Communications satellite Telstar 1 was launched atop a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the
first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images,
and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2
launched May 7, 1963. Telstar 1 and 2, though no longer
functional ,still orbit the Earth today.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

Buster (Joseph Frank) Keaton
(October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966)

1926…Filmed in Oregon

MIKE GRACIA

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie
(July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967)

Folk singer Woody Guthrie died of complications
of Huntington’s disease.

MIKE GRACIA

On this day, Pvt. Eddie Slovik became the first American
soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion
and the only one who suffered such a fate during World
War II.

The Soviet Union inaugurated the “Space Age” with its launch
of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. The spacecraft,
named Sputnik after the Russian word for “satellite,” 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 
its elliptical orbit had an  at 18,000 miles an hour. It transmitted
radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by
amateur radio operators. Those in the United States with access
to such equipment tuned in and listened in awe as the beeping
Soviet spacecraft passed over America several times a day.

In January 1958, Sputnik’s orbit deteriorated, as expected, and
the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere.