I'm Hillary's age and I have I have an old newspaper around, with a space race headline from 1957. The headline reads
"Vanguard flops."Here's what really happened around that time.
FROM SPUTNIK I TO TV-3
With a series of rumbles audible for miles around, the vehicle, having risen about four feet into the air, suddenly sank. Falling against the firing structure, fuel tanks rupturing as it did so, the rocket toppled to the ground on the northeast or ocean side of the structure in a roaring, rolling, ball-shaped volcano of flame.
TV-3 launch, 6 December 1957. Two seconds after launch,
when the vehicle was four feet off the pad, thrust ceased.
TV-3 crumpled on the pad and exploded. More about Vanguard rockets
Headline from Syracuse Herald Journal, December 6, 1957.
Satellite Launcher Blows Up
Navy rocket unable to rise off the ground
Cape Canaveral, Fla.
America's first satellite launcher blew up today at the missile test center on Cape Canaveral.The hope of creating an artificial moon disappeared in a tremendous pillar of smoke that floated up towad white, peaceful clouds.
Just at the zero hour for the launching, 11:45 am, the 72 -foot Vanguard rocket belched flame at its base. The great ring of flame was estimated to have had a diameter of more than 200 feet and to have billowed up at least 25 feet around the rocket.
But the rocket never rose. [sic]
Another headline from the front page
Nikita says we kidnaped [sic] Sput rocket
Moscow--
Communist party secretary Nikita Khrushchev charged tonight that part of the first Sputnik's carrier rocket fell on the United States last Sunday, but the Americans "do not want to give it back to us."