First to Land on a Comet?

This week the European Space Agency (ESA) announced they will choose from among five sites onComet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for theRosetta spacecraft’s robot laboratoryPhilae to land, as reported here, here, and here.

They claim this will be the first time a human-built spacecraft has landed on a comet.

I beg to differ.

I’m aware of an alternate universe very close to our own, a universe in which an actual manned—not robotic—landing has already occurred.

In 1897.

It’s all documented in my story,...