1957...
That makes me the same age as
1957 was also the year Norway's king Haakon VII died, which means that to
this date I have just barely lived under three kings. (The two others
being, for those not familiar with Norwegian history, Olav V and Harald V.)
For the truly curious, king Haakon died in September from complications
after a femur fracture. As Humpty Dumpty might have put it, he had a great
fall that put an end to his great fall...
About a month later the Russians launched Sputnik 1, and the world would
never be the same again. [Some would say the world would never be the same
as long as I was in it, but...]
A little later the same year it was already time for Sputnik 2,
and in connection with that I would like to clear up a little misconception.
Half the world goes around thinking the dog on the world's second satellite
was named Laika. Actually laika is the Russian word for that
particular dog race. So it wasn't named Laika - it was a
laika. [Of course it's easier to relate to a hero(ine) with a name - one may
wonder how successful the "Lassie" movies would have been if the
heroine had been "called" Collie, for instance.
According to what I heard on Jeopardy last week, 1957 was also the
year Ghana became independent. No details
right now, maybe later...
Finally (for now), the last day of February that year was darkened ;) by
the debut of the Belgian comic antihero
Gaston la Gaffe (Viggo in Norwegian.)
Anyone else know about interesting things that happened in "my"
year, let me know and I'll (maybe)
put it here...
BTW, how do you like the background colour on this page? It's a rather
special colour made up of 18 units red, 1 unit green and 87 units blue. Or
in hex, 120157! Occasionally, that number also makes a pretty nice island
when used as a seed in Vista!
