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NOVEMBER 1957
SPACE AGE BEGINS— “The earth’s first man-made satellite, called sputnik (Russian for
‘fellow traveler’), became spaceborne around midnight (Moscow time) on October 4. The U.S.S.R. gave no advance notice of the launching, and in the first days of sputnik’s flight little information about the satellite was released to the rest of the world. The ‘bird’ itself was a sphere with a diameter of 58 centimeters (about 23 inches). It carried two radio transmitters. Whether the bird carried other instruments was not clear: Soviet scientists said the satellite was recording temperature, and U.S. scientists were certain that it was transmitting coded signals.”
NOVEMBER 1907
VALUABLE ROADS— “Good roads in the Mississippi Valley pay better than almost anywhere else in the country, owing to the vivid contrast between them and the natural poor roads. The increase in valuation of property along the line of macadam roads in this section has been up to sixty per cent, and many new, thriving towns are to-day making strenuous efforts to attract settlers and investors through improving roads. It has proved an economical success to increase road taxation in order to secure higher real estate values.”
NOVEMBER 1857
BUST— “The recent financial crisis, which fell upon us so suddenly, has been very disastrous in its results to the industry of our country. Manufactures have been paralyzed, and no one but an eye-witness can have a conception of their complete and overwhelming prostration. Factories are closed, forge fires are extinguished; the hammer, the saw, the spindle and loom are silent; and men walk about the streets with anxious, care-worn countenances, for although they have willing hearts and ready hands, there is no work for them to do.”
