October 4, 1957

"One day in 1957 everybody in the United States was minding his or her own business when suddenly the Russians launched a grapefruit-sized object called Sputnik (literally, ‘Little Sput’) into Earth orbit, from which it began transmitting back the following potentially vital intelligence information (and we quote): ‘Beep.’ This came as a severe shock to Americans, because at that point the best our space scientists had been able to come up with was a walnut-sized object that went: ‘Moo.’”

(Dave Barry Slept Here, pp. 139-140 [1989 edition].)