Apparently, the first man-made object in space was a manhole cover. It was covering the shaft down which an atomic bomb was lowered for underground testing, and when the bomb went off the cover was launched at such a velocity that it would have cleared the atmosphere and pootled off into space.
I'm rural and I agree it would be very hard to "tip" a cow, but outhouse tipping is real and in fact I participated in such a nefarious activity on Halloween in my younger and sillier days. Unlike teenage boys, we girls always made certain no one was in them when we tipped them over.
It also says that it probably disintegrated before it made it to space though.
Just could not remember Charleton Heston.