On October 4, 1957, at the height of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit around the Earth.
People the world over speak of the ‘Space Age' as beginning with the launching of the Russian Sputnik on 4 October 1957.
After World War II, the Space Race was one component of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States...
Based on recently declassified documents from the Soviet Union and the United States, this National Geographic television special (from 2006) adds new insight into why the two superpowers were racing into space.
"It's difficult to recapture the sense of paranoia and self-doubt that Sputnik created in the U.S., but The New York Times' coverage of that week helps a bit."
Don Mitchell is a retired research scientist with an interest in Soviet spacecraft. In honor of Sputnik's fiftieth anniversary, Mitchell created a site about the early days of the Soviet space program.
The Cold War was an era of hostility between the United States (and our democratic allies) and the Soviet Union (and their communist allies) that began after World War II. During the fifties and sixties, the threat of nuclear attack loomed large, much the
CNN's Cold War site is a companion to their 1998 television documentary of the same name.
Best clicks at the virtual Cold War Museum are the Trivia Game ("Who was the founder of the Soviet Communist Party and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution?") and the decade-by-decade timeline that runs from the '40's to the '90's.
During the early Cold War years, CONELRAD was a national Emergency Broadcasting System.
For middle and high-school students, HistoryWiz is a nice combination of onsite features and related offsite links.
Steve Schoenherr is a history professor at the University of San Diego.
