Today -100: January 13, 1920: Whatever happened to pulling a sword out of a stone?

In an editorial entitled “A Severe Strain on Credulity,” the NYT calls bullshit on Prof. Robert Goddard’s claim to have invented a rocket that could operate in space because how could its forward motion continue in the vacuum of space? “To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that.” Goddard, “with his ‘chair’ in Clark College... does not know the relation of action and reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

The NYT will issue a correction to that editorial in its July 17, 1969 edition: “Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.” I can’t get a functional link, but it’s on page 43, the same page as an article by Isaac Asimov explaining that spacecraft maneuver like a squid.

The US will pull the last of its forces out of Siberia. They’ll help the remaining anti-Bolshevik Czech soldiers evacuate, and then they’re outta there and Japan can protect the trans-Siberian railroad itself.

The Monarchist Party in Hungary wants, as the name suggests, a king. They’re hoping a rich American will buy the position, paying off the country’s debts. None of the Habsburgs has enough money.

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