Tomorrow will mark the 50th anniversary of the first man in space. On April 12, 1961 Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, spent 108 minutes in space aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. It would be his only space flight. Gagarin continued his career designing spacecraft and training other cosmonauts. He died in 1968 when a jet he was piloting crashed.
Gagarin received many honors for his achievement, but perhaps none so great as being immortalized in musical form by French techno-artiste Jean-Michel Jarre:
Recommended reading:
SixDay Science 
Amazing achievement, even if it was the dang Commies doing it :)
There is a lot of history packed into that slideshow, all around one fellow.
I believe Gagarin wouldn’t have wanted to go out by any other way.
Gagarin was by all accounts a nifty guy. We should have encouraged him to defect.
Wouldn’t that have been something! If the Soviets found out, they would’ve had him killed and made it look like an acci– Hmm….
Yeah, hmm.