The Visionary Voyager: 15 Fascinating Facts About Jules Verne

1. His Mentally Ill Nephew Shot Him in the Leg

In March 1886, while Jules Verne was walking home in Amiens, his 25-year-old nephew Gaston approached him and fired two shots with a pistol. The second bullet struck the author in his left shin, causing a severe injury that never properly healed. Gaston suffered from severe mental illness and paranoia, believing that shooting his famous uncle would draw attention to his perceived persecutors. Verne courageously refused to press charges against his nephew, who was subsequently committed to an asylum for the remainder of his life. The gunshot wound left the famed adventure writer with a permanent limp, forcing him to walk with a cane for his final nineteen years.

2. He Uncannily Predicted Details of the Apollo 11 Moon Mission

Published in 1865, Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon foresaw the twentieth-century space race with remarkable mathematical and logistical precision. He calculated that a lunar projectile should launch from Florida, located near the equator to maximize Earth’s rotational boost, just like NASA’s real-life Kennedy Space Center. Verne specified a three-man crew housed in a light aluminum capsule, matching the three astronauts who flew aboard Apollo 11 in 1969. Furthermore, he correctly estimated the launch velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravity, the cost adjusted for inflation, and the splashdown of the returning spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean. NASA officials later acknowledged the staggering overlap between Verne’s fictional narrative and actual aerospace engineering.

3. A Lost Futuristic Novel Was Found in a Safe Over a Century Later

In 1863, Verne penned a bleak speculative novel titled Paris in the Twentieth Century, set in the year 1960. His publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, rejected the manuscript, deeming its vision of the future far too dark, commercialized, and depressing for Victorian readers. Despondent, Verne locked the draft away in a heavy brass-bound safe, where it remained forgotten for more than 120 years. It was only in 1989 that his great-grandson managed to open the safe and discover the long-lost manuscript. When published in 1994, readers were astonished to find accurate predictions of gas-powered automobiles, glass skyscrapers, high-speed elevated trains, electric street lighting, and a global communications network reminiscent of the internet.

4. A Childhood Escape to Sea Became an Enduring Literary Legend

According to a famous biography written after his death, an eleven-year-old Verne secretly signed on as a cabin boy aboard the three-masted ship Coriolie. The story claimed he intended to sail to the West Indies to obtain a coral necklace for his beloved cousin Caroline Tronson. His frantic father supposedly caught up with the ship at the port of Paimboeuf and dragged the young boy home before it set sail. After receiving a severe punishment, the young Jules reportedly promised his mother that from then on, he would "travel only in his imagination." Although modern scholars suspect the tale was embellished by his early biographer, it remains a defining legend in the mythology surrounding his romantic adventurism.

5. He Is the Second Most Translated Author in Human History

According to UNESCO’s Index Translationum database, Jules Verne holds the title of the second most translated individual author in history. His vast body of work has been rendered into over 4,700 distinct foreign language translations across the globe. He trails only British mystery writer Agatha Christie, while consistently outpacing literary titans like William Shakespeare, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Dickens. His extraordinary international appeal lies in his ability to blend rigorous scientific enthusiasm with universally accessible adventure themes. Translators have kept his classics continuously in print across hundreds of languages since the mid-nineteenth century.

6. Journalist Nellie Bly Beat His Fictional 80-Day Record in Real Life

In November 1889, pioneering American investigative journalist Nellie Bly set out to turn Verne’s famous novel Around the World in Eighty Days into a real-world speed record. Traveling by steamship, train, and rickshaw, Bly completed her circumnavigation of the globe in just 72 days, six hours, and 11 minutes. During her whirlwind journey, she made a brief detour through Amiens, France, to meet an admiring Jules Verne and his wife, Honorine. The aging author enthusiastically cheered her on, though he privately doubted she could break his fictional protagonist’s record without taking a shortcut. Bly’s triumph proved that rapid global travel was no longer a fantasy, turning her into an international icon.

7. He Worked as a Paris Stockbroker to Support His Writing

Before establishing himself as a commercial author, Verne spent several years working on the bustling trading floor of the Paris Bourse as a stockbroker. He took the financial job in 1856 to earn a stable income after marrying Honorine de Viane, a young widow with two children. Although he found the chaotic financial market tedious and stressful, he forced himself to rise at five o'clock every morning to write plays and short stories before heading to the exchange. He routinely utilized his downtime between market transactions to research scientific journals and geography books. Verne finally abandoned financial trading in 1863 following the massive commercial success of his novel Five Weeks in a Balloon.

8. The U.S. Navy Named the First Nuclear Submarine After His Fictional Vessel

When the United States Navy constructed the world’s very first nuclear-powered submarine in the 1950s, they christened it the USS Nautilus. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the visionary father of the nuclear Navy, selected the name specifically to honor Captain Nemo’s futuristic submarine from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Verne’s fictional Nautilus, written in 1870, operated on advanced electrical power and could remain submerged almost indefinitely without needing to refuel. The real-life USS Nautilus achieved a similar technological milestone in 1958 when it became the first vessel to complete a submerged transit under the North Pole.

9. He Envisioned an Electric Stun Gun a Century Before the Taser

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Captain Nemo equips his crew with specialized underwater hunting rifles that utilize electric charges rather than gunpowder bullets. These weapons fired small glass capsules encased in steel and charged with high-voltage electricity, which instantly paralyzed ocean game or human intruders upon impact. Verne described the mechanism with remarkable technical detail, explaining how an electrical discharge could incapacitate a target without fatal mechanical trauma. Modern law enforcement devices like the taser were not developed until the 1970s, making Verne’s concept another astonishing example of his scientific foresight.

10. His Father Cut Him Off Financially for Abandoning Law for Literature

Verne’s father, Pierre Verne, was a prosperous attorney who fully expected his eldest son to inherit and run his lucrative legal practice in Nantes. Jules moved to Paris in 1848 to earn his law degree, successfully completing his studies while quietly spending his evenings immersed in the theatrical and literary scene. Upon passing his exams, Jules flatly refused his father's offer to take over the family firm, declaring that he was born to be a man of letters rather than a lawyer. Furious at his son's defiance, Pierre completely cut off his financial allowance, leaving the young writer to survive in cold Parisian garrets on meager bread rations and theatrical odd jobs.

11. He Wrote Grand Global Voyages While Rarely Leaving His Study

Despite earning a reputation as history's ultimate literary adventurer, Verne lived a quiet, sedentary life for most of his mature career. While he owned a few small yachts in his middle age and made short trips across Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, he spent his later decades confined to his home in Amiens. Surrounded by thousands of scientific journals, geography texts, maps, and index cards, he conducted exhaustive research to craft his exotic settings. He relied on meticulous note-taking and vivid imagination rather than personal exploration to construct his globetrotting adventures. He famously remarked that his desk was the only vehicle he needed to travel to the center of the Earth or the surface of the Moon.

12. Phileas Fogg Was Inspired by an Eccentric American Entrepreneur

The unflappable, clockwork-obsessed protagonist of Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg, was modeled on the real-life exploits of George Francis Train. Train was a flamboyant American merchant, railway promoter, and eccentric politician who undertook a publicized global tour in 1870. During his journey, Train was briefly imprisoned in France for supporting local revolutionaries, an incident that caught Verne’s attention in national newspapers. While Train was bombastic, boisterous, and erratic in stark contrast to Fogg’s calm British composure, his record-setting journey provided the blueprint for the story. Train was later deeply annoyed that Verne’s fictional character became more famous than he was.

13. Highbrow French Critics Originally Dismissed Him as a Children's Author

Throughout his lifetime, the elite French literary establishment largely sneered at Jules Verne, categorizing his works as mere commercial entertainment for children and young adults. Major literary circles and the prestigious Académie Française repeatedly ignored his applications for membership, viewing his science-heavy adventure novels as lacking artistic depth. It was not until decades after his death in 1905 that literary critics radically reassessed his legacy, recognizing his mastery of language and mythmaking. Modern surrealists, avant-garde writers, and cultural theorists like Roland Barthes praised Verne as a visionary genius who pioneered modern science fiction.

14. He Suffered from Debilitating Fits of Facial Paralysis

Beginning in his early twenties, Jules Verne suffered from recurring episodes of Bell’s palsy, a neurological condition that causes sudden weakness or paralysis in facial muscles. He experienced four major attacks during his life, each leaving one side of his face drooping and making eating and speaking painful and difficult. The attacks were often accompanied by agonizing earaches and intense facial nerve pain that left him bedridden for weeks at a time. Verne frequently blamed these health crises on severe stress, overwork, and mental exhaustion brought on by his grueling publishing deadlines. He underwent painful electrotherapy treatments in an attempt to restore full movement to his facial muscles.

15. A Lunar Crater on the Far Side of the Moon Is Named in His Honor

To commemorate his immense contribution to space travel mythology and scientific speculative fiction, astronomers officially named a prominent lunar crater after Jules Verne. Discovered through Soviet lunar probe imagery in 1959, the "Jules Verne" crater measures approximately 143 kilometers (89 miles) in diameter and is situated on the far side of the Moon. Appropriately, it lies immediately adjacent to a basaltic lunar plain designated as Mare Ingenii, which translates to the "Sea of Cleverness." This extraterrestrial tribute permanently links the French author’s name with the celestial body he helped millions of readers visit in their imaginations long before spaceflight became reality.