Wednesday, April 12, 1961: The first man in space

Perched atop the Vostok 1 spacecraft, cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, 27, is launched into outer space at 9:07 a.m. (local time at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic). His voyage takes him around the Earth once, traveling at 18,000 miles per hour, reaching an altitude of 203 miles and lasting 108 minutes. Gagarin ejects from the capsule as planned, but only after a dangerous re-entry. He parachutes safely to the ground, two miles away from Vostok 1. He is instantly a hero the world over.

-- Resources

* Photo from Science Photo Library. Website: @

* Anniversary website (yurigagarin50.org): @

* Flight summary and events leading up to flight (from Encylopedia Astronautica): @

* Flight information (from russianspaceweb.com): @

* Flight timeline (from yurigagarin50.org): @

* Flight analysis (from Space History Notes): @

* Infographic (from space.com): @

* Photo gallery (from Russian Archives Online): @

* Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (includes flight information): @

* Anniversary party website (yurisnight.net): @

* More links (from firstorbit.org; several sites are in Russian): @

-- Magazines and newspapers

* Time magazine: April 21 cover @

* Life magazine: April 21 edition @

* Newsweek: April 24 cover @

* Front page of Pravda: (scroll down): @

* Front page of The Daily Worker: @

* Front page of New York Times: @

* Front page of Huntsville (Alabama) Times: @ and @

* "How Yuri Gagarin's historic flight was nearly grounded" (from The Guardian newspaper): @

* More Gagarin stories from The Guardian: @

* "Soviet Radio and Newspaper Reports on the Flight of the Spaceship Vostok" (translation from Jet Propulsion Laboratory): @

-- Books

* "The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team -- Their Lives, Legacy and Historical Impact": @

* "Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974" (from NASA; in PDF format): @ and @

* 1977 booklet published in Soviet Union (from www.kosmonaut.se): @

* "Yuri's Day -- The Road to the Stars" (graphic novel): @

-- Videos from britishpathe.com

* Pre-flight footage and liftoff: @

* British newsreel: @

* "With Gagarin to the Stars" (Soviet documentary, narrated in English): @ and @ and @

-- More videos

* "First Orbit" (real-time re-creation, using footage shot from International Space Station): @

* Flight simulation using Orbiter computer program: @ and @

* Videos from criticalpast.com: @

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Tuesday, April 11, 1961: The trial of Adolf Eichmann

In Jerusalem, Israel, former Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann goes on trial for his role in the Holocaust of World War II. (Eichmann had been captured the year before; see post of May 11, 1960.) The 15 counts against him include charges of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a hostile organization.

-- Trial summaries

* From United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: @

* From Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team: @

* From Israel State Archives: @

* From "The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust": @

-- Other resources

* "The Trial of Adolf Eichmann" (from remember.org): @

* "Marking 50 Years Since the Eichmann Trial" (from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority): @

* Trial transcripts (from The Nizkor Project): @

* Trial photos (from Israel State Archives): @

* "How Nazi Adolf Eichmann's trial unified Israel" (from BBC): @

* holocaustsurvivors.org: @

-- Videos

* Eichmann Trial Channel (includes 200+ hours of trial footage): @

* Newsreel: @

* Portions of trial (from britishpathe.com): @

* Opening statement by Israeli attorney general Gideon Hausner: @

* Witness testimonies: @

* Significance (by Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust studies professor, Emory University): @

* "The Seventh Million" (documentary): Part I @ and Part II @

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Sunday, April 9, 1961: 'Sunday'

In what is considered one of the first social-protest films of the 1960s, Dan Drasin records the day's events as several people are arrested in New York's Washington Square after demonstrating against the denial of a permit to play music. The result is the 17-minute documentary "Sunday." Under the headline "Folk Singers Riot in Washington Sq.", The New York Times reported: "At the height of the battle, hundreds of young people, many of the boys with beards or banjos and many of the girls with long hair or guitars, fought with fifty policemen in clashes across the square. Hundreds more, including some baffled tourists, watched."

* Watch "Sunday": @

* "How the Beatnik Riot Helped Kick Off The '60s" (story from NPR): @

* Excerpt from the book "Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader": @

* Dan Drasin's website: @

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Saturday, April 8, 1961: Last of the 'Big Red Cars'

Electric streetcar service comes to an end in Los Angeles, as buses take over the last of the trolley lines, connecting L.A. and Long Beach. The lines had dated back to the late 1800s.

* "The Red Cars of Los Angeles" (from the University of Southern California): @

* Los Angeles Mirror, April 8: @

* Entry from the Orange Empire Railway Museum: @

* Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society: @

* Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California: @

* "What Did We Give Up With the Big Red Cars?" (by George Hilton, UCLA professor): @

* Ride the Last of the Big Red Cars" (footage): @

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Undated: Fingerprinting a ghost

Sergeant Rowland Mason with the Manchester, England, fingerprint bureau attends several seances in a house that is (according to its owners) inhabited by a violin-playing ghost named Nicholas. With the apparition's consent, Mason attempts to take fingerprints; all that appear are three scratch marks.

* Summary of case (from www.trutv.com): @

* "Detective Stories" (pages 193-202): @

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Wednesday, April 5, 1961: Barbra Streisand

The 18-year-old singer from Brooklyn makes her national television debut on "The Jack Paar Show" (guest-hosted that night by Orson Bean). She sings two songs: "A Sleepin' Bee" and "When the Sun Comes Out."

* More about appearance: @

* Footage from show: @

* Official Streisand website: @

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Undated: Industrial robot

Unimate, the world's first industrial robot, is put to work at a General Motors plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey. Its job: taking red-hot metal parts (door handles, etc.) from a die-casting machine and placing them in cooling vats.

* Entry in Robot Hall of Fame: @

* 1999 article from The Trentonian newspaper: @

* 1966 footage of the Unimate on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson": @

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Wednesday, March 29, 1961: End of South Africa's Treason Trial

Members of the anti-apartheid African National Congress -- including Nelson Mandela, left -- are acquitted of high treason after a trial that began in 1956. The accused all had a hand in adopting the Freedom Charter in 1955; South Africa's government had claimed they were conspiring to set up a Communist state.

* Summary of trial (from about.com): @

* In-depth look at trial (from South African History Online): @

* Links to trial materials: (from overcomingapartheid.msu.edu): @

* Text of Freedom Charter (from ANC website): @

* Mandela's testimony from 1960 (from nelsonmandela.org): @

* Banning of ANC (blog entry from March 8, 1960): @

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Undated: 'Ring Around The Rosie'

James Leasor's 1961 book "The Plague and the Fire" helps popularize the belief that the children's rhyme is a reference to The Great Plague of 1665-1666 that swept through England (or, by extension, The Black Death of the mid-1300s that devastated Europe). From the book:

Ring a-ring a-roses

A pocketful of poesies,

'Tishoo, 'tishoo,

We all fall down!

Few people watching a group of children dancing hand-in-hand in a circle to this well-known nursery rhyme may realize that it has origin in the plague. Roses refer to the rosy rash of plague, ringed to signify the tokens; the poesies were herbs and spices carried to sweeten the air; sneezing was a common symptom of those close to death. The words "we all fall down" certainly referred to Londoners during that stifling August.

The rhyme, in various versions, dates back to at least the 1700s; it appears in the 1881 book "Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes" (pictured above).

* "The Plague and the Fire": @

* Article debunking the connection (from snopes.com): @

* "Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes" (from Project Gutenberg): @

* Summary of The Great Plague (from Harvard University Library): @

* Summary of The Black Death (from Dr. E.L. Skip Knox, Boise State University): @

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Monday, March 27, 1961: The Tougaloo Nine

Nine students from all-black Tougaloo College in Mississippi attempt to integrate the Jackson Public Library, which at the time served only white patrons. The students are arrested and charged with breaching the peace and held in jail for 36 hours. This sets in motion further demonstrations.

* Summary of events (from Civil Rights Movement Veterans website): @

* Summary of events (from Mississippi Heritage Trust): @

* Two articles from Jackson newspapers: (from Mississippi Department of Archives and History): @ and @

* "African Americans of Jackson" (search book for "Tougaloo Nine" for more images): @

* More about Tougaloo's role in civil rights movement (from National Park Service): @

* Civil Rights Documentation Project (from University of Southern Mississippi): @

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Undated: John Whitney's 'Catalog'

A pioneer in computer animation, Whitney had worked with graphic designer Saul Bass to create the title sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" in 1958. The short film "Catalog" featured a series of visual effects using a computer that Whitney himself had devised.

* Watch "Catalog": @ (Note: The music accompanying this video is from Tod Machover's "Electric Etudes," composed in 1983. The original film used music by jazz great Ornette Coleman.)

* Watch "Vertigo" sequence: @

* Whitney biography site (created by Syracuse University students): @

* "Digital Harmony" (from Animation World Network): @

* Whitney filmography (from www.iotacenter.org): @

* "Cybernetic Cinema and Computer Films" (from the book "Expanded Cinema" by Gene Youngblood): @

* Computer graphic timeline, 1945-2000 (from www.webbox.org): @

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March, 1961: The Studebaker Avanti

Sherwood Egbert (at right in photo), the new president of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation, turns to famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy (left) to create a sports car that will reinvigorate the company. The result: the Avanti. Its sleek, modern look is a complete departure from the more rounded Studebakers and Packards of years past.

After meeting with Egbert in early March, Loewy gathers a team of designers and sets to work near Palm Springs, California. Remarkably, they produce the completely new design (and a full-size clay model) in less than 6 weeks. The Avanti is pushed into production and would debut at the New York Auto Show in April 1962.

-- The Avanti:

* Summary (from howstuffworks.com): @

* Summary (from danjedlicka.com): @

* "The Unlikely Studebaker" (from ateupwithmotor.com): @

* Raymond Loewy's sketches for Avanti (from Library of Congress): @

* www.avantisource.com: @

* Avanti Owners Association International: @

* Short film introducing the car: @

-- Raymond Loewy:

* Official website: @

* www.raymondloewy.org: @

* Virtual exhibit (from Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware): @

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Friday, March 17, 1961: 007

Interest in British author Ian Fleming -- and his creation, secret agent James Bond -- surges after President Kennedy lists Fleming's "From Russia, With Love" as one of his favorite books. (Fleming and Kennedy had met the year before.) Hollywood takes note and soon begins filming the first Bond movie, "Dr. No."

* "The President's Voracious Reading Habits" (March 17 issue of Life magazine; includes list of "Ten Kennedy favorites"): @

* "Ian Fleming & James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007" (2005 book; account of Fleming-Kennedy meeting begins on page 178): @

* Official website of Ian Fleming: @

* Fleming collection at Indiana University: @

* Extensive James Bond website: @

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Undated: Laser surgery

Dr. Leon Goldman, a dermatology professor at the University of Cincinnati, is the first surgeon to use a laser to treat a skin disease. (The technology was still in its infancy; click here for entry from May 16, 1960, on the first working laser.) Goldman also establishes the first medical laser laboratory at the university.

* "Medical and surgical uses for the laser" (article by Goldman in January 30, 1964, edition of New Scientist): @

* "Lasers in Medicine" (from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics): @

* Goldman obituary (1997, Los Angeles Times): @

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Saturday, March 11 / Monday, March 13, 1961: Ken doll

After two years on her own, the popular Barbie doll gets a boyfriend as Ken is introduced by Mattel Inc. at the American Toy Fair in New York. (While Mattel is marking the 50th anniversary on March 11, serious doll collectors prefer March 13, the date the toy fair opened, as the actual birthday.) Ken (last name Carson) was named after the son of Mattel's owners. "He's a doll!" the ads proclaimed.

* All about Ken (from www.barbiemedia.com): @

* Barbie and Ken quiz (via CNBC): @

* First TV commercial: @

* www.manbehindthedoll.com: @

* dollobserver.com (blog): @

* "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll" (book by M.G. Lord): @

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