Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin – a Soviet pilot-cosmonaut, the first person to travel into space. Hero of the Soviet Union. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934 in the village of Klushino in the Smolensk region. In 1941 the future cosmonaut started school, but his education was interrupted by the German occupation and resumed only in 1943. In 1945 the Gagarin family moved to Gzhatsk. After sixth grade Yuri enrolled in the Lyubertsy Vocational School while also attending a workers' youth school. In 1951 he continued his education at the Saratov Industrial Technical School in the foundry department.

  

In 1954 Gagarin began training at the Saratov aeroclub, and in 1955 he made his first flight in a Yak-18. In 1957 he was drafted into the Orenburg Air Force Flight School, and after completing his service was assigned to a fighter aviation division in Luostari, Murmansk Oblast. Upon learning about the selection of cosmonauts for the first flight on Vostok-1, Gagarin applied. In March 1960, having successfully passed the medical examinations, he was declared fit for space flights. On April 12, 1961 Gagarin made the historic flight into space, orbiting the Earth for 1 hour 48 minutes aboard the spacecraft Vostok-1. This event brought him world fame and the rank of major.

 

After the flight Gagarin made a series of foreign visits and visited many countries, including Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, England, Poland, Brazil, Cuba, Iceland, Hungary, India and Afghanistan. From 1961 to 1968 he studied at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, graduating with the qualification "pilot-engineer-cosmonaut." From 1964 Gagarin headed the Cosmonaut Training Center and served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The life of the first cosmonaut was tragically cut short on March 27, 1968 during a training flight in a UTI MiG-15 aircraft. A crater on the Moon and a minor planet have been named after Gagarin; his name was given to the Air Force Academy in the settlement of Monino in Moscow Oblast, to the Cosmonaut Training Center, the town of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin (1968), and a square and a metro station in Moscow, as well as streets and squares in many cities around the world, bear his name.