Wan Hu is Earth’s first astronaut

According to Chinese legend, an official named Wan Hu was the first to try to fly away from Earth on a rocket.

So goes the legend that the first astronaut in the world was Chinese.

Legends about the first Chinese astronaut vary – in some cases he is called Wan Hu, in others Wang Chu.

According to some reports, he lived 2000 years before Christ, according to others – in the 16th century.

Whatever the case, the basic story is this: Wang Hu was an important man and ordered to build himself an apparatus to fly to the moon.

The spacecraft was a chair to which 47 powder rockets were strapped.

Wang Hu sat down on the chair, his servants lit the rockets on fire, and the apparatus exploded.

When the smoke cleared, neither the chair nor the astronaut was on the “launch pad.”