Word: samosata
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Long before the invention of the rocket, man dreamed of hoisting sail and traveling through space in wind-blown ships. In The True History, a tale written in the 2nd century A.D. by the satirist and onetime lawyer, Lucian of Samosata, a ship with a 50-man crew is caught in an Atlantic storm, carried aloft and sent, sail billowing, on a journey to the moon. Later storytellers launched ships with sails on even more fanciful space trips. But none of these fictional voyages was as remarkable as the mission now being planned for NASA by scientists at Pasadena...
...largely past its BEM (bug-eyed monster) and little-green-menace stage, science fiction can look fondly at its own beginnings, and Amis writes knowledgeably of Lucian of Samosata. The Greek writer's True History is an early account of a space voyage (the ship is whirled to the moon by a waterspout), but though fictional it is hardly scientific, even considering the state of science in the 2nd century A.D. Claims of other ancestors are unsurprising: Swift, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne. Until about 1940, BEMs kept a many-tentacled grip on the medium, but then came...
...economic problems he withdrew with a dignified shake of the head into his divine majesty, convinced that if serious difficulties arose his inner voice would at once show him the right way." And to those who think Germans are happy, Author Feuchtwanger has this to say: "A stranger visiting Samosata or Edessa would never have thought that the country was in a state of unrest. He would have had the impression that the people were quite satisfied with Nero's rule and quite happy under...
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