The U.S. State Department angrily accused the Soviet Union of
shooting down an unarmed T-39 Sabreliner aircraft of the United
States Air Force (similar to above) while on a training mission
over Erfurt, East Germany, by a MiG-19 jet fighter of the Soviet
Air Force. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were killed in the
incident.

According to the U.S. military, the jet became disoriented by a
violent storm that led the plane to veer nearly 100 miles off
course.

The Soviet attack on the plane provoked angry protests from
the Department of State and various congressional leaders,
including Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who charged that the
Soviets had intentionally downed the plane “to gain the
offensive” in the aggressive Cold War maneuvering.

For their part, the Soviets refused to accept U.S. protests and
responded that they had “all grounds to believe that this was
not an error or mistake…It was a clear intrusion.”

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr.
(May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978)

SANDY KOZEL

All in the Family  television sitcom aired on CBS for nine seasons, from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979.

Complicated and tension-filled negotiations between the United
States and the Soviet Union finally result in a plan to end the two-
week-old Cuban Missile Crisis. A frightening period in which
nuclear holocaust seemed imminent began to come to an end.

Since President John F. Kennedy’s October 22 address warning
the Soviets to cease their reckless program to put nuclear weapons
in Cuba and announcing a naval “quarantine” against additional weapons shipments into Cuba, the world held its breath waiting to
see whether the two superpowers would come to blows. With no apparent end to the crisis in sight, U.S. forces were placed at
DEFCON 2—meaning war involving the Strategic Air Command
was imminent. On October 24, millions waited to see whether
Soviet ships bound for Cuba carrying additional missiles would
try to break the U.S. naval blockade around the island. At the last
minute, the vessels turned around and returned to the Soviet Union.

TIM MAGUIRE

I Love Lucy is a television sitcom that originally aired 
on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with
a total of 180 half-hour episodes, spanning six seasons. 

The show starred Lucille Ball, her husband, Desi Arnaz
(above), along with Vivian Vance and  William Frawley.
 

The Soviet Union inaugurated the “Space Age” with its launch
of Sputnik, 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.

A Soviet technician works on Sputnik in 1957.