One hundred eight minutes made him the first human in orbit
Yuri Gagarin (9 March 1934–27 March 1968), Soviet pilot-cosmonaut, became the first person in outer space on 12 April 1961. Launched from Baikonur on Vostok 1, he completed one Earth orbit in 108 minutes—a Cold War milestone that made him a global icon.
He was the third of four children of a carpenter and a dairy worker on a state farm at Klushino, near the town of Gzhatsk that was renamed after him in 1968. German troops took the village on 18 October 1941 and burned the school on their first day. A Nazi officer moved into the family home, and the Gagarins spent 21 months in a mud hut of about three metres square behind it, while young Yuri carried out small acts of sabotage. His father, beaten for refusing to work for the occupiers, ended the war in hospital.
After a 1946 move to Gzhatsk, the boys learned to read from a discarded army manual in a makeshift school. At sixteen he apprenticed as a foundryman at a Lyubertsy steel plant, finishing evening classes and vocational school with honours in 1951. Accepted in 1955 by the Chkalov pilots’ school in Orenburg, he twice fumbled landings in the MiG-15 trainer and nearly washed out, yet he was commissioned a lieutenant on 5 November 1957 and posted to Luostari near the Norwegian border.
After the Luna 3 launch in October 1959 he volunteered for space, with about 265 flying hours behind him. From 154 short-listed pilots, doctors picked 29 candidates and 20 were approved; Gagarin was among the first twelve confirmed on 7 March 1960. Training began at Moscow’s Khodynka airfield on 15 March, and Alexei Leonov likened the exercise regime to Olympic preparation. Asked privately whom they wanted to fly first, all but three of his peers named Gagarin; evaluators praised his modesty, memory and quick reactions.
Vostok 1 was his only flight. After his friend Vladimir Komarov died on Soyuz 1, for which Gagarin was backup, officials barred him from further missions. He finished a Zhukovsky academy correspondence diploma in early 1968 and was killed weeks later in a jet crash.
Source: Yuri Gagarin
