Zambia's Forgotten Space Program of 1962.

Back in 1962, a Zambian teacher vowed that his country would beat America as the first country to put a man on the moon, and then they would go on to Mars. Unfortunately, his dream never came to fruition. The Zambians worked hard though. His "astronauts" rolled down hills in barrels to get used to traveling through space. They practiced walking on their hands, as their leader - Edward Makuka Nkoloso - assured them that was the only way to get around on the moon. "My spacemen are ready, but we're having a few difficulties ... we are using our own firing system, derived from the catapult." Yet Nkoloso lamented that:

"I've had trouble with my space-men and space-women. They won't concentrate on space-flight; there's too much love-making when they should be studying the moon. Martha Mwamba, the seventeen-year-old girl who had been chosen to be the first coloured woman on Mars, has to feed her ten cats, who will be her companions on the long space flight."

But it all came to naught, because the United Nations wouldn't give him the $700 million he needed to fund the space program.