Yuri Gagarin: The First Man in Space

Born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk—a city that would later bear his name—Yuri Gagarin flew for the Soviet Air Forces before being selected along with five other Cosmonauts for the Soviet Space Program.

As the Cold War and subsequent Space Race escalated between the United States and the USSR, Gagarin would stun the world by beating the Americans into space.

Yuri Gagarin Becomes the First Human in Space

On April 12th, 1961, Gagarin boarded his Vostok 1 space capsule for a successful liftoff. He orbited the earth for 108 minutes before re-entering earth’s atmosphere, ejecting from his capsule at 23,000 feet for a parachute drop safely down to earth.

Beating Alan Shepard and the Americans by three weeks, Gagarin became an instant national hero and was awarded the Soviet Union’s highest medal for valor. Beginning in 1962, the Soviet Union began celebrating the day of Gagarin’s flight as Cosmonautics Day, which was later renamed International Day of Human Space Flight.

The flight would be his sole trip into space, although he did serve as backup crew for ill-fated Soyuz-1 space flight, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.

Fearing for the life of their national hero, Soviet officials permanently banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. He died in 1968 when his MiG-15 training jet crashed near the town of Kirzhach, taking the life of Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin.