Space traveler monkeys Able, left, and Baker, right, during a press conference after the return from their flight
May 28, 1959 — Humans had still never traveled beyond the atmosphere, so we sent our mammalian kinfolk to pave the way. A 7-lb. female rhesus monkey named Able and a 1-lb. female spider monkey named Baker were packed into the nose cone of a Jupiter rocket and fired on a parabolic lob 300 miles above the Earth — well past the 67-mile threshold of space. Unlike their predecessor, Laika, they returned alive. There's no way to know whether they enjoyed the trip, but with the face-flattening G-forces at launch and re-entry and the teeth-rattling jolt of the parachute landing, odds are they didn't. The pained expression on the face of the taxidermically memorialized Able, on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, certainly doesn't suggest a leisurely journey.