On this day...

Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space (11th April, 1961). I'm not sure whether the Moon landing by the American industry NASA was a hoax or not, but I'm pretty sure that this isn't! His Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. 

This Soviet hero was a Colonel (Polkovnik) of Soviet Air Forces, a cosmonaut and a pilot too. His stay in outer space was for 1 hour and 48 minutes. Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death), on 9 March 1934. 

On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

Yuri Gagarin statue in London, near Admiralty Arch