44 Fun Facts About Yuri Gagarin

Which American reached space 23 days after Gagarin's flight of 12 April 1961?

Alan Shepard flew for just 15 minutes on 5 May 1961, a suborbital hop, yet ten years later he walked on the Moon as commander of Apollo 14.

What was the name of the spacecraft that carried Gagarin into orbit?

Vostok 1 kept its manual controls locked for the flight, and the code to free them sat in a sealed envelope on board in case of emergency.

How long did Gagarin's spaceflight last?

108 minutes took him once around the planet before he came down near the city of Engels, where he told a frightened farm woman and a girl that he needed a telephone to call Moscow.

Which animal, Zvezdochka, flew the last rehearsal flight before Gagarin's launch?

A dog: Zvezdochka, 'Little Star', flew with a mannequin that played a recording of a choir, picked so that nobody tuning in could mistake it for a live pilot; both came back safely.

From which launch site was Gagarin's spacecraft launched?

Baikonur Cosmodrome borrowed its name, by most accounts, from a mining town some 320 km away to hide where the pad really stood; that pad is now called Gagarin's Start.

What does 'Poyekhali!', Gagarin's famous cry at launch, roughly mean?

'Off we go!' was an informal phrase, his reply as ground control wished him a good flight, and for many it came to stand for the dawn of the Space Age.

How did Gagarin actually return to the ground at the end of his flight?

He ejected and landed by parachute from about 7 km up, as designed, but officials hid it because record rules then required a pilot to land with his craft.

In what packaging did Gagarin carry his meat purée and chocolate sauce into orbit?

Squeeze tubes like toothpaste tubes let him eat without crumbs floating round the cabin, and days of spare provisions were packed in case the braking rocket failed.

Which cosmonaut, Gagarin's backup in April 1961, became the second person to orbit Earth four months later?

Gherman Titov was disappointed to be passed over, yet it was he who later proposed that the Soviet Union mark 12 April each year as Cosmonautics Day.

Gagarin took off as a senior lieutenant; which rank did he hold by the time he landed?

Major, skipping captain: by the account of Khrushchev's son, the Soviet leader was offered a captaincy for Gagarin and retorted that he should be made at least a major.

In which present-day country was Gagarin born?

Russia: he was born in Klushino, a village about 100 miles west of Moscow, which put it in the path of the 1941 invasion when he was seven.

At which royal residence did the Queen receive Gagarin during his 1961 visit to Britain?

Buckingham Palace was where the Queen received him, and he also met prime minister Harold Macmillan on a visit that drew cheering crowds, though Britain stood firmly in the American camp.

What trade did Gagarin train in as a 16-year-old apprentice at a steel plant near Moscow?

A foundryman by training, he passed with honours, and in 1961 a British foundry workers' union invited their fellow moulder over and gave him a medal.

As a student in Saratov, Gagarin earned extra money as a dock labourer on which river?

The Volga runs past Saratov, where the technical student also joined the local aero club and spent his spare time learning to fly light aircraft.

What simple fix ended the cadet Gagarin's repeated trouble landing his jet trainer?

A cushion to sit on gave the small cadet a proper view of the ground from the cockpit; after two failed attempts he landed cleanly and went on to graduate with honours.

What kept tall pilots out of Gagarin's cosmonaut group?

Capsule size: the cabin was a sphere only about two metres across, and being short was one reason Gagarin and his backup became the final pair picked from twenty.

Gagarin's first posting as a fighter pilot was near Murmansk, close to the Soviet border with which NATO member?

Norway lay just beyond Luostari air base, where he flew fighters for two years before being picked, with 19 other pilots, in the secret selection of the first cosmonauts.

What went wrong as Gagarin's capsule began re-entry, sending it into a violent spin?

Two modules failed to separate because a bundle of cables still joined them; they tumbled together until the wires gave way, and he calmly signalled that everything was OK.

The six cosmonauts fast-tracked for the first flights, Gagarin among them, were nicknamed after which Black Sea resort?

Sochi gave the 'Sochi Six' their name, and the line-up soon changed: two of the original six were injured, one diving into a shallow lake, and had to be replaced.

All but three of which group secretly voted for Gagarin to fly first?

His fellow trainees each named the rival they would most like to see fly first, and one, Yevgeny Khrunov, found him very focused and demanding of himself and of others.

Which Soviet chief designer radioed 'We wish you a good flight' to Gagarin at lift-off?

Sergei Korolev's name was a state secret in his lifetime: the public knew him only as the Chief Designer, and his identity was revealed when he died in 1966.

Which honour, his country's highest, was Gagarin awarded in Moscow after his flight?

Hero of the Soviet Union came at the end of a motorcade through Moscow, amid celebrations thought to be the country's biggest since the end of the Second World War.

When did Radio Moscow first tell the world about Gagarin's flight?

While he was still in orbit: the bulletin went out about an hour before he landed, partly so that a rescue could be organised quickly if anything went wrong.

In which British city did Gagarin ride in an open-top car through pouring rain?

Manchester saw him stay standing in the open car through the downpour because, he said, the people had come to see him.

Generations of cosmonauts copied which unplanned stop Gagarin made on the way to his rocket?

Relieving himself on the bus tyre was pure necessity, yet crew after crew copied him for decades afterwards, Valentina Tereshkova included.

Which trademark of Gagarin's was said to be able to melt the stoniest heart?

His smile made him the Soviet Union's best ambassador: in the years after the flight he accepted invitations to about thirty countries, drawing crowds wherever he went.

After his flight, Gagarin was elected in 1962 as a deputy of which body?

The Supreme Soviet gained a famous deputy, but he soon went back to Star City, where he spent years working on designs for a reusable spacecraft.

Gagarin was backup pilot for which ill-fated 1967 mission that killed his friend Vladimir Komarov?

Soyuz 1's parachutes failed on landing; Gagarin had reportedly pressed for the rushed launch to be delayed, and afterwards he was barred from spaceflight as too precious to lose.

The 2011 film First Orbit recreated Gagarin's view of Earth with new footage shot from where?

The International Space Station crosses his route only now and then, so the film-makers waited for a matching pass and astronaut Paolo Nespoli filmed the view through its cupola window.

Which Soviet maker built the two-seat jet trainer in which Gagarin was killed in March 1968?

MiG built the trainer, a type he had first flown as a cadet; he died in it with instructor Vladimir Seryogin only weeks after being cleared to fly again.

Where were Gagarin's ashes interred?

The walls of the Kremlin hold his ashes close to those of Vladimir Komarov, the friend whose doomed flight he had trained for as backup only a year before.

A cosmonaut on the crash inquiry argued that what sent Gagarin's plane into a spin?

A jet passing too close: the cosmonaut, who heard two booms while running parachute training nearby, held that it was flying far below its permitted height.

A KGB report found Gagarin's crew had outdated information about what?

The weather no longer matched the report the crew had been given, so they believed they were higher than they were and could not pull the jet out of its spin in time.

What is the annual worldwide 'space party', first held on 12 April 2001, called?

Yuri's Night was dreamed up by three space enthusiasts as a World Space Party, and it also honours the first Space Shuttle launch, twenty years to the day after Gagarin's flight.

Which two moonwalkers left medals honouring Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov on the lunar surface?

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin also left a tribute to the three Apollo 1 astronauts killed in a launch-pad fire, so the fallen of both sides of the Space Race were remembered together.

Which competition's championship trophy has been called the Gagarin Cup since 2008?

The Kontinental Hockey League is said to have picked the name because the last possible game of its first season fell on 12 April; Gagarin himself liked to play in goal.

A Gagarin statue unveiled in London in 2011 was later moved outside which institution?

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, has been its home since 2013, overlooking the prime meridian; the statue was a gift from the space agency Roscosmos to mark fifty years since the flight.

What is the Moscow monument to Gagarin, unveiled in 1980 on Leninsky Avenue, made of?

Titanium, a metal often used in spacecraft, forms the figure, which rises on a ribbed column like a rocket's exhaust above a copy of his landing capsule.

Which fictional character tied with Gagarin as sixth-most-popular space hero in a 2010 survey?

James T. Kirk could tie with the first real spaceman because the survey was open-ended: people named any space hero they liked, real or invented.

What was named 'Gagarin' in April 2011 to mark fifty years since his flight?

A rocket carrying a crew: it bore his portrait and left from the very pad he had used, with an American astronaut among the three on board.

Where is the crater named after Gagarin in 1970?

The Moon's far side never turns towards Earth, so it had gone unseen until a Soviet probe photographed it in 1959.

Which town near Gagarin's birthplace was renamed Gagarin in 1968, after his death?

Gzhatsk took his name in the year he died; the family had moved there after the war, and the town has since become home to a cluster of museums in his memory.

In which city did Gagarin train as a military pilot from 1955?

Orenburg was officially called Chkalov, after a celebrated Soviet pilot, when he arrived, and took back its old name in 1957, the year he graduated and married a local medical-school graduate.

Which institution was renamed in Gagarin's honour after his death in 1968?

The cosmonaut training centre took his name weeks after he died; he had been its deputy training director while officials, afraid of losing him, tried to keep him from flying.