Adventure holidays have proved to be enduringly popular in recent years. The temporary restriction on international travel at the beginning of the decade inspired many people to bring forward major bucket list plans such as iconic hikes, while the need to steer clear of crowds saw an increase in visits to off-the-beaten-track locations. Adventure featured …

In the late 1800s, celebrated French author Jules Verne published a pair of sci-fi novels predicting man’s journey to the Moon. They depicted a spacecraft being fired from a columbiad (a type of Civil War-era cannon) in Florida to the Moon, and subsequently splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. A century later, on the morning …