The Story of Robert H. Goddard
THE CLEAR AFTERNOON of October 19, 1899, outside Worcester, Massachusetts, burst with autumn color. Seventeen-year-old Robert “Bob” Goddard was scaling a homemade ladder to prune a spindly cherry tree. As his gaze shifted skyward, the possibilities of the coming twentieth century seemed to float in front of him.
While home ill with bronchitis, Bob had been reading newspaper installments of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. In this science fiction novel, Martians journey to Earth in steel cylinders shot from a giant space gun. How fantastic would it be to travel to the Martians’ world! Bob thought. What might a spaceship that could take humans to Mars look like? How would it work?
After climbing down from his perch, Bob kept on dreaming of space travel. “I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended,” he always remembered, “for existence at last seemed very purposive.”
Born on October 5, 1882, Bob had been fascinated by science since he was five years old, when he discovered that he could generate electric sparks by shuffling his feet on a rug. Learning that electrical power could be stored in a battery, Bob took apart an old-fashioned battery jar. Finding a zinc rod inside it, he waved the rod over his head while shuffling his feet outside, trying to produce enough electrical energy to jump a fence. Though this experiment failed, he was startled when his mother told him to be careful. “Sometime it might work,” she warned, “and then you’ll go sailing away and might not be able to come back.” As a teenager, Bob experimented with turning graphite—a form of carbon—into diamonds. Rather than making him rich, his tube of chemicals exploded, sending jagged pieces of broken glass flying.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2017 من Cricket Magazine for Kids.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2017 من Cricket Magazine for Kids.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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EACH TIME HELGA Estby looked over her shoulder, the big cat was there. Crossing Wyoming’s Red Desert on foot, in the dust and heat of August 1896, was tough.
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The Water Bucketre
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One rainy night, while alone in the castle library with her talking gargoyle, Marcus, Princess Audrey finds a book with the odd title Finding Angel. Meanwhile, in modern times, a girl named Angel is celebrating her thirteenth birthday.
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I LEAN OVER the side of the catamaran and peer into the crystal blue water. This is my last chance, I think.
The Bushwhackers
I CAN’T ABIDE living one more day in this pigpen!” I groaned and rolled out of bed to pull on my dress.
As American as Appleless Pie!
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The Man Who Built A Better Leg
THE CIVIL WAR was only a few weeks old when seven hundred and fifty Confederate recruits gathered in the fields around Philippi, Virginia. It was early June 1861, and as yet there had been no real battles. The men had eagerly volunteered, but most had no training as soldiers. Their only weapons were the ones they brought from home— old-fashioned flintlock muskets, cap and ball pistols, and a few shotguns.
