In 1865, four years before the United States transcontinental railroad was finished, a French novelist published a story about three men flying to the Moon.

The book was called From the Earth to the Moon. The subtitle gave the journey time. Ninety seven hours and twenty minutes.

The novelist was Jules Verne. He chose the launch site by physics, not imagination. Any spacecraft trying to reach the Moon, he wrote, would have to launch from between the equator and the 28th parallel, where the Earth spins fastest. He picked Stone Hill, Florida, just south of Tampa.

A hundred and four years later, NASA looked at the same band of latitudes. They chose Cape Canaveral, Florida. A hundred and twenty miles north of Stone Hill.

Verne built his spacecraft from a material that was rare and expensive in 1865. Aluminum. He named the cannon that fired it the Columbiad. He gave it a crew of three. The capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, where it was recovered by a ship of the United States Navy.

The Apollo 11 command module was an aluminum capsule. It was called Columbia. It carried three men. It splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, where it was recovered by a ship of the United States Navy.

Verne estimated the program would cost five and a half million dollars in 1865. Adjusted to 1969, that was twelve billion. The actual Apollo program cost fourteen.

After his crew came home, Neil Armstrong said in public that Jules Verne had written the trip first. A century before. From Florida. To the Pacific. Aboard the Columbia.

Verne never claimed to be a prophet. He had asked his cousin Henri Garcet, a Paris mathematician, to do the orbital calculations. He had read Newton. He had chosen the launch site by physics. The match with Apollo is what physics in 1865 could already see.

He died in 1905. He never saw a radio broadcast. He never saw a man leave the Earth.

The Earth left for the Moon in 1969, by the route he had drawn in 1865. Florida. Aluminum. Three men. Pacific Ocean. Columbia.

They knew. Subscribe.