Poyekhali!, Off We Go!: Gagarin, First Human in Space
1961 · event
At 9:07 Moscow time on 12 April 1961, a 27-year-old carpenter's son from a village the Nazis had burned shouted "Poyekhali!", "Off we go!", and became the first human being to leave the planet. Yuri Gagarin's single orbit lasted 108 minutes; humanity's view of itself changed forever.
He returned by parachute into a potato field, where a startled woman and her granddaughter asked if he had come from space. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I have." His smile became the most famous in the world, a cosmonaut so charming even the Cold War couldn't weaponise him entirely.
Gagarin died seven years later in a routine training flight, at 34. April 12th is still celebrated worldwide as Yuri's Night, the anniversary of the morning our species first slipped, briefly and forever, off its home world.