July 10, 1962: Telstar 1 Is Launched

July 10, 1962: The Telstar 1 communications satellite is launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida. By July 23, it was beaming television signals from each side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other. It relayed its first, and non-public, television pictures, a flag outside Andover Earth Station, to Pleumeur-Bodou, France the following day. 

Almost two weeks later, on July 23, at 3:00 PM Eastern Time, it relayed the 1st publicly available live transatlantic television signal. The broadcast was shown in Europe by Eurovision, and in North America by NBC, CBS, ABC, and the CBC. The 1st public broadcast featured CBS's Walter Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby in Brussels, Belgium. The first pictures were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The first broadcast was to have been remarks by President John F. Kennedy, but the signal was acquired before the president was ready, so engineers filled the lead-in time with a short segment of a televised baseball game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs. The batter, the Phillies' Tony Taylor, was seen hitting a ball pitched by Cal Koonce to the right fielder, George Altman. (The Phillies won the game, 5-3, thanks to a home run by Don Demeter.)

From there, the video switched first to Washington, D.C.; then to Cape Canaveral, Florida; to the World's Fair in Seattle; then to Quebec City; and, finally, to Stratford, Ontario. The Washington segment included remarks by a now-ready Kennedy, talking about the price of the American dollar, which was causing concern in Europe. When Kennedy denied that the United States would devalue the dollar, it immediately strengthened on world markets. Cronkite later said that "we all glimpsed something of the true power of the instrument we had wrought."

On February 21, 1963, due to increased nuclear testing in the atmosphere, Telstar 1 stopped functioning – around the time the song "Telstar" by The Tornadoes -- the 1st song by a British band to hit Number 1 in America, over a year before The Beatles did it -- dropped off the music charts. Telstar 2 was launched on May 7, 1963, and lasted about as long. Although completely useless for 59 years, both of these satellites are still in orbit around the Earth.

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July 10, 1962 was a Tuesday. Unlike the day of the Phillies-Cubs broadcast, when there were other games, there was only 1 score on this historic day. From 1958 to 1962, Major League Baseball held 2 All-Star Games every season, 1 in a ballpark of each League. This day was the 1st, at the new District of Columbia Stadium in Washington.

President Kennedy attended, and threw out the ceremonial first ball. No one could have foreseen that, within just 6 years, both JFK and his brother, then the Attorney General of the United States, would be assassinated, and that, a year after that, D.C. Stadium would be renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

Before the first ball ceremony, JFK spoke to Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals, an ardent Democrat. Musial was 41 years old, 2 years younger than JFK was when he was elected. JFK said, "They said I was too young to be President, and you were too old to play baseball. I guess we both proved them wrong."

Selected for the American League team from the defending World Champion New York Yankees: Center fielder Mickey Mantle, right fielder Roger Maris (both starting), catcher Elston Howard, 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson, shortstop Tom Tresh (the eventual AL Rookie of the Year, who would be moved to left field when Tony Kubek returned from his military service), and pitcher Ralph Terry. The only member of the expansion New York Mets selected for the National League was former Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Richie Ashburn. The opposing starting pitchers were Jim Bunning of the Detroit Tigers and Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

For the 1st time, the All-Star Game had a Most Valuable Player award. It was given to Maury Wills of the Dodgers, on his way to setting a new major league record with 104 stolen bases in a season. In the 6th inning, he entered the game as a pinch-runner for Musial. Wills stole 2nd base, and was singled home by Dick Groat of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the 8th inning, Wills singled, was singled to 3rd by Jim Davenport of the San Francisco Giants, and scored on a sacrifice fly by the Giants' Felipe Alou. The NL won, 3-1.