Wan Hu

Wan Hu is the name attached to a legendary Chinese official said to have been the first person to attempt to use rockets to launch himself into the sky, an account first recorded in early twentieth century American publications with no confirmed earlier Chinese source. Some Chinese accounts identify him as a Ming dynasty official whose real name was Tao Chengdao, holding the title Wan Hu, and describe an attempt in which he had assistants ignite dozens of rockets mounted to a chair in order to achieve flight, an attempt said to have ended in his death around 1390. Historians of science, including Joseph Needham, have treated the story as dubious and possibly invented or embellished during a later period of Western fascination with Chinese technology, while others argue it may preserve a genuine oral tradition later transmitted through European missionary accounts. No contemporary Ming era document describing the attempt has been found. The story remains significant to transport and spaceflight history as an enduring popular symbol of an early, if unverified, human attempt at rocket propelled flight, commemorated by the International Astronomical Union naming a crater on the far side of the Moon after him in 1970.