BW - EP144—011: October 1957—NATO, Syria, And More Sputnik

On October 21st, 1957 Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited New York City. It was the final stop on their tour. The next day they returned to the United Kingdom. Meanwhile in Washington, President Eisenhower was meeting with the U.K.’s Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and NATO Chief Paul-Henri Spaak. Their chat was over Middle East policy, rocket deployment, and the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. On Friday October 25th at 7:30AM, the NBC World News Roundup took to the air talking of developments. The British and US were butting heads on Middle East policy, while Britain wanted the two countries to share nuclear secrets. France was complaining that the U.S. and England weren’t allowing technological access. NATO Chief Spaak was expected to invite France to the upcoming talks. After this meeting Prime Minister MacMillan was to give Canadian PM John Diefenbaker an in-person report on the talk. In London, the Prime Minister’s Conservative party’s grip was loosening. The Socialist Labour Party had recently taken a seat in the House of Commons and the leaders of two major trade unions were going ahead with wage demands to counter inflation. All countries were listening for word from Moscow on how Sputnik was doing. The U.S. was focusing on reports that its carrier rocket was outpacing the satellite, while also continuing to push its own space advancements. On Saturday October 26th, Sputnik 1’s batteries ran out after its three-hundred-twenty-sixth orbit around the Earth. The following Monday Ytzak Ben-Zvi was reelected president of Israel by the Knesset congress. The next day, October 29th, Moshe Dwek threw a grenade in the Knesset chambers injuring several ministers. In the wake of Turkish elections, riots broke out in six different locations. And in Flagstaff, Arizona, a U.S. Air Force tanker plane crashed into a mountain, killing all sixteen crew members.