1957...

That makes me the same age as

Ernie's deSoto!!

Picture of a deSoto

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.

Going back to the spring and moving southwards, Ghana became independent on the 6th of March. Which means I am roughly two months older than Ghana! Gee, I feel soooo old....

Not so far south, 1957 was also the year of the Spaghetti Harvest Hoax

Returning to Norway for a moment, this was the year when the silver mines at Kongsberg shut down after 333 years of, well, mining I guess!

Another more or less well known person born that year was Gary McClellan. Funny, I've known him (sort of) for quite some time but didn't think of checking his web page until now...
I supposeJohn Lasseter is a bit more wellknown; just found out he and I were born on the same day!

Back to dark events, according to an article I read recently this was also the year when several swarms of aggressive bee hybrids were accidentally released in Brazil, which was the origin of the notorious killer bees.

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, or if you've got some links for some of the unlinked entries, let me know and I'll (maybe) put it here...

And to prove I mean it, here's (finally!) an excerpt from an email I got from one Dreamflight84 (I got it in May 01, it's now April 02!)

EISENHOWER DOCTRINE ANNOUNCED: in January of 1957 (a few years after the Suez 
Canal crisis in the Middle East) President Eisenhower reversed his policy and 
stated that the United States was prepared to "use armed force anywhere in 
the Middle East against any country controlled by international communism."

LITTLE ROCK ARKANSAS: in 1957 Little Rock Arkansas opened Central High School 
to a few black students, and the National Guard had to be called in and 
remain there all year to escort them to class.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957: (later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would provide 
even more rights) authorized the atty. general to obtain injunctions to stop 
election officials from interfering with blacks seeking to register to vote, 
and established a Civil Rights Commision with broad investigatory powers and 
a Civil Rights dividion in the Dept. of Justice

Dreamflight adds that "You can name any random year and I can tell you everything about it!", though that may only have been true back then while he (?) was preparing for a test...

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 (well, without the zero actually - 12157) also makes a pretty nice island when used as a seed in Vista! Just look: