On this date, April 12th, in 1961, Soviet Cosmonaut Yury Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human to travel in space. Yuri’s Night celebrations are hosted around the world on this date each year to celebrate this event. Congratulations Comrade!
Another anniversary of note on this date was the maiden flight (in 1981) of the first Space Shuttle, Columbia.
And finally, this date (in 2018) was the initial hoped-for ‘start of service’ date for the LiftPort Space Elevator. Alas…
(Picture credits: Yuri Gagarin via Tass/Sovfoto. Columbia via NASA. Click on the thumbnails for slightly larger versions)
In January, more than forty five years after the Evil Empire made Yuri Gagarin a hero of the Soviet Union, Pravda reported that Gagarin was not the first man in space, he was just the first man to survive a flight into space:
If this is true, and it has to be because it is from Pravda, it should in no way diminish the significance of the Gargarin’s successful flight. If Gagarin knew of the deadly attempts by Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov, we should be even more impressed with Gagarin’s courage.
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