They told him it would never fly. Literally, the New York Times, the newspaper of record, heaped scorn on Robert Goddard in an editorial about one of his rockets. Goddard was stung by the criticisms, but would not take them to heart. “It is difficult to say what is impossible,” he would reply to naysayers, “for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.” Self-guided, he began early experiment with rocket propulsion via mixes of gunpowder, before moving on to the more practical liquid fuels.

On this day, March 17, in 1926 Robert Hutchins Goddard launched a small rocket from his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Massachussetts. Propelled by a liquid-oxygen and gasoline mix, the rocket rose 41 feet within several second, and crashed down into a nearby field.

Today, the farm and field are a golf course, but marking the exact spot where Goddard fired his rocket is a small monument to his accomplishment. Golfers on the “9th Fairway, between Tee and Green” of Pakachoag Golf Course might pause for a moment to pay their respects for the father of rocket aviation.