Centennial history began a four-year trek through the back pages. Charleston officials reported that the city’s tourist traffic was down by half on the day of the ceremony. News from Fort Sumter was overshadowed by the opening of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and even more so by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight, which shocked Americans as a kind of reprise on Sputnik. Five days later, these sensational stories were swept away by the real-life military disaster at the Bay of Pigs.
