Oct 4 1957
Sputnik

~ The Sputnik crisis was the American reaction to the success of the Sputnik program.

~ It was a key Cold War event that began on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite.

~The launch of Sputnik I and the failure of its first two Project Vanguard launch attempts rattled the American public; President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to it as the “Sputnik Crisis”.

~Although Sputnik was itself harmless, its orbiting scared the people of the US