When Sputnik Crashed in Manitowoc

5-7-21 News Headline :  Large out of control Chinese rocket set to reenter Earth's atmosphere

That headline reminded me of a sliver of history we discovered in our travels years ago.  In 2009, my wife and I were on a quest to visit all 50 states, which is why we found ourselves in Wisconsin in April of that year.  She is a teacher, and so while others go off on Spring Break to Florida, we went to Wisconsin.  And had a ball.  

When you travel, you can discover strange things that you were not looking for. On that trip we found ourselves staying overnight in Manitowoc.  How do you pronounce that?   Just like it looks?  Nope.  In a four syllable word you can put the accent on any one of the four.  I chose the 3rd one and pronounced it Man uh TOE ick.  And immediately announced to any knowing local listener that I was from out of town.  The correct pronunciation is with emphasis on the 4th syllable, Man uh tuh WOCK.  We were set straight by a waitress in a diner that morning, and have repented and sin no more.

The town is one of a series of Wisconsin towns along the coast of Lake Michigan.  They all have lovely views, and in several of them I did a morning run and enjoyed the sun rising over the vast expanse of Lake Michigan.  There was a submarine docked on the river that flows into the lake, and so we ended up taking that tour, and that turned out to be the No 1 destination for visitors to Manitowoc.  The Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company built 28 submarines during World War II that, like salmon seeking an outlet to the sea, found their way out of Lake Michigan, down the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico and service during the war.

But the 7th highest rated site for visitors was the main discovery for us.  It was a circle drawn in the middle of 8th Street in a residential neighborhood , with a bronze marker on the nearby sidewalk explaining the significance of the circle.  On September 5, 1962, a 20 pound piece of metal came crashing down from the sky with enough force to leave cracks in the road surface.  Two policemen were called to the scene to find a red hot piece of something embedded in the street.  The Sputnik IV satellite had gone awry after its launch in 1960 - and in 1962 the headlines announced that it was re-entering the atmosphere, and that any parts of it that did not burn up would be making a hard landing on earth.  This 20 pound chunk was one of several that rained down over Wisconsin that day.  

As is the case with all UFO's, the government rushed in and carted away the evidence. NASA ended up

making several casts of the item, and then gave the original piece back to Mother Russia.  One of the replicas found its way back home to Manitowoc, where it has an honored place among paintings by Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol and Mary Cassatt.  The marker in the street is in front of the Rahr-West Art Museum, and so the Museum volunteered to hold and display this piece of history.  

The people of Manitowoc are very proud to be the location of this sliver of history, so much so that on the 2nd weekend in September, they host an annual festival, Sputnikfest, which according to their website  was  named "one of the Top Five Funkiest Festivals in the country by Readers Digest ..."  The festival's slogan?  "Sputnik landed here...Why don't you?"

If the Chinese spacecraft survives re-entry in the next day, and doesn't kill anyone, then perhaps some other lucky town will be able to turn lemons into lemonade as they have done in Manitowoc, taking a small piece of history and making it the basis for a "funky" annual festival celebrating not the history itself as much as the ability of resourceful and creative people to turn anything into an excuse for a party!  

For more information on Sputnikfest, start here:  https://www.manitowoc.org/1109/Sputnikfest

And if you want to visit the "chunk", then here is the homepage for the Rahr-West Museum:  https://www.manitowoc.org/1006/Rahr-West-Art-Museum