April 12, 1961: The First Man In Space

April 12, 1961: Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the 1st man in space. The 27-year-old native of the village of Klushino in the town of Gzhatsk -- which would later be renamed Gagarin -- was a Lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. He was launched at 12:07 PM local time (1:07 AM, U.S. Eastern Time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and flew aboard Vostok 1 ("Vostok" means "East") for 1 hour and 48 minutes, reaching Earth orbit in 10 minutes, and completing a single trip around the planet.

He ejected from his capsule, and parachuted to land on a farm near the town of Engels, in Saratov Oblast. (An "Oblast" is the Russian equivalent to what America calls "States"). He was found by a farm woman and her granddaughter. He later said, "When they saw me in my space suit, and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, 'Don't be afraid! I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space, and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"

He was now the most famous private citizen in the world. It would be another 23 days before America put a man in space, Alan Shepard; and 10 months before an American reached orbit, John Glenn.

His life afterward was very mixed. He was put in a lot of situations that required him to be away from home, and to drink. He became an alcoholic, and his wife caught him with another woman. He also ruffled some feathers by telling his superiors that the Soyuz 1 spacecraft was unsafe, and shouldn't fly. They didn't listen, and it crashed, killing his friend Vladimir Komarov. They moved him out of contention for a second spaceflight, as much to keep him quiet as to keep him alive.

On March 27, 1968, now a full Colonel, Gagarin was flying a MiG-15 near Kirzhach, Russia, when problems with the weather and his perception thereof caused him to crash. He had just turned 34, and left behind a wife and 2 daughters. 

Because of his iconoclasm and personal failings, it has often been wondered if the plane was sabotaged. But every investigation since has suggested pilot error. But perhaps the greatest of all Soviet astronauts ("cosmonauts"), Aleksey Leonov, was flying a helicopter nearby, and thinks another jet flew too close, causing a sonic boom, causing Gagarin's fatal error. His remains were interred in the Kremlin Wall in Moscow's Red Square.

As the 1st human in space, Yuri Gagarin was one of the few Soviet citizens who could genuinely be considered a hero by the capitalist and democratic West.

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April 12, 1961 was a Wednesday. There were only 2 Major League Baseball games scheduled, as most teams had opened the season the day before, and had scheduled this day as an off-day in case of rain for their intended opener.

Both games were on the Pacific Coast. The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-2 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. (Dodger Stadium opened the following year.) Wally Moon hit a home run in the 7th inning, but it was the Dodgers' pitcher Johnny Podres, the Brooklyn hero of 1955, who drove in the winning run that inning, with an RBI single.

And the San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at Candlestick Park. Tom Haller hit a home run in the 7th, but the winning run came home in the 8th, when Vernon Law hit Orlando Cepeda with a pitch with the bases loaded.

The night before, the Boston Celtics had clinched the NBA Championship, beating the St. Louis Hawks, 121-112 in Game 5. The Hawks haven't played an NBA Finals game since.

The Stanley Cup Finals were underway, and Game 4 was played on April 12, at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. The Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Blackhawks 2-1, on goals by Alex Delvecchio and Bruce MacGregor.

But the Blackhawks would win Games 5 and 6, and take the Cup. The Wings, who last won the Cup in 1955, wouldn't win it again until 1997; the Hawks, until 2010.

Four days later, Tottenham Hotspur beat Sheffield Wednesday of Yorkshire, 2-1 at White Hart Lane in North London (actually, in Middlesex until a redrawing of city boundaries took effect in 1965), to clinch the Championship of England's Football League. Three weeks later, they beat Leicester City to win the FA Cup, becoming the 1st team in the 20th Century to win both in the same year, known as "doing The Double." "Spurs" haven't won the League since.