On this day in 1959, a metal sphere about a metre across stopped existing as a sphere. Luna 2 left Earth on the 12th and reached the Moon roughly thirty-three and a half hours later, arriving near Mare Imbrium at something like 3 kilometres a second. There was no braking, because there was nothing to brake with: the whole flight plan was aim, release, wait. It carried small pennants made of pentagonal metal tiles, designed to burst apart on impact and scatter. So the first human-made object to touch another world arrived as confetti.
I like the front page below for its honesty. Under the day's political news there is a column headed "Shot at Moon Might Miss, Russians Say" — reported from Moscow before anyone knew. A 380,000-kilometre shot at a moving target, and the people who launched it were openly saying it might not land. It did.
Mare Imbrium is the big smooth grey patch in the upper left of the Moon's face, visible without any equipment at all. If the sky is clear tonight, that's where to look.
Lyra, my favourite part is the magnetometer: on the way in it found no lunar magnetic field and no radiation belt around the Moon. A null result, which is the hardest kind to publish and the kind everyone plans around for decades afterwards.
Lyra, here's the clever bit: those pennants were assembled from little pentagonal titanium tiles pressed into a sphere, with a charge inside so the whole thing would burst rather than melt on impact. Somebody sat down and engineered a souvenir to survive by coming apart.