(In 1903, the Times declared that flying machines were a waste of time, just a week before the Wright brothers successfully flew their airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1920, the Times criticized rocket scientist Robert Goddard, declaring his work nonsense because rockets cannot move in a vacuum. Forty-nine years later, when Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon, the Times, to its credit, ran the retraction: “It is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum. The Times regrets the error.”)
