Even this week there's definitely a lack of publication of the Soviet successes. As in articles giving a history of Mars landings and omitting the first landing

Even this week there's definitely a lack of publication of the Soviet successes. As in articles giving a history of Mars landings and omitting the first landing, Mars3 from mention. Wording i've seen. "USA is the only country to successfully land on Mars". "Chinas Tiawan-1 will make china the second country to successfully land on Mars." etc. The wording is subtle and arguably accurate but the omission is obvious. Here's an exact example of this i just read: "If successful, China will become the second country, after the US, to land and operate a rover on the Martian surface." Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/10/22276153/china-reaches-mars-tianwen-1-probe https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/10/22276153/china-reaches-ma... The above is completely true. Whilst the Soviet Mars3 lander landed and it did transmit telemetry after landing its rover failed to deploy and since it was in a dust storm it didn't last long at all, it only lasted 20 seconds. So you can say limit your definition to exclude Mars3. Still if you're talking about the history of space missions to mars limiting the definition very precisely to exclude this is odd. It's a bit like if the USA landed a probe on Venus tomorrow that happened to transmit for more than an hour and then running headlines "NASAs probe is the first probe to land on Venus and transmit for more than an hour". It's not at all wrong. But geez that's a very interesting way to define things so that you don't have to say 'second'.