[subtitle: The incredible (and indeed untrue) story of President Taylor's APE]It’s 1849, and a Gold Rush is drawing thousands of American prospectors to California, which was snatched from Mexico only a year earlier. The lay of the land is still poorly surveyed, the risks and resources of the terrain as yet largely unknown.So US President Zachary Taylor initiates a top secret government programme to speed-map the last piece in the puzzle of America’s Manifest Destiny...Predating the launch of Sputnik by over a century, President Taylor’s task force, consisting of civil engineers and frontiersmen, constructs a rocket in the Californian wilderness,...