At 17, Robert Goddard, when he took refuge in his cherry tree near his home in Worcester, Massachusetts, imagined spaceships landing on Mars. When he came down from the tree, he was a different person: he would dedicate the rest of his life to building rockets and would celebrate Anniversary Day every year, October 19th, under his cherry tree. In 1938, the tree was uprooted. Goddard was living in New Mexico and wrote in his diary: “Cherry tree down—have to carry on alone.”
