1 November

1932: On 1 November 1932, engineer Wernher von Braun was named head of the German liquid-fuel rocket programme.

Von Braun eventually went on to design the Saturn V rockets which took the United States Apollo missions to the Moon in the 1960s and early 1970s.

1923: On 1 November 1923, American Robert H. Goddard successfully operated a liquid oxygen and gasoline rocket motor on a testing frame, both fuel components being supplied by pumps installed on the rocket.

1919: On 1 November 1919, Sir Herman Bondi was born.

Bondi was an Austrian-born British mathematician and cosmologist who, with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold, formulated the ‘steady-state’ theory of the Universe in 1948.

Their theory addressed a crucial problem: "How do the stars continually recede without disappearing altogether?" Their explanation was that the Universe is ever-expanding, without a beginning and without an end. Further, they said, since the Universe must be expanding, new matter must be continually created in order to keep the density constant. Their theory was eclipsed in 1965, when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, giving convincing support to the ‘Big bang’ theory of creation now accepted.