NOVEMBER 15 — 1957 Khruschev challenges U.S. in nuclear rifle match; 1984 Baby Fay dies of kidney failure; 1777 Articles of Confederation adopted
NOVEMBER 15
1957 – Khrushchev challenges the US
…to a friendly nuclear rifle match. Why, doesn’t that sound fun. Little ballistic skeet anyone? Seems the USSR was gloating in their success in launching their first and second Sputniks. The second one had a dog named Laika in it, who proved that living beings can survive weightlessness in outer space, which paved the way for human exploration. So Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev challenged President Eisenhower on the US progress in the arms race, and issued a formal challenge to a “shooting match”. After all, if the US did have a Sputnik, he said, she would have launched it already. Guys need a ruler? Seriously.
Eisenhower told Khrushchev he was going to bitch slap him so hard Google won’t be able to find him. Actually I made that last part up. While Khrushchev acknowledged that the UZSA and USSR wanted peace, and that the Soviets would never start a war, “some lunatics” might bring it on, namely Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who had created an artificial war psychosis. If there was a war, he said, it would be fought on American soil, which their rockets could reach. Communism would ultimately defeat capitalism. Right. How did that work out again for the USSR? Exactly.
1984 – Baby Fae dies of kidney failure.
…It would have been heart failure, but Leonard Bailey MD, a heart surgeon at Loma Linda in California, performed the first cross species transplantation on her and paved the way to medical innovations unseen to this point. Baby Stephanie Fay Beauclair was born with hypo plastic left heart syndrome, which is where parts or all of the left side of the heart is missing. It’s basically fatal, Fay’s mom Theresa two big choices, she could leave Fay at the hospital to die, or take her home to die.
That’s when Dr. Bailey got a hold of Theresa and explained his research. Several other humans tried animal-heart transplants in the past but were unsuccessful. Dr. Bailey believed an infant would be more likely to survive due to an underdeveloped immune system that would not reject an alien organ. On October26, he performed the world’s first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing the 14-day-old infant’s defective heart with the healthy heart of a young ape. Faye not only survived the surgery, but flourished for two weeks. A new drug called immune-suppressive drug called cyclosporine was also used to help keep the body from rejecting the new heart. It worked, and Fay’s body accepted the heart but due to an increase of the dosages for the drug, her kidneys would ultimately shut down. Faye survived for 20 days, but on November 15 1984 she died.
1777 – Articles of Confederation are adopted.
…Basically the first constitution of the United States, the articles established Congress, the Law, and the authority to make treaties. During the American Revolution, the Articles were ratified and eventually replaced by the Constitution to make the US government stronger. There were eight presidents during the duration of the Articles, one for each year. The first was John Hanson, whose title was President of the United States in Congress Assembled. The Articles could not levy taxes but could declare war or peace.