MIKE GRACIA

Mount Rushmore (Six Grandfathers) before construction,
c. 1905.

On October 4, 1927, sculpting began on the face of Mount
Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota.

It would take another 12 years for the granite images of four
of America’s most revered presidents—George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt
to be completed.

The monument was the brainchild of a South Dakota historian
named Doane Robinson, who was looking for a way to attract
more tourists to his state.

American sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum
(1867 – 1941)

The Soviet Union inaugurated the “Space Age” with its launch
of , the world’s first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957.

The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the Russian word for
“fellow traveler,” was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time
from the Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic.

Sputnik had a diameter of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds
and circled Earth once every hour and 36 minutes. Traveling
at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an apogee
(farthest point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest
point) of 143 miles.