A freind of mine posted this link which is an artical/post on the Official Google blog on Twitter. It is a vedeo showing Google Mars with an historical overlay on it showing the works of Giovanni Schiaparelli. This is to celebrate his 174th birthday – this guy observed Mars through a telescope and drew maps of mars – he made quiet alot of contributions to astronomy and I’m sure I’ve read some really interesting articles on him in Astronomy Now Magizine so I shall be attempting to hunt them out at some point to do a more indepth post about this.
The naming system for martian features that he came up with whilst creating these maps is what we still use today!
I am also making a note that next year will be the 175th birthday!