From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-10-04:
"Each of these first rockets was like a beloved woman for us. We were in love with every rocket, we desperately wanted it to blast off successfully. We would give our hearts and souls to see it flying." -- Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program, recalling his work in the 1950s. Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was launched October 4, 1957. [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070930/ap_on_sc/sputnik_s_secrets](submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)
Today, of course, begins a cluster of sad spaceflight
anniversaries (I'll include a date with two nice ones as well,
since it's between two of the other dates):