Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen

NASA Perseverance Mars rover spots delightfully goofy rocks (is that a butt?)

 Behold the funniest Mars rocks the rover has found so far.

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Software engineer Kevin Gill spotted this brachiosaurus-shaped rock in images taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kevin Gill
This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.

NASA's Perseverance rover is on Mars to undertake serious science, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun with some of the weirder rocks the wheeled explorer has spotted since landing in February. 

There's a long history with Mars and pareidolia -- the human tendency to see familiar objects in random shapes. I once spent hours looking for "faces" in images from NASA's Curiosity rover, just for fun. Space fans have imaginatively seen rocks and formations that resemble a bone, a fish, blueberries and even a spoon.   

With a few flights of fancy and a willingness to be silly, you can find all sorts of entertaining shapes littered across the floor of the Jezero Crater. Here are some of the best so far.

'Brachiosaurus'

Software engineer Kevin Gill, a "data wrangler at NASA-JPL," has a long track record of processing Mars images for the enjoyment of space fans. He spotted an elegant rock snapped by the rover on April 15. 

"Awww, it looks like NASA Perseverance found a tiny fossilized brachiosaurus on Mars," Gill tweeted.

The small stone featured a long "neck," a tiny "head" and a big body that made it look like the famously large vegetation-munching dinosaur. To me, this unusual rock resembles No-Face from the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away.

'Butt rock'

Space writer Jason Major noticed a rump-shaped rock in the distance in a rover image from February. "Perseverance probably won't bother going to study it but I hope somebody files this one as 'butt rock,'" Major tweeted cheekily.

Perseverance got a clearer look at "butt rock" a  couple months later. And it still looks a bit like a behind.

NASA's Perseverance rover got a closer look at "butt rock" on April 22, 2021.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Much like we've seen all sorts of heart-shaped objects in places out in space, perhaps derriere-shaped stones will become hot targets for Perseverance's cameras.

'Odd' rock

The first widely famous rock from the mission dates to late March when the rover eyed a 6-inch-long pockmarked object that NASA described as "odd." Researchers speculated it might be a meteorite or a weathered chunk of bedrock.

NASA's Perseverance rover snapped a view of this odd rock on March 28. If you look closely just to the right of center, you can see a series of tiny marks where the rover's laser zapped it.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

With preceding NASA rovers as a model, we can look forward to more photos of entertaining, intriguing and downright funny Martian rocks as Perseverance makes its way through the crater. 

With other rovers having already spotted a spoon, a pancake, fruit and a "jelly doughnut," we could use a few more food items and table settings to make a complete pareidolia meal.

Follow CNET's 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.      

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NASA Mars helicopter snaps awe-inspiring, midair view of Perseverance

Ingenuity adds to its historic legacy with a marvelous image of the Perseverance rover on Mars.

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