Boriska: The Boy Who Said He Once Lived on Mars

On 12 March 2004, Pravda published a report about a Russian boy known as Boriska. He was about seven when he spoke at Medveditskaya Ridge, north of the Volgograd region. He said he had once lived on Mars, flown a spacecraft to Earth, and remembered a civilisation called Lemuria. He also said ancient Mars had a thick atmosphere and developed life, then a war caused a disaster that destroyed the atmosphere. Survivors moved into cities deep underground.

The account appeared before the public knew much about NASA’s newer Mars data. Later missions confirmed that Mars once had rivers, lakes, and a denser atmosphere; MAVEN measured how the solar wind strips particles from the planet’s upper atmosphere. For people who support Boriska, this is the starting point: a child with no specialist training described part of the geological history scientists were still reconstructing.