Luna 9 Lands on Moon: First Soft Landing Achieved
Luna 9 landed on the Moon and immediately started sinking. The Soviets had designed it with airbags because nobody knew if the surface was solid or dust soup. It settled after a few centimeters. Then it opened like a flower and transmitted the first photos from another world. They showed rocks and shadows — the Moon was solid. NASA had been planning missions based on quicksand theories. Luna 9 proved them wrong three years before Apollo 11.
February 3, 1966
60 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on February 3
The Normans conquered Southern Italy because younger sons had nothing to inherit back home. Drogo of Hauteville was one of twelve brothers who left Normandy as …
Ramon Berenguer III married Douce I of Provence in 1112. She was 18. He was 35 and already widowed. The marriage joined Barcelona's Mediterranean ports with Pro…
Papal mercenaries under Cardinal Robert of Geneva slaughtered over 2,000 residents of Cesena after the city resisted Church authority, an atrocity so severe it …
Sultan Mehmed II ascended the Ottoman throne, inheriting a fractured empire and a precarious geopolitical position. Two years later, he orchestrated the fall of…
Bartolomeu Dias sailed past the southern tip of Africa without realizing it. A storm pushed his ships so far off course that when he turned back north, he hit t…
Portugal crushed a combined fleet of Ottoman, Mamluk, and Indian forces off the coast of Diu, securing a decisive naval victory. This triumph ended Muslim domin…
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