All the creatures of Middle Earth, the men, the elves, and the hobbits alike, had gathered in the Vale of the Great Oak Tree to watch the hanging of JRR Tolkien. Everyone was eager to see the Author, who had subjected them to soggy melodrama past reasonable endurance, kicking in midair. Bilbo Baggins had brought the rope.
"Wait," said Gandalf, "it will be more official if we make the lynch rope one millionth of planet radius." By looking from a tall mountain, the Wizard had discovered that the radius of Middle World was 4000 miles, so with his spindly wizard legs he paced off 4 paces, exactly a millionth of the radius, along the rope. Frodo, who had learned how in the Boy Scouts, knotted the noose and, agile as a monkey, lashed the other end high in the friendly branches of the Oak.
When, to everyone's satisfaction, Tolkien was properly suspended, Gandalf gave the writhing Novelist a push and timed a full swing of the pendulum at one tenth of a minute.
"Tolkien," said the Wizard, "if you can tell us the escape velocity from this damned planet we will cut you down and let you go." The purple-faced Medievalist gestured for pen and paper, given which he promptly wrote down that the Middle World's circumference was 8000pi miles, some 25 thousand in fact. He then noted that the period of a satellite in low orbit would be a thousand times the pendulum period just measured, and thus 100 minutes. The speed in low orbit would therefore have to be 25 thousand divided by a hundred, or 250 miles a minute. Accordingly, escape speed from the planet's surface would be root-two times that or 350-some miles a minute: 360 just to be sure.
Some not terribly astute small animals cheered and threw their hats in the air. The Author was let down and then, at an appropriate launch date, catapulted into space by the Elves, at 360 miles a minute just to be sure.