Did you know that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space on April 12, 1961? Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes. He was launched into orbit aboard a Vostok rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome at Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR (now known as Kazakhstan). His call sign was Kedr (“cedar“).

He landed inside his spacecraft after 27 hours and 18 minutes in space. Although Gagarin had never been higher than 167 kilometers, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union — an award never given to any other cosmonaut.

Russians still celebrate Cosmonauts Day on April 12, in memory of Gagarin’s flight aboard Vostok 1. The Russian Federal Space Agency plans to build a rocket monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic journey into space.

Yuri Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934, in Klushino (near Gzhatsk, about 110 miles southwest of Moscow), Russia. He was the 3rd child out of 5 children born to Alexei and Anna Gagarin. His father worked as a carpenter, and his mother worked at a textile plant.

The local public school wasn’t good enough for Yuri, so he attended an agricultural technical school near Gzhatsk. Upon graduating from secondary school in 1953, he entered the Soviet Army. He served with the First Choczah Division near Kaluga until 1955, when he joined flight training at Orenburg Military Pilot’s School. Later that same year, on October 4, 1955, he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In 1956, Gagarin was accepted into the Orenburg pilot’s school and graduated as a pilot-engineer at the top of his class. Yuri was assigned to serve in a fighter squadron in Ukraine after graduation. He flew a MiG-15 from December 1957 until 1960 when he entered Air Force pilot training at Monino Airfield near Moscow.

He became a bomber pilot and completed the first stage of piloting tests with high marks on November 16, 1959. In 1962, Yuri began serving as a Communist Party Central Committee member.

While completing cosmonaut candidate training at Star City (near Moscow), Gagarin became an expert in space theory and extravehicular activity, completing parachute training. On March 16, 1960, Yuri Gagarin was selected to be a member of the first group (Group One) of Soviet cosmonauts.