Melbourne slipped uneasily back into obscurity but the damage was done. Once more the rest of the world began to notice it existed. Traces of cosmopolitanism began to seep into the staid old lady’s veins and no amount of pulpit warnings, government restrictions and aristocratic disdain could keep it out.
  Nevertheless, in 1964, Melbourne was by no means equipped to cope with the invasion of Beatlemania.

​

The astronomer was perfectly stupefied. The four minutes had passed. Light was returning, the luminous corona had not been visible.
“What can be the matter?” asked Jasper Hobson.
“The matter,” exclaimed the astronomer. “why, the eclipse is not complete. It is not total for this part of the globe—do you understand me?—not total!”
“Then the almanacs must be wrong.”
“Wrong! Tell that to the marines, Mr. Hobson.”
“Well, then—” Hobson’s face clouded as he stopped.
“Then,” replied Black. “we are not on the 70th parallel.”
“What do you mean?” cried Mrs Barnett.
“We shall soon know,” said the astronomer, whose eyes flashed with anger and disappointment. “The sun will soon pass the meridian. Give me my sextant—quick, quick!”
One of the soldiers ran to the house and brought back the instrument.
Thomas Black then made his observation, and put down his calculations in his notebook.
“How was Cape Bathhurst situated when we took the latitude last year?” he asked.
“It was 70 deg. 44 min. 37 sec.,” Hobson replied.
“Well, sir, it is now 73 deg. 7 min. 20 sec. You see we are not under the 70th parallel after all.”
“Or rather, we are no longer there,” muttered Joseph Hobson.
A sudden revelation seemed to come upon his mind. All the phenomenon hitherto so inexplicable were now accounted for.
Cape Bathurst, since the arrival of the expedition, had drifted three degrees further north!
  Among Jules Verne’s early masterpieces is The Fur Country, often split wrongfully into two halves—The Sun in Eclipse and Through the Bering Strait. An international expedition to the north coast of Canada to observe a solar eclipse suddenly realises that the sun and stars are in the wrong position. An Arctic earthquake has caused the entire icy-bound peninsula on which they are camped to break off and go sailing through the Northwest Passage and eventually float into the Pacific Ocean. Its a battle to survive as their iceberg home grows smaller by the day, but by an ingenious method they slow the melt until they can be rescued. Another of Verne’s most brilliant ideas.