September 23, 1959

That fall of 1959, gas ran $0.31 a gallon and Eisenhower was in the White House — the Soviet Union had just launched a spacecraft that crashed onto the surface of the Moon — the first human-made object to reach another world — while back home Americans were dealing with a steel industry labor dispute that had shut down production for months. On television, "Gunsmoke" was the country's top-rated show, and at the movies, audiences were lining up for "Ben-Hur," a biblical epic starring Charlton Heston that would go on to win a record 12 Academy Awards. The Los Angeles Dodgers claimed the World Series title over the Chicago White Sox that October, and on the 21st of that same month, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum — designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had died earlier that year — opened its doors to the public in New York City.