Yuri Gagarin

Russian-Soviet pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is well-known as the first human to journey into outer space.

Early life of Yuri Gararin

Gagarin went to a vocational school in Moscow.
He was intended to become a foundry worker – foundry is a factory that produces metal castings.
After graduating from the vocational school in 1951, he was selected for training at the Saratov Industrial Technical School, where he studied tractors.
Gagarin volunteered for weekend training as a Soviet air cadet at a local flying club where he learned to fly.

Gagarin was one of the 20 pilots chosen for the initial Soviet space programme.
He was so popular among his fellow candidates that 17 of them anonymously nominated him for the space programme.
Out of the 20 selected, the eventual choices for the first launch were Gagarin and Gherman Titov.
One of the factors for their selection was their physical characteristics.
Since the small Vostok cockpit had limited space, Gagarin was chosen as he was only 5 feet 2 inches tall.
On April 12, 1961, the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1) spacecraft was launched.
Gagarin thus became both the first human to travel into space and the first to orbit the earth.
His call sign was Kedr, which is the name of a Russian pine tree.
In total, Gagarin’s flight lasted 108 minutes.

He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the titles of Hero of the Soviet Union and Pilot Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union.
Monuments were raised to him, and streets were renamed in his honour across the Soviet Union.

In 1962, he began serving as a deputy to the Soviet of the Union and was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League.
Gagarin became Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Air Forces in 1962 and received the rank of colonel in 1963.
Gagarin never went into space again but took an active part in training other cosmonauts.
On March 27, in the year 1968, Gagarin died in a jet fighter aircraft crash while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base.
His birthplace Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death.