November 8, 1954

That fall of 1954, gas ran $0.29 a gallon and Eisenhower was in the White House — the Soviet Union announced it would withdraw from Port Arthur, signaling a shift in the Cold War's balance of power in Asia. On the radio, Rosemary Clooney's "Hey There" was the song everyone knew, while television sets across the country were tuned to "I Love Lucy" and the new drama anthology "The U.S. Steel Hour." In October, the New York Giants swept the heavily favored Cleveland Indians in four straight games to claim the World Series, and that same fall, a woman napping in her Alabama home became the first person in recorded history to be struck by a meteorite when a four-kilogram rock punched through her roof and landed on her.