1957

Introduction

I was watching Richard Osman's House Of Games tonight and in the "I'm Terrible At Dating" segment (one of Fiona's favourites) the question was "What year was the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1, launched by Russia?

The answers ranged from 1954 to 1978 but someone got the right answer, 1957.

I then started wondering what other significant events had taken place that year and thought it may be an interesting subject for a Vocal story.

So obviously we start off with the launch of Sputnik.

Obviously, most of this information will be taken from searches on the world wide web with some comments from me about the particular event.

Sputnik 1

As a kid, I loved anything to do with space and Sputnik's launch kick-started the USA's desire to be the first to land on the moon. Sputnik and Telstar were ingrained into my psyche, via the black-and-white television and radio of my childhood.

This was the first artificial Earth satellite and was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batteries ran out. Aerodynamic drag caused it to fall back into the atmosphere on 4 January 1958.

Remember the USA landed on the moon in the late sixties which shows what absolute jokes Bezos, Musk and Branson are with their souped-up fairground rides.

In November Sputnik 2 was launched by the Soviet Union, with space dog Laika aboard, a mostly-Siberian husky, becoming the first animal in space.

The Little Rock Nine

This was something I was totally unaware of before writing this piece and I am so glad that I found this, something that should be part of Black History and part of the Black Lives Matters movement.

We know of Rosa Parks and other names who helped to try and destroy racial segregation but who knows the names of The Little Rock Nine?

They were:

Ernest Green (b. 1941)

Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941)

Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010)

Terrence Roberts (b. 1941)

Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942)

Minnijean Brown (b. 1941)

Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942)

Thelma Mothershed (b. 1940)

Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941)

Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School.

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Worlds First Major Nuclear Incident

On Oct 10 A fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumbria, England becomes the world's first major nuclear accident.

The Worlds First Non-Military Nuclear Plant

In December, the world's first full-scale nuclear power plant, for peacetime use only, begins to generate electricity at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania.

Conclusion - What Else Happened In 1957

Well on October 1st in that year, in Mount Street Hospital in Preston, I was born and a new horror was inflicted on the world and eventually Vocal. This is the reason that I have had to scour most of this from the internet, I only came into being at the end of that year and probably only started to pick things up in the early sixties.

I do remember loving The Byrds and The Who when I heard them around 1965, and I was at Primary School and able to read when I got there at the age of four.