Happy Birthday to the Legend, the first human in space Yuri Gagarin . Almost 58 years ago, on April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went to space. The rocket carrying Gagarin's Vostok 1 spacecraft launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 6:07 a.m. local time. Reaching unprecedented speeds for manned travel, the spacecraft broke free of the Earth's gravitational pull and entered orbit around the planet, circling once before re-entering the atmosphere and landing back on Soviet soil.
Two days before his flight, Yuri Gagarin wrote a farewell letter to his wife and daughters in case of an accident. His wife, Valentina received this letter 7 years later, when her husband died in a plane crash in 1968.
You never know when is your last day...
