Henrique Alvim Corrêa's Martian Tripod Destroyed by Shell — War of the Worlds 1906

A towering Martian fighting-machine staggers mid-collapse as an artillery shell tears through its alien chassis, sending tentacles and debris spraying skyward in a cascade of radiating lines. Below, tiny human figures scatter or lie dead across a blasted landscape of shattered trees and scorched earth. The heat-ray beam still fires uselessly as the war machine tips toward oblivion — a rare moment of human triumph in H.G. Wells' apocalyptic Martian invasion, captured in Corrêa's hauntingly delicate pen-and-ink style.