Sputnik 1, the first satellite
The USSR opens the space age
On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union put the first artificial Earth satellite into orbit, its radio beeps picked up around the world. The launch opened the Space Age and started the space race between the USSR and the United States.
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Did you know
1957: the USSR launched the first satellite, and six countries signed the Treaty of Rome, the seed of the future EU.
1957: Ghana became one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to throw off colonial rule, and the USSR launched the first satellite.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 18 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 10 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 9 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 8 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 23 years later
Europe
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 24 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 21 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 16 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 4 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — same year
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 25 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 9 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 22 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 23 years later
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 1 year earlier
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 1 year later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 3 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 6 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 10 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 12 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 4 years earlier
- 1955–1975 Vietnam War — 2 years earlier
- 1958–1962 Great Leap Forward — 1 year later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 18 years later
Americas
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 2 years earlier
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — 2 years later
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 3 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 12 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 21 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 16 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 15 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 3 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 2 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 83)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 76)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 68)
- Mao Zedong (aged 64)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 39)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 28)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 27)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 23)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 73)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 68)