It's [the moon] dead - dead! Vast extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow, or frozen carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere landslip seams and cracks and gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched this planet systematically with telescopes for over two hundred years. How much change do you think they have seen? None.

The First Men in the Moon, Chapter V (pp. 65-66), George Newnes, Ltd. 1901