On October 4, 1957, the first manmade object was successfully launched into orbit.  It was Sputnik, the Soviet satellite.  Sputnik circled the earth in low orbit, giving off radio signals, beeping regularly for all its life.  Sputnik’s life was never expected to be very long, since it was battery powered, and there was no one in orbit to provide fresh batteries.  It kept beeping for about three weeks before it went silent.  Sputnik was a triumph for the Soviets in the Space Race, and a source of embarrassment for Americans, who couldn’t stand the thought of trailing the world’s foremost communist power in this contest. Replica of Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite. The Soviets had no intention of slowing down.  While Sputnik 1 was still beeping around the earth, Premier Nikita Khrushchev told Soviet scientists that he wanted to see Sputnik 2 up and operational in time for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution.  This was a big ask, since the 40th anniversary fel

In 1970, the Soviet Union founded a settlement that would one day be the city of Pripyat ( Прип'ять) .  Pripyat is in the extreme north of the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic, named after the nearby Pripyat River, which originates in Ukraine, and flows mostly through modern-day Belarus.  The city of Pripyat officially became a city in 1979, after enough people had moved there.  Pripyat was the ninth Nuclear City in the Soviet Union.  Nuclear cities are quite literally that: cities built around nuclear power plants.  Throughout the 1970s, the main reason one might live in Pripyat was to service the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant.  By the time the population had hit 49,000 in 1979, it was officially a city. Pripyat, Ukraine SSR, circa 1980     Pripyat was what was called a “closed city”.  This doesn’t mean access was restricted, like it might be around a military base.  You were free to come and go; all that was “closed” was the purpose of the city: produci