With a whopping 272 of them scattered across the city, London certainly isn’t lacking in the Tube station department. But only one of them is – quite literally – out of this world. And that, my friends, is Tooting Bec; a south London station that has a crater on Mars named after it. Yes, really.
Whilst the subject of life on Mars may still be up for debate, the topic of Tooting on Mars is indisputable. And in the year of Tooting Bec’s centenary; what better time to tell you all about it, hey?
The history of Tooting Bec station
Tooting Bec was originally named Trinity Road, and was built as part of the Northern Line’s Morden extension in 1926. It’s been proudly perched in rooting Tooting for almost 100 years, and still to this day boasts plenty of distinctive Charles Holden design details, with its stone facade, angled entrances, unique light fittings, and original tilework.
The station (like many others at the time) served as a deep-level subterranean shelter during WWII, and played a pivotal role in protecting local residents during the Blitz. But its most impressive claim to fame is the fact that Tooting Bec is the only London Tube station to have a namesake on a planet millions of miles away. Well, that we know of…
The Tooting impact crater on Mars
Back in 2004, a 17.4 mile wide crater was discovered on Mars by an astronomer named Pete Mouginis-Mark. Astronomical features of this type are usually named after their discoverers, and so in 2006, Pete decided to name the impact crater after his home town of Tooting.
The crater lies near an old river valley that supposedly reminded him of Tooting Bec. And when speaking to the BBC at the time, he said: “I thought my mum and brother would get a kick out of having their home town paired with a land form on Mars.” Who’d have thought it, hey?