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History’s First Astronaut
Who was the first-ever astronaut? Russia’s Yuri Gagarin or Neil Armstrong?
The answer may be a man named Wan Hu of the Ming Dynasty in China. He was the first in history to attempt to fly to space, the Moon, to be more specific. Four-hundred years before Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon and said the words “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, Wan Hu built a rocket and attempted to fly to the Moon.
Wan Hu was a regional official sometime in the 16th century, during the Ming Dynasty era. Not much is known about him, except that he was a very adventurous man who was bored with his life as a government official. The adventurous nature of Wan Hu compelled him to explore the unknown and make a name for himself.
However, to his disappointment, the Ming-era Chinese worldview was very narrow by today’s standards and it was widely believed that all of Earth was already conquered and inhabited. Disappointed, Wan Hu spent days gazing into the stars at night and pushing off his governmental works, until an idea struck him. Wan Hu thought…
