It was on the 12th of April, 1961, when the first flight by man into cosmic space took place. Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in the world, was a 27-year old Air Force pilot at that time.

The spaceship flew at the speed of 300 miles a minute. That's six times faster than man ever travelled before. His flight lasted 108 minutes, but a circuit round the Earth took 89 minutes.

This is what Yuri Gagarin said at his press conferenc : "On my flight the 'day' side of the Earth was clearly seen: the continents, islands, seas, and big rivers. Flying over the land I could clearly see the big squares of fields, and it was possible to distinguish which was meadow and which was forest. I could not see as well as from an airplane, but very, very well though.