Idealogian

Rocket Science

While I was away, I came across this gem of objective reporting by CNN:

Of course, as any space historian knows, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space.

His 1961 flight aboard a Soviet Vostok space capsule, catapulted the former air force pilot into the history books and set alarm bells ringing in the Western world that the final frontier was about to turn a very communist shade of red.

But was he really the first?

Several centuries earlier -- legend says about 1500 AD, sometime around the middle of the Ming Dynasty -- a Chinese stargazer named Wan Hu dreamed of going where no man had gone before and set out to turn that dream into space age reality.

...

Wan's pioneering spacecraft was built around a sturdy chair, two kites and 47 of the largest gunpowder-filled rockets he could lay his hands on.

Come the launch day, Wan dressed himself in his imperial finery, strapped himself in the chair and called upon his 47 servants, each armed with a flaming torch, to light the 47 fuses.

Their job done, the servants speedily retreated to a safe distance ... and waited.

What came next, the legend goes, was an enormous bang.

When the smoke eventually cleared, Wan and his chair were nowhere to be seen.

Whether Wan actually made it or not has never been made clear.

The prognosis does seem a little doubtful.

CNN seems to be adopting FOX News's creed of "We Report, You Decide." Personally, though I'm no rocket scientist, I'd have trouble writing that article without making heavy use of the word "smithereens."