Today in History, November 3rd
On November 3, 1957, the Soviets launched Laika into orbit on Sputnik 2. Plus Panama's independence and the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline.
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November 3 is best known for 1957, when the Soviet Union put a dog named Laika into orbit aboard Sputnik 2. The date also brought Panama’s break from Colombia in 1903 and the Chicago Tribune’s famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” blunder in 1948.
The big story: Laika Becomes the First Animal to Orbit Earth (1957)
On November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union’s second satellite, Sputnik 2, lifted off with a passenger: Laika, a small dog of about 13 pounds who had been a stray on the streets of Moscow. She was part husky, and she became the first animal to circle the Earth. Sensors wired to her body sent back readings, giving scientists data on how a living body copes with spaceflight. For decades, Soviet officials said she had lived for about a week before a planned, painless death. In 2002, a Russian scientist set the record straight: Laika died within hours of launch, from overheating and stress. The satellite kept circling until it burned up on reentry on April 14, 1958. Her flight helped pave the way for Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, in April 1961, and it raised the stakes of the space race for the U.S.
More events on November 3
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1793 | French writer Olympe de Gouges, author of the 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, was guillotined in Paris during the Terror. |
| 1883 | Black Bart, the poetry-writing California stagecoach robber, pulled his last holdup. A handkerchief he dropped, with a laundry mark on it, led to his capture. |
| 1903 | Panama declared independence from Colombia with quiet U.S. backing. Within weeks, a treaty handed the U.S. control of the future Canal Zone. |
| 1948 | The Chicago Tribune’s front page announced “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Harry Truman had actually won, and he was famously photographed holding up the paper. |
| 1964 | Residents of Washington, D.C., voted for president for the first time since 1800, thanks to the 23rd Amendment. Lyndon Johnson won in a landslide. |
| 1969 | President Richard Nixon went on national TV to ask the “great silent majority” to back his Vietnam War policy. |
| 1979 | Klansmen and neo-Nazis opened fire on an anti-Klan march in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five demonstrators. State and federal juries later acquitted the accused gunmen. |
| 1992 | In the “Year of the Woman,” four women won U.S. Senate seats, including Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, the first African American woman elected to the Senate. |
| 2014 | One World Trade Center officially opened in Lower Manhattan, on the site of the Twin Towers destroyed on September 11, 2001. |
| 2016 | In the early hours of the morning, the Chicago Cubs beat Cleveland 8–7 in 10 innings of Game 7 to win their first World Series since 1908. |
Born on November 3
- 1793: Stephen F. Austin, who brought the first large wave of American settlers into Mexican Texas.
- 1903: Walker Evans, photographer of Depression-era America and co-creator of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
- 1933: Amartya Sen, Indian economist who won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
- 1949: Anna Wintour, British-born editor in chief of American Vogue.
Keep reading
Sources
- Soviet Union launches a dog into space, History.com
- Laika, Britannica
- This Day in History: November 3 (and its linked event articles), History.com
- Olympe de Gouges, Britannica
- Carol Moseley Braun, Britannica
- Austin, Stephen Fuller, Texas State Historical Association
- Walker Evans, Britannica
- Amartya Sen, Britannica
- Anna Wintour, Britannica
