Ongoing History Daily: 30 Seconds to Mars facts
Jared Lato is a 10th grade dropout who moved west to start a career in music. That didn’t work out as expected because instead of getting music gigs, he ended up as an actor. He was in a bunch of different movies including Fight Club with Brad Pitt, American Psycho with Christian Bale, and Girl, Interrupted with Angelina Jolie.
But the music jones never went away and in 1998 he formed 30 Seconds to Mars with his drummer brother, Shannon, and the band became a going thing.
The name requires a little explanation. It comes from a rare manuscript by a Harvard professor entitled Argus Apocraphex that places human evolution on a timeline extending through all of history. From this perspective, the human race is just 30 seconds away from going to Mars. It’s a metaphor for the future, says Leto.