Facts About Yuri Gagarin - strangefacts

• Colonel Yuri A. Gagarin was born on a collective farm in a region west of Moscow, Russia on March 9, 1934

• Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space and the first man to orbit the Earth making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft 

• His father was a carpenter. Yuri attended the local school for six years and continued his education at vocational and technical schools

• Yuri Gagarin joined the Russian Air Force in 1955 and graduated with honors from the Soviet Air Force Academy in 1957

• Soon afterward, he became a military fighter pilot. By 1959, he had been selected for cosmonaut training as part of the first group of USSR cosmonauts

• Yuri Gagarin flew only one space mission

• On April 12, 1961 he became the first human to orbit Earth. Gagarin's spacecraft, Vostok 1, circled Earth at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour

• The flight lasted 108 minutes. At the highest point, Gagarin was about 327 kilometers above Earth

• Once in orbit, Yuri Gagarin had no control over his spacecraft

• Vostok's reentry was controlled by a computer program sending radio commands to the space capsule Although the controls were locked, a key had been placed in a sealed envelope in case an emergency situation made it necessary for Gagarin to take control. As was planned, Cosmonaut Gagarin ejected after reentry into Earth's atmosphere and landed by parachute

• Colonel Yuri Gagarin died on March 27, 1968 when the MiG-15 he was piloting crashed near Moscow. At the time of his death, Yuri Gagarin was in training for a second space mission

• According to this book, Yuri Gagarin started dreaming about and planning his trip into space while he was still a kid. Before anyone had been in space. Follow your dreams, kids 

• Lots of things are named for him now, like a crater on the moon, and the town near where he grew up. He also has a few statues, like this one coming to London

• Former indie rockers Ozma named not one, but two songs after the cosmonaut: “The Flight of Yuri Gagarin” and the “Landing of Yuri Gagarin.”

• Gagarin was an environmentalist! “Orbiting Earth in spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!” So even if you never make that trip into space yourself, at least you honour Gagarin’s memory by taking care of our planet

• On April 12, 1961, the Russian cosmonaut became the first human launched into space. His 108-minute mission made him a world-wide hero. Gagarin died in 1968 at the age of 34 in a crash during a jet training flight 

• Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space less than a month later

• The USSR also had plans to go to the moon and at one time Gagarin, desperate to make a second spaceflight, was suggested as the back-up for the mission to land a cosmonaut on the moon

• The name of the capsule that carried Yuri into space was Vostok

• Yuri Gagarin died in 1968 and he left behind a wife and two daughters