Yuri Gagarin

Born on the March 9th, 1934 (the same year that Hitler declared himself Fuhrer) to a carpenter and a milkmaid, Yuri Gagarin led a difficult childhood. Like millions of other people in the Soviet Union, the Gagarin family suffered under Nazi occupation in 1941. After an officer took over their house, the family was forced to live in a mud house ten feet by ten feet for almost a whole year. His two older brothers were deported to Poland for slave labour and they did not return until after the war.

At the age of 16 he entered apprenticeship at the Lyubertsy Steel Plant near Moscow. He graduated from 7th grade and from his apprenticeship and he was selected to further study at the Saratov Industrial Technical School. On weekends, he volunteered for training as a Soviet air cadet. There he learnt to fly a biplane and later a Yak-18. After his graduation, he was drafted for the Soviet Army in 1955. He was sent to the First Chkalov Air Force Pilot's School and learnt to fly the MiG-15. In the November of 1957 he became a lieutenant of the Soviet Air Forces, and in 1959 he became senior lieutenant.

In 1960, after an extensive selection process, Gagarin was chosen along with 19 other pilots for the Soviet Space Program. This group was further funneled to just six people, called the Sochi Six. These men underwent very thorough training and testing. Eventually, Gagarin was selected due to his excelling at the tests and because he was only 5 foot 2 inches tall (the cockpit was small). His active lifestyle (he played basketball and ice hockey) helped improve his fitness. A soviet air force doctor described Gagarin as follows:

"Modest; embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy; high degree of intellectual development evident in Yuri; fantastic memory; distinguishes himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his surroundings; a well-developed imagination; quick reactions; persevering, prepares himself painstakingly for his activities and training exercises, handles celestial mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher mathematics; does not feel constrained when he has to defend his point of view if he considers himself right; appears that he understands life better than a lot of his friends"

On the 12th of April 1961, the Vostok 1 spacecraft, with Gagarin on board, was launched. It successfully made it into space and orbited Earth, making Yuri the first man in space and the first man to orbit Earth. Apparently, during reentry, he whistled the tune of a nationalist Soviet tune ("The Motherland Hears, The Motherland knows").

After his flight Yuri became a global sensation, visiting Italy, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Japan, the UK, and Egypt. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest award of the Soviet Union. He did have an awkward encounter when his wife caught him cheating on her and his attempted escape through the window resulted in his face hitting a kerbstone. He continued working with the Soviet Space Program, moving up the ranks to Colonel. On the 27th of March, 1968, he died in a fatal crash while on a routine training flight. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin.