23rd August 2016
16 March 1926. The world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket lifts off at Auburn, Massachusetts, paving the way for an era of space flight and innovation. And the man behind the feat is the American engineer and founding father of modern rocketry Robert H. Goddard (1882–1945).
26th May 2016
Rocketgrams are mail delivered by firing crude rockets towards their destinations. Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith, an Indian aerospace engineer, launched the first rocketgram in the 1930s. In the ten-year span of his experiments he made around 270 launches. The first successful livestock dispatch was of a cock and a hen, Adam and Eve, across the Damodar River near Burnpur in West Bengal.
11th April 2016
The name ‘rocket’ comes from the Italian word rocchetta, a name of a small firecracker created by the Italian artificer Muratori in 1379. Rocchetta means ‘little fuse’.
4th April 2016
In 1792 the weapon suppliers of Tipu Sultan designed and successfully developed the first iron-cased rockets. These were used by Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan, rulers of the kingdom of Mysore, against the East India Company during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. The British then spread this technology around the world.