Called "The @Columbus of the Cosmos," @Yuri @Gagarin made history as the first human to go into space. His 108-minute flight aboard @Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, proved that man could withstand the rigors of spaceflight, including lift-off, re-entry, and weightlessness, and still perform the manual operations essential to flight. More importantly, however, it marked the epic beginning of humanity's reach for the stars.
Born to a peasant family in the village of @Klushino in the former @Soviet Union, his education was primarily vocational until he entered pilot training in 1957. He went on to graduate with honors from the @Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in 1967. Disciplined and dedicated, his impressions of space flight were nevertheless filled with words of poetry, appreciating the joy and beauty of the stars.
Although Gagarin experienced 5 g's of force on liftoff, the most rigorous part of his journey was unquestionably re-entry. As the remainder of his 125-foot ship fell at 17,500 miles per hour toward the planet, he experienced approximately 10 g's, making him feel like a 1500 pound brick falling from the sky. Due to the enormous frictional heating from air molecules, temperatures outside his capsule approached 2000 degrees @Fahrenheit; inside, however, the temperature remained only about 68 degrees. Vostok 1 landed successfully in @Siberia.
Tragically, Gagarin was killed on March 27, 1968, when his test aircraft crashed near @Moscow. He was inducted in 1970 into the International @Aerospace Hall of Fame.
