Sputnik crisis
The Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, came as a tremendous shock to the American public, and amid the widespread calls for action in response to the Sputnik crisis, officials in the United States and Britain seized an opportunity to mend the Anglo-American relationship that had been damaged by the Suez Crisis the year before. The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, wrote to President Dwight D. Eisenhower on 10 October, urging that the two countries pool their resources, as Macmillan put it, to meet the Soviet challenge on every front, "military, economic and political."