Manitouac, Wisconsin, is a small city of about 30,000 on the shore of Lake Michigan.

It's a mix of residential streets, industrial plants, churches, and locally owned businesses.

It's a classic midwestern town, and Manitouac's a relatively quiet place.

But if you're walking along North Ace Street, right outside the local art museum, you'd

be walking past a rather loud moment in the town's history.

In fact, if you look down, you'd see a plaque in the sidewalk.

It says Sputnik IV, as in Sputnik IV, and the date of September 1962.

Just a short distance from the plaque in the very center of the street, there's a small

metal ring embedded into the pavement.

This plaque and that metal ring commemorate the day when this small midwestern city came

into contact with history on a grand scale, a historical moment that went well beyond

the planet itself.

Because that ring marks the very spot where a piece of a Soviet Sputnik satellite came

crashing back to Earth.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

Today, we head to Manitouac, Wisconsin, and to the moment in time, when this small city

in the heartland had a front row seat to the space race, that's after this.

For all its high-minded language and the many incredible achievements that have come

from the space race.

At the time, the whole thing was mostly a matter of paranoia, coming off the heels of world

wars, atomic weapons, and ballistic missiles.

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