I wonder if the Explorer’s Club served Hot Dogs in her honor that year.

November 3, 1957 –

Laika the dog became the first living creature in space on this date, when she involuntarily fulfilling a canine suicide mission aboard the Soviet Sputnik 2. Soviet engineers expected Laika to die from oxygen deprivation—a painless death within 15 seconds—after seven days in orbit.

However, some western researchers speculated, then later confirmed by declassified Soviet documents in 1993, that Laika was roasted when the satellite’s heat shields were detached.

And so it goes