Ti lao shu

The rockets were made from sticks of bamboo, from bamboo trees just as in the image.

The ti lao shu were the very first known rockets to ever exist. They were hollowed-out sticks of bamboo with gunpowder jammed inside. They were made in ancient China in the 1200s, predating the Goddard-1, the first "modern" liquid-fueled rocket, by hundreds of years. Since they used gunpowder, they were also the first solid-fueled motors to exist.