A Fife church minister first imagined space flight - beating Jules Verne

More than 150 years ago, a church minister from Monimail in Fife first suggested that rockets could fly to the moon and go faster in the vacuum of space - before Jules Verne

For generations of space enthusiasts, Jules Verne was the first person to imagine manned space flight. But it has now emerged that the science fiction writer was beaten to it, by an obscure Scottish church minister from a sleepy village in Fife.

An expert in the history of space exploration has discovered that Rev William Leitch, a Presbyterian minister from Monimail near Cupar, was the first to develop the idea that not only could rockets fly in space but could do so more quickly and smoothly outside Earth's atmosphere.