed to have got to Mars a long time ago. He did this back in the late 1950s by communicating telepathically with the beings who inhabited the Red Planet. He also claimed that his mother went there on a UFO. And what’s more the BBC took him very seriously.

He was called George King. He was a London taxi driver who back in 1956 had a strange experience.

He was washing the dishes when he heard a voice which said

“Prepare yourself. You are about to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.“

• At the 10:50 mark. King “contacts” our planetary neighbors: