Pictured below: Vostok 1 The craft that Gagarin made his famous journey in

Yuri Gagarin - First Man To Be Among the Stars

"I see the Earth. It is blue, but there is no god up here" These were the first words spoken by a man who saw the stars first hand, Yuri Gagarin. Thanks to his monumental and historic space flight in 1961,On 12 April 1961, aboard the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1), Gagarin became both the first human to travel into space, and the first to orbit the earth.His call sign was Kedr (Russian: Кедр) Yuri Gagarin is widely regarded as a national hero in Russia, or as it was then, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He received two of the highest honors in the Soviet Union, The Hero of the Soviet Union award, and The Order of Lenin, the highest possible military honor of the country. The vessel Vostok 1 spent over an hour in orbit, until crashing back into the atmosphere. Yuri actually had to eject from the craft before impact as there was never any landing procedure. Yuri parachuted to safety, and landed in a Russian farmers fields following the flight. this particular fact about the flight was kept secret from the rest of the world for quite some time, only revealed after the "Space Race" between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. was long over.

 

Images from ookaboo.com users: Tempe, Anizotropia, Seifkin DRPage created by students from Littleton High School, USA & St. Mark's Senior Secondary Public School, India

Images from ookaboo.com users: Tempe, Anizotropia, SeifkinDR