Wernher von Braun

Here's an excerpt that cracked me up, regarding a childhood incident in the life of Wernher von Braun:

The young von Braun was enthralled by explosives and fireworks, to the great chagrin of his father, who considered his son a juvenile delinquent. As a teenager, he strapped six skyrockets to a red toy wagon and set them off. The wagon traveled five blocks, streaming flames, before the rockets exploded, destroying the wagon, and von Braun was arrested.

For those who don't recognize the name, von Braun was a leading US rocket scientist during the early years of NASA; it's reasonable to suppose the moon shot wouldn't have happened until many years later if he had been working in another country- such as Russia. And where did he train?

Despite this inauspicious beginning, he went on to earn a PhD in physics in the late 1930s. Within two years he found himself heading Nazi Germany’s military rocket development program. He invented the V-2 ballistic missile, first launched on October 3, 1942. This would be the ancestor of practically every missile used today.

After Germany's defeat in 1945, von Braun and his entire team of rocket experts came to the US with all their plans and prototypes.

It was only in early high school that I began to understand enough history to more fully understand the humor in Tom Leher's take on the man. But from an early age, I loved the line in the song below, "'Once zee rrrockets are up, who cares where zey come down? Zat's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun."

I'm not able to get to the post I took the above quotes from at the moment (Google tells me the site appears to be down), so I'll stick in a link later. Followup: I just realized that the site may be down, but the URL ought to be valid when it comes back up...