Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

At 7:28pm tonight (GMT) on Oct 4, 1957 at the Tyuratam Test Range in Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Prosteyshiy Sputnik 1 (Elementary Satellite 1) into low-Earth orbit, giving shock 'n awe revelation to the United States and igniting a Cold War space and ICBM race.

Sputnik was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On that day a story circulated in the Pentagon that a junior officer rushed to tell a U.S. Air Force general that the enemy had just launched the first artificial satellite. The general blurted out "Which enemy, the Army or the Navy?"

The Beep Heard Around the World

As the sun rose on October 4, 1957, many Americans were talking about baseball. The headlines reported that for the first time in nine years, a team from outside of New York had won a game in the World Series. The day before, in front of 65,202 fans filling Yankee Stadium, Hank Aaron launched a fly ball to center field. Mickey Mantle misplayed it, allowing Aaron to stretch the hit into a triple. The play sparked a rally for the Milwaukee Braves, and the Yankees were unable to recover, losing 4 to 2.

By the time the sun set that evening, however, a completely different topic dominated conversations. On the other side of the world, almost 6,000 miles from Yankee Stadium, another ball had been launched and its effects were both more dramatic and long-lasting.

At the Soviet Baikonur complex in what is now Kazakhstan, at 2:12 in the afternoon New York time, the world suddenly changed. Thirty-two rocket boosters ignited, the desert steppe shook and a three-stage rocket shot skyward, accelerating to over 17,000 miles per hour. At 142 miles above the earth, the rocket’s protective cone released its cargo. Humanity’s first satellite, called Sputnik, started to orbit the earth.

The birth of NASA and [D]ARPA came the following year.


Just a month later and Sputnik being paraded. LOL.

There were three great shocks to America. Pearl Harbor, 9/11, And Sputnik.

In a brief TED Talk in 2007, filmmaker David Hoffman previewed his excellent documentary "Sputnik Mania," which assesses the negative and positive impacts of Sputnik on American society and the world.

"I made the feature documentary, Sputnik Mania. Critics and supporters told me that I had to tell the story of what happened to American education during that period, how we changed ourselves so radically in science, engineering, and math -- our complete education system really. With the help of one wonderful collector of old footage, I made this story for schools, teachers, educational leaders. It tells what happens, and the footage proves it."



Hoffman also produced and directed "The Story of the Sputnik Moment," which examined how the US reaction to Sputnik transformed its entire educational system by emphasizing the importance of science and scientists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJnt3xW2Fc



We had joy, we had fun...





Kevin McCarthy should have listened to Kevin McCarthy.




LMAO!!



This is one of the best Simpsons gags ever and remains as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.




Oct 4, 1906: Electric Boat Company launched first-in-class Octopus "C-1" (SS-9) at Fore River Shipbuilding. Headlines proclaimed, "Largest submarine ever built for the United States Navy." The C-class boats had a crew of 1 officer and 14 enlisted men, and a diving depth of 200 feet.

USS C-1 (SS-9) was the only real US Navy vessel to be named "Octopus", however, Navy Cross recipient Capt Edward L. Beach Jr. used the name USS Octopus in his novel "Run Silent, Run Deep." He was also naval aide to President Eisenhower, who carried the first nuclear football.



Fast-forward 117 years: (General Dynamics) Electric Boat is building GIANTS!!


Mount Weather director James B. Looney was very grateful to Bunny Mellon for the permission to use her property's airstrip in the event that it was required in an emergency. Her personal pilots were issued "Operations Support Team" photo IDs by Mt. Weather.

Rachel Lambert Mellon—the American gardening and design idol who died in March at age 103 and was universally known as Bunny—believed that style was order and that order brought pleasure. In the 1950s, when I first visited Oak Spring, the Mellons’ 4,000-acre stud farm in Upperville, Virginia, during a boarding-school weekend with her daughter, Eliza Lloyd, I opened one of my classmate’s bedroom cupboards to find shelf after shelf of rigorously color-coded stacks of T-shirts.

Far less known are the remarkable interiors of the dozen-plus homes that Mellon and her family occupied in the U.S., France, and the Caribbean. None were ever published at length—British photographer Michael Dunne snapped this article’s never-before-seen images for the Mellons’ archives—but their lessons left a mark on design professionals as well as admiring friends: Washington Post columnist Maxine Cheshire once noted that Mellon had "more influence in shaping Jacqueline Kennedy’s taste than anyone else in her life."

Tour Bunny Mellon’s Houses and Gardens