The first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of R-7, Vostok, on 12 April 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

27-year-old Yuri Gagarin was the only crew member of Vostok 1.

In an April 5 diary entry, Kamanin wrote that he was still undecided between Gagarin and Titov.

When Gagarin and Titov were informed of the decision during a meeting on April 9, Gagarin was very happy, and Titov was disappointed.

Gagarin was examined by a team of doctors prior to his flight.

This was a different Gagarin.

Gagarin entered the Vostok 1 spacecraft, and at 7: 10 am local time ( 04: 10 UT ), the radio communication system was turned on.

Once Gagarin was in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, his picture appeared on television screens in the launch control room from an onboard camera.

Following a series of tests and checks, about forty minutes after Gagarin entered the spacecraft, its hatch was closed.

Gagarin, on the other hand, was described as calm ; about half an hour before launch his pulse was recorded at 64 beats per minute.

At 07: 55 UT, when Vostok 1 was still 7 km from the ground, the hatch of the spacecraft was released, and two seconds later Gagarin was ejected.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968 ) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut.

Gagarin became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour.

Gagarin later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him.

Gagarin died in 1968 when the MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed.

Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk ( renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death ), ( now in Smolensk Oblast, Russia ), on 9 March 1934.

After studying for one year at a vocational technical school in Lyubertsy, Gagarin was selected for further training at a technical high school in Saratov.

In 1960, after much searching and a selection process, Yuri Gagarin was chosen with 19 other pilots for the Soviet space program.

When Komarov's flight ended in a fatal crash, Gagarin was permanently banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights.

This sentiment was further inspired by the rediscovery of a contemporary, 13th-century wall painting of Tamar in the then-ruined Betania monastery, which was uncovered and restored by Prince Grigory Gagarin in the 1840s.

For further history of the academy see the article on the Zhukovsky – Gagarin Air Force Academy.

Out of the twenty selected, the eventual choices for the first launch were Gagarin and Gherman Titov due to their performance during training sessions as well as their physical characteristics — space was limited in the small Vostok cockpit, and both men were rather short.

Komarov was selected to command the Soyuz 1, in 1967, with Yuri Gagarin as his backup cosmonaut.

In 1987 he was selected as a cosmonaut, and arrived at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Lonchakov was selected as a test-cosmonaut candidate of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Cosmonaut Office in December 1997.

In 1987, after a successful tour as Commander of the Gagarin Military Air-Force Academy, he was selected as a cosmonaut for training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Gennady Padalka was selected as a cosmonaut candidate to start training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in 1989.

Romanenko was selected as a cosmonaut candidate at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Cosmonaut Office in December 1997.

In 1836 a young former colleague at the Munich legation, Prince Ivan Gagarin, obtained Tyutchev's permission to publish his selected poems in Sovremennik, a literary journal edited by Pushkin.

After Gagarin became the Greatest Man in the World, for a nation that does not believe in the cult of personality or in careerism, Moreland wrote me a letter in which he said: `` I am not interested in how long a bee can live in a vacuum, or how far it can fly.

On that cold, but bright, April day we were guests of your government in the reviewing stand of Red Square to witness the poeple's celebration for Yuri Gagarin and later on that day we attended the somewhat more exclusive reception for him in one of the impressive palaces of the Kremlin.

The assignments were formally made on April 8, four days before the mission, but Gagarin had been a favourite among the cosmonaut candidates for at least several months.

Launch would not occur for another two hours, and during the time Gagarin chatted with the mission's main CapCom, as well as Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, Nikolai Kamanin, and a few others.

The ground station at Khabarovsk reports back, " There are no instructions from No. 20 ( Sergey Korolyov ), and the flight is proceeding normally " They are telling Gagarin that they don't have his orbital parameters yet because the spacecraft has been in orbit for only 6 minutes, but the spacecraft systems are performing well.

Gagarin and other prospective candidates were subjected to experiments designed to test physical and psychological endurance ; he also underwent training for the upcoming flight.

When the 20 candidates were asked to anonymously vote for which other candidate they would like to see as the first to fly, all but three chose Gagarin.

Gagarin was backup pilot for his friend Vladimir Komarov in the Soyuz 1 flight, which was launched despite Gagarin's protests that additional safety precautions were necessary.

* The Seliger system was tested during the 1960 launches of the Vostok capsule, including Sputnik 5, containing the space dogs Belka and Strelka, whose images are often mistaken for the dog Laika and the 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space on Vostok 1.

In 1965, Komarov worked with Yuri Gagarin in supervising preparations for the flight of Voskhod 2, which carried out the first attempt of an Extravehicular activity in outer space.

One source reports that before boarding the spacecraft, Komarov feared for his life, but he flew anyway in order to spare Gagarin the same fate.

In May 1967, Gagarin and Leonov criticised Mishin's " poor knowledge of the Soyuz spacecraft and the details of its operation, his lack of cooperation in working with the cosmonauts in flight and training activities " and asked Kamanin for him to be cited in the official report into the crash.

Chris Hadfield was the Director of Operations for NASA at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center ( GCTC ) in Star City, Russia from 2001 until 2003.

Yuri Gagarin was the backup pilot for Soyuz 1, and was aware of the design problems and the pressures from the Politburo to proceed with the flight.

In 1961, the sky was no longer the limit for manned flight, as Yuri Gagarin orbited once around the planet within 108 minutes, and then used the descent module of Vostok I to safely reenter the atmosphere and reduce speed from Mach 25 using friction and converting velocity into heat.

From 1966 until 1970 he studied at the Gagarin Air Force Academy in Monino, in the Soviet Union, and afterwards worked in the administration of the East German air force, responsible for pilot education and flight safety.

Unlike Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Titov took manual control of the spacecraft for a short while.

At the Federation's 62nd general conference held in Helsinki, Finland, Beregovoy was awarded the first Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal for achievements in space ; Finnish President Urho Kekkonen was the honorary presenter on July 14, 1968.