12th April: Yuri Gagarin's first orbit

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

1. He was one of 19 pilots selected to train for the space mission. these were further whittled down to the "Sochi Six" and finally Gagarin and Gherman Titov. In the end, the choice came down not only to how well they'd done in training, but their height, or lack of it. The Vostok spacecraft cockpit was rather small and so it made sense for a short person to fly it. Gagarin was 1.57 metres (5 ft 2 in) tall.
2. When the long list of candidates were asked to vote anonymously which of their peers should be the first to fly, all but three chose Gagarin. He was very popular, and was said to have a smile "that lit up the Cold War".
3. The village in which Yuri Gagarin was born, Klushino, near Gzhatsk, was renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death.
4. Before becoming a pilot, Gagarin trained as a foundryman, and went to technical school, where he studied tractors.
5. Gagarin learned to fly at weekends, when he volunteered for weekend training as a Soviet air cadet at a local flying club. When he was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1955, he was sent to the First Chkalov Air Force Pilot's School in Orenburg.
6. His call sign was Kedr, meaning Siberian pine or Cedar.
7. As his spacecraft launched, Gagarin said, "Poyekhali!" which means "Let's go!" a phrase that came to represent the start of the space age. During re-entry, he whistled the tune The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows. The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky".
8. He was a keen sportsman - his favourite sport was ice hockey, and he liked to play goal keeper. He was also a Basketball coach.
9. After his historic flight, Gargarin travelled the world and was often given a hero's welcome. He visited Manchester in the UK when it was pouring down with rain. He refused to have the roof of the car up, or even to hold an Umbrella because, he said, "If all these people have turned out to welcome me and can stand in the rain, so can I."
10. On 27 March 1968, during a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near Kirzhach. Their bodies were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.