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?
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