Within weeks, Balto was a media superstar, receiving a Hollywood contract and a nine-month vaudeville tour. The driver, Balto and the rest of the dogs forged on, and it was Balto who was Nome’s first sight of salvation. After completing their 53 miles of the relay, the next team was not ready to leave. Balto relied on scent (rather than sight), leading his team of dogs over the beaten trail of ice to safety. When it was time for this trusted lead dog to take off, the driver and 13-dog team encountered a blizzard with pelting snow so fierce it blocked the driver’s sight. It took five-and-a-half days (cutting the previous record in half) and involved more than 150 dogs and 20 drivers, but it was the black-and-white Siberian husky, Balto, who emerged as a national superstar. The “Great Race of Mercy” covered 674-miles of rugged wilderness, frozen waterways and treeless tundra. The territory’s governor arranged for the best drivers and dogs to participate in a round-the-clock relay to transport the serum to Nome. With the harbors filled with impenetrable ice and the subzero temperatures too extreme for open-cockpit airplanes to fly, the stage was set for the heroism of sled dogs. Curtis issued a quarantine, what he needed was medicine, but the nearest batch of antitoxin serum was more than 1,000 miles away in Anchorage. Curtis Welch, feared an epidemic could put the entire village of 1,400 at risk. It was January 1925, and the children of Nome, Alaska, were dying of diphtheria. Sledder Gunnar Kasson hugs his famous dog Balto. Laika was honored in 2008 by Soviet officials who erected a small monument near the military research facility where she trained. Two years later, Soviet space dogs Belka and Strelka became the first animals to circumnavigate Earth and survive. After circling Earth more than 2,000 times, Sputnik 2, with Laika’s remains inside, burned up upon re-entering the planet’s atmosphere in April 1958. She trained along with two other dogs for the Soviet space program in 1957, eventually being selected as the sole occupant of the capsule.Īlthough Soviet officials initially claimed Laika survived aboard Sputnik 2 for about a week before perishing, in 2002 it was revealed that the space pup actually died within hours of the launch, due to overheating and stress. A small, female mutt (or “muttnik” as she was dubbed in America), Laika was a stray dog from the streets of Moscow. On November 3, 1957, Laika (which means “barker” in Russian) become the first animal to orbit Earth when she traveled aboard the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2. He’s on both Facebook and Twitter, serves as the inspiration for a blog that recreates his adventures on the rails, was honored in July 2011 with a commemorative stamp and his preserved body is on display at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. Newspapers across the country published Owney obituaries as America mourned the passing of this famous mail mutt. marshal who was sent to investigate the situation. While the details of his 1897 death are murky, it is believed that Owney bit the hand of an Ohio mail clerk and tried to attack the deputy U.S. Over the course of his nine years of service, he traveled more than 140,000 miles as a mascot of the Railway Post Office and the United States Postal Service. In 1895, Owney embarked on a 129-day “Around the World” publicity tour aboard the Northern Pacific mail steamer Victoria. Clerks affixed so many medals and tags to his collar that he needed a harness to hold all the bounty. Within a few years, he was traveling the country by train with them, and then the world.Īs newspapers chronicled this canine’s travels, his fame grew. This border terrier would sleep on mailbags, until he eventually started accompanying his new owners on their delivery routes. (Credit: Public Domain)Īdopted in 1888 by post office workers at a branch in Albany, New York, after his previous owner abandoned him, Owney became an unofficial mascot of the U.S.
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