Manipal Entrance Test 2020 English Paper

Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow by selecting the most appropriate option. No one knows when or by whom rockets were invented. In all probability the rocket was not suddenly invented but evolved gradually over a long period of time, perhaps in different parts of the world at the same time. Some historians of rocketry, notably Willy Ley, trace the development of rockets to the 13 th century China, a land noted in ancient times for its fire work display. In the year 1232 AD when the Mongols laid siege to the city of Kai-Feng Fu, the capital of Honan province, the Chinese defenders used weapons that were described as "arrows of flying fire". There is no explicit statement that these arrows were rockets, but some students have concluded that they were because the record does not mentioned bows or other means of shooting the arrows. In the same battle, we read, the defenders dropped from the walls of the city a kind of bomb described as "heaven-shaking thunder". From these meagre references some students have concluded that the Chinese, by the year 1232 had discovered gunpowder and had learned to use it to make explosive bombs as well as propulsive charges for rockets.