On this Day...

January 13

• In 1898, one of history’s most famous headlines appeared in the French newspaper L’Aurore. The novelist Emile Zola had taken up the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been wrongly imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of treason largely because he was Jewish. Believing Dreyfus innocent, Zola published an open letter to the French president denouncing the captain’s accusers and charging that it was they who were guilty of treason. In no time Zola was hauled into court on a charge of libel, and found guilty. Fleeing to England, he continued to fight the injustice with his pen. The case became a cause célèbre and finally, in 1906, Dreyfus was freed. But sadly, Zola didn’t live to see his victory – a victory that had been heralded by the two-word headline “J’accuse!” In 1920, a cruel article appeared in the “New York Times.” It heaped derision on the theories of Professor Robert Hutchings Goddard, who had publicly announced that a rocket could function in a vacuum. Though Goddard later became known as “the Father of Space Exploration,” the article’s author suggested that he was the master of scientific follies, and “seems only to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools!” Fortynine years later the bumptious Times writer got his comeuppance when Apollo II headed for the moon. The paper published a gentle apology which said, “It is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum. The Times regrets the error.” Unfortunately, by then Goddard had been dead for 24 years!