What are the effects of the coriolis effect?

The Coriolis effect causes global wind currents to blow in a diagonal direction due to the rotation of the Earth. If the Earth didn't rotate, wind currents would blow straight north and south from the poles to the equator due to the pressure differences between the two regions.

The soviet union beat the us to the first successful launch, with the october 4, 1957, orbiting of sputnik 1, and later beat the us to have the first human in earth orbit, yuri gagarin, on april 12, 1961. the "race" peaked with the july 20, 1969, us landing of the first humans on the moon with apollo 11