History Book - A Reformation watershed, and the space race

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: The WORLD History Book. Today, a milestone in the race to space, the birthday of a celebrated teacher, and the trial of the leader of the Reformation.

Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: We begin today with a pivotal anniversary from the Reformation: It’s been 500 years since Martin Luther first appeared before the Diet of Worms on April 17, 1521. Those proceedings aimed to hold Luther accountable for his controversial protests against the Catholic Church.

Bishop Robert Barron of the Los Angeles Archdiocese confesses a fascination with Luther and his incredible zeal.

BARRON: Luther quite obviously was a fighter. He took on the pope, he took on the emperor, he took on the electors of the Holy Roman Empire, he took on the inquisitors. Luther was a very pugnacious figure.

That drive served him well as he went up against heavyweights at his trial.

The 2003 movie Luther, starring Joseph Fiennes, reenacted Luther’s final stand at the trial.

LUTHER: I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other, God help me. [Cheers]

The Diet of Worms concluded in May of 1521. Emperor Charles V declared Luther a heretic, but declined to arrest him.

Jumping ahead now more than 300 years to commemorate the birth of Anne Sullivan. She taught Helen Keller how to overcome the difficulties of blindness and deafness by communicating. This 1930 news footage shows Sullivan recounting her time with Keller.

SULLIVAN: When I saw Helen Keller first, she was 6 years and 8 months old. She had been deaf and blind and deaf and mute since her 19th month….

Sullivan was born on April 14th, 1866—155 years ago—in Western Massachusetts. A child of Irish immigrants, Sullivan—like her famous pupil—was no stranger to disability. Repeated childhood illnesses left Sullivan with severely diminished vision. Then, her mother died when she was only 8 years old. Her father abandoned his children shortly after. Sullivan lived in the squalor of a poor house.

At age 14, inspectors came to evaluate conditions there. Sullivan made the most of their visit—telling them of her ambition to attend a school for the blind. A 20-12 short film reimagined that moment:

FILM CLIP: My name’s Anne Sullivan, and I want to go to school. 

Her boldness paid off, and she began attending the nearby Perkins School for the Blind. She graduated as valedictorian in 1886 at the age of 20.

Shortly after, Sullivan learned about the Keller family in Alabama. After plenty of trial and error, the pair found effective methods, and Keller learned to communicate.

SULLIVAN: And I let her see by putting her hands on my face how we talk with our mouths. 

In her memoirs, Keller referred to the day she and Sullivan met in March 1887 as “my soul’s birthday.” The two remained lifelong friends, until Sullivan’s death in 1936 at age 70.

And for our final entry today, a breakthrough in the Cold War Space Race.

Sixty years ago today, on April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into outer space.

SOUND: [launch of Vostok 1]

That milestone had been over a decade in the making, since NASA sent fruit flies into space in 1947. After that came dogs, like the Soviets’ notorious 1957 attempt with a Moscow stray, Laika, who died in space just a few hours after launch. In January 1961, the U.S. sent a chimpanzee into space to test the effects of orbital travel. But, the USSR ultimately nabbed the distinction of being first to put a man into orbit less than three months later.

NEWSREEL: It was no secret, either in Moscow or anywhere else, that Russia was ready to make the attempt, and just after 7 a.m. our time, the 450-ton rocket went up. 

Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spacecraft made a single orbit of Earth before reentry. That flight lasted only 1 hour and 48 minutes. America launched its first astronaut into orbit in May 1961, but the Soviets got the jump on them, beating that milestone by about three weeks.

NEWSREEL: A long, red-carpeted walk to the platform where Krushchev greets him. Gagarin puts party first by thanking the Communists for the opportunity. 

The achievement ushered in the era of manned space exploration.

As for Gagarin, though, his star burned out quickly. He died in a training exercise seven years after that career high. The Kremlin has stonewalled investigations into the exact circumstances that led to  Gagarin’s death.

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

(Photo/iStock)

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