Who was Yuri Gagarin?

Contrary to popular belief, Neil Armstrong was not the first person to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere into the dark silence of space. 27 year old Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, achieved a major milestone in the ongoing space race between the USA and USSR when his capsule Vostok 1 completed its orbit of earth on April 12 1961. Despite Gagarin’s hero status in the USSR, Vostok 1 remains overshadowed by the American Apollo 11 mission that allegedly landed humans on the moon. So who was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin?