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History That Hits

The Father of Rocketry Nobody Believed: Robert Goddard's First Launch (100th Anniversary)

March 16, 1926: a physics professor fires a homemade rocket from a frozen cabbage field in Auburn, Massachusetts. It flies for 2.5 seconds and reaches 41 feet. The New York Times had already called him ignorant. They wouldn't print a correction until the day after Apollo 11 launched — forty-nine years later. On the 100th anniversary of that first liquid-fueled rocket launch, this is the story of how one man's impossible dream became the foundation for the Saturn V, the Space Shuttle, SpaceX, and every rocket that has ever left Earth.