Belka and Strelka return from orbit
Two dogs become the first living beings back from orbit
On 19 August 1960 a spacecraft carried the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, two rats and plants into orbit. A day later all returned alive, a first. Less than eight months later Gagarin followed them, and Khrushchev gave Strelka's puppy Pushinka to the Kennedys.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
A space dog's daughter lived in the White House. Khrushchev gave the Kennedys Pushinka, a puppy of Strelka; she had a litter with the Kennedys' dog, and the president jokingly called them 'pupniks'. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 21 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 13 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 12 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 11 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 20 years later
Europe
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 24 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 19 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 7 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — 3 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 1 year later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 12 years earlier
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 12 years earlier
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 7 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 18 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 19 years later
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 4 years earlier
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 2 years earlier
- 1960 Year of Africa — same year
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 3 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 7 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 15 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 7 years earlier
- 1959 Tibetan uprising and the Dalai Lama's flight — 1 year earlier
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 6 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 15 years later
Americas
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — 1 year earlier
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — same year
- 1969 Moon landing — 9 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 10 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 23 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 24 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 19 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 18 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 6 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 1 year earlier
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 86)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 79)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 71)
- Mao Zedong (aged 67)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 42)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 31)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 30)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 26)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 76)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 71)