50 Years ago

The final stage of a Russian multi-stage rocket, launched at about 17.00 hr. u.t. on January 2, flew past the Moon to become the first artificial planet of the Sun. The final-stage rocket is stated to have weighed 1,472 kgm ... after all its fuel was burnt, and its pay-load of scientific instruments, together with the container, weighed 361.3 kgm ... The instruments were intended to measure the Moon's magnetic field, the intensity and composition of cosmic rays, lunar radioactivity, the impact of meteors and the composition of the Moon's atmosphere ...The programme of scientific measurements is stated to have been successfully accomplished before radio contact was lost on January 5 ... Since the Moon was near last quarter at the time of the launching, the rocket's path was nearly tangential to the Earth's orbit; the rocket's orbit around the Sun, therefore, has almost the same perihelion distance as the Earth's orbit, though the aphelion distance is greater because of the rocket's greater speed at perihelion.

From Nature 10 January 1959.

100 Years ago

Never had earthquake taken such toll of human life as that which has just devastated Calabria ... [T]he Yeddo — now Tokio — earthquake of 1703, with its death-roll of 200,000, had stood in a class by itself; yet even this great number seems insufficient to count the deaths on the morning of December 28, 1908, and if to those whose lives were ended by the immediate effects of the earthquake we add the subsequent deaths from injury, exposure, and sickness, the loss will amount to well over a quarter of a million lives ... From Pizzo the band of destruction extends southwards for about 50 miles through ill-starred Monteleone, which no earthquake seems to spare, Palmi, and Bagnara, to Reggio di Calabria.

From Nature 7 January 1909.