Wednesday, September 19, 2012

WAN-HOOOOO!!!!!

What do ancient China, space exploration and the Darwin Awards have in common? 
One man, named Wan Hu (or Wan Hoo).  

This is a little-known bit of historical awesomeness that the world just needs to be more aware of. Even after getting my degree in History with an Asian emphasis (ie- studying Chinese history for 2 1/2 years at a university) I had never heard of Wan Hu until coming across a small captioned picture of him in my son's middle school astronomy textbook.  (Prentice Hall Science Explorer, 2005)  I read up on the story in Wikipedia, a 2003 CNN.com article, and a NASA site with a brief caption under his picture.   Here's what I found out:

According to legend, around 1500AD, during the Ming Dynasty, there lived a local government official named Wan Hu.  Wan was obsessed with the stars and wanted to "boldly go where no man [had] gone before". 

The Chinese had been using gunpowder for over 800 years.  They had already invented hand grenades, flame-throwers, land mines, signal flares, and had recently pioneered multi-stage rockets and rocket-bombs.  Kites had been in use for 2000 years in China already (since 500BC) and the Chinese had even achieved manned flight in these kites 1000 years earlier (although documented flight sans fatality had only been achieved 500 years earlier).  So, the idea of space travel was not such an unreasonable thought for an educated official.  His plan, however... 

Wan Hu decided to harness the great Chinese inventions of kites and rocket power to achieve lift-off and travel to the moon.  He had two kites and 47 of the largest-available rockets secured to his sturdy wicker chair, dressed in his finest official clothing, and prepared to make history as the first astronaut.  Forty-seven of his servants came forward with flaming torches, lit the fuses on the rockets, and took cover. 



Next came the "Big Bang" that ought to earn him the first-ever Darwin Award for a Chinese official. 

When the smoke cleared, there was no trace of Wan Hu or his wicker chair.  


So, my kids and I decided that "Wan-HOOOO" should be our term (or battle-cry) for anything that is really fun but really stupid - such as flying your lawn chair with helium balloons, or attaching a jet-engine to a car to see how fast you can make it go, or hand-feeding a large shark. 

WAN-HOOOO! 

1 comment:

  1. Haha love it! There's a Myth Busters episode about Wan Hu I'm sure you guys would enjoy.

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