Smithsonian To Unveil New Exhibit Featuring FDR's Jetpack Chair

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum announced today that an exhibit featuring President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famous jet pack chair will open later this summer. Dr. Peter L. Jakab ,curator of the Air and Space Museum, announced the forthcoming exhibition in a gala affair attended by dignitaries and wealthy trustees of the museum.

"We are proud to announce that Roosevelt's rocket powered whirligig, long kept in a top secret bunker, will be open for public viewing by history lovers for the first time. God bless America"

For decades schoolchildren have looked up to FDR, the president who steadfastly led the United States during World War II, and have longed to see his fabled flying contraption that was so crucial in bringing the dreadful conflict to a swift end. The jet-pack-chair, which the 32nd president is said to have controlled with his mind, provided GIs with key air support during Operation Overlord. According to American historian Antony Beevor "had it not been for Fly Boy Franklin with his telepathically controlled interstellar flying-chair, the allies would have lost that day. Had he not been up there in the skies launching his laser-guided missiles on key targets and incinerating Wehrmacht foot soldiers with his exhaust flames, you'd be speaking German right now."

Indeed the rocket chair, long kept under wraps by Pentagon scientists, has become the stuff of legend. Adorned with a pinup of Hollywood Bombshell Rita Hayworth and decked out with the menacing slogan "this machine kills fascists," the chair, nicknamed "kraut killer," was the Nazis worst nightmare.

Whole battalions of German troops would surrender en masse to no avail at the mere sight of the chair: their pitiful screams drowned out by the throbbing of FDR's massive brain as he mercilessly launched salvo after salvo of his precision guided missiles at the helpless men.

While the public has long awaited an exhibition featuring the jetpack chair, Pentagon officials balked at the suggestion after FDR returned to his home planet in 1945. Over the course of 12 presidential administrations, generations of scientists have worked round the clock to try to divine the secrets of the machine. Just below the photo of Rita Hayworth are several blocks of inscrutable text in a language that is believed to have originated in the Antares nebula. Scores of the world's most talented linguists have poured over the writings with no success. Having spent a total of $13 trillion on decoding the language, the Defense Department abandoned the project altogether in favor of more promising projects like the F-35 Fighter Jet. At long last the chair is in a museum where it belongs.

At the gala Dr. Jakab raised his champagne glass in celebration. "I would like to propose a toast: to the chair! Even though a small amount of Tiberian gas still remains in the fuel canisters and even though we all know that this museum is haunted, I think we can agree that nothing could possibly go wrong!"

"Here, here!" The other guests shouted in unison as a string quartette hired for the occasion began to play ominous sounding chords.