Curious facts from the biography of the first cosmonaut that the public did not know about: Unknown Yuri Gagarin

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Aviation and Cosmonautics Day is an international holiday celebrated on April 12. This is a special day in the history of mankind - the day when the cosmos was submitted to man for the first time. A real triumph of science and all those involved in the space industry! The pioneer who paved the way to the stars was the Soviet pilot - Yuri Gagarin. Even now every schoolboy knows his name, but there are many curious facts in his biography that have never been in the public domain.

Everything that lies on the surface: a good-natured open face and his sincere smile. This is how the world still remembers Gagarin. The author of the cult phrase "Let's go!" not only lived by the sky, he was ill with it.

The future cosmonaut was born on March 9, 1934 in an ordinary Soviet family of rural workers, in the Smolensk region. The small town of Gzhatsk now bears his name. After Yuri graduated from school in his hometown, he enters a vocational school, specializing in molding and foundry. After graduating from this educational institution, he decides to go to study at an industrial technical school. During these years, Gagarin was passionately interested in aviation, began to visit the Saratov flying club.

In the summer of 1955, Gagarin graduated from college with honors. A month later, he was lucky enough to fulfill his old dream - to make his first independent flight on a Yak-18 aircraft. In the same year, Yuri was called up to serve in the ranks of the Soviet army. He began to serve in the city of Orenburg. There he entered the 1st Chkalov Military Aviation School of Pilots named after K. E. Voroshilov.

At the same time, Yuri met his future wife and the love of his life. Dark-haired and brown-eyed, fragile and short, with a scattering of cute little freckles on her face, Valentina immediately won the heart of the gallant cadet. After almost four years of long courtship, a few days after Gagarin graduated from the flight school, the couple got married.

The first daughter of the Gagarins, Elena, was born in Zapolyarny, Murmansk region, where Yuri was sent to serve. In the same year, Gagarin found out about the recruitment of pilots as cosmonauts and decided to try. The competition was crazy - about three thousand people per seat, but this did not frighten him or stop him at all.

After very difficult and numerous tests, Gagarin was accepted into the ranks of Soviet cosmonauts. He transports his family to Zvezdny Gorodok near Moscow and begins a new life, which now consists of endless flight training. Valentina began to work right there - at the Flight Control Center, as a laboratory assistant-biochemist. A month before the fateful flight into space, Valya gave her husband another daughter - Galina.

April 12, 1961 became a turning point not only for world history, but also for the history of the Gagarin family. After all, the first cosmonaut had to become the face of the Soviet Union, capable of representing the country in the international arena with dignity. This was well understood by both Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the head of the Soviet space project, and the heads of the Defense Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and other persons in charge of space development.

Not a trace remained of the calm and measured family life. Now their lives were spent in endless flashes of cameras, interviews, trips to television to participate in various programs, travel abroad and meetings with top officials of foreign states. Yuri was recognized everywhere, wherever he went, and they simply did not give a pass.

Gagarin himself suffered greatly from the fact that he had to be torn between duty and his loved ones. But both Yuri and Valentina passed this test of glory with honor and did not lose the most valuable thing that they had - love for each other and their children. The fame and worldwide recognition did not spoil the character of the spouses. They held out.

For the first flight into space, the pioneer Yuri Gagarin was awarded such a high title as Hero of the Soviet Union and was awarded one of the highest state awards - the Order of Lenin.

Yuri was looking forward to when he could finally plunge into his favorite work again. And so, in 1961, he entered the N. E. Zhukovsky. It was very difficult, but Gagarin was busy with what he loved most. He gave all of himself to the cause. Two years later, he was appointed deputy head of the Cosmonaut Training Center. Then he again began preparations for space flights. It was supposed to be a flight to the moon. The flight of the Soyuz-1 spacecraft, within the framework of the Soviet "lunar program", ended in failure and death of cosmonaut Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov. During his speech at the memorial service, Gagarin promised that they would "teach the Soyuz to fly." And so it happened, only by that time Yuri himself was gone.

After defending his diploma, Gagarin achieved permission to make an independent training flight - he continued to prepare for new space achievements. He made the first and last such flight on March 27, 1968. It all ended in one moment, the whole happy life - Yuri Gagarin died. The exact reasons and circumstances of this tragedy, to this day, have not been fully clarified. It is only known for certain that the sky took its own, the first cosmonaut of our planet, Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, died. The authorities declared this day a mourning day.

Probably, with a kind of sixth sense, Yuri felt the threat hanging over him. Before the flight, he wrote a letter to his beloved wife. It became a farewell. Valentina read it only after her husband's death.

Valentina Ivanovna Gagarina fulfilled everything that her beloved husband asked so much: she raised her daughters as he dreamed of - people worthy and respected by all. The eldest daughter became an art critic. In the early 2000s, she was appointed general director of the Moscow Kremlin State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve. The youngest graduated from the Plekhanov University of Economics, where she still works as the head of the department. Now they both have grown children. Valentina herself did not arrange her personal happiness. She loved once and remained faithful to her only beloved until her death.

Today, in the 21st century, space science demonstrates the greatest achievements: thousands, even tens of thousands, of satellites revolve around our planet, man was on the Moon, Mars and Venus were explored by automatic probes and many other achievements. But forever the day of April 12 will remain in history as the first flight into open space of the Soviet pilot Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin.

Read more about the love story of Yuri Gagarin and his Valentina in our article Yuri and Valentina Gagarins: always together both on earth and in space.