Wasn’t there a Russian astronomer that theorized about this? Velikovsky I believe. He suggested that we had near run-ins with both Mars and Venus in the past.
Or is this something different and he is still considered a crank?
The book was Worlds in Collision, written in about 1950 or so. A very interesting read, well researched and tying historical events to the possible cause of a close pass of the near earth-sized comet which was captured into an orbit and is now known as Venus.
Many of his theories were proven correct when the space program enabled exploration.