June 16, 1963: The 1st Woman In Space

June 16, 1963: Vostok 6 is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On board is one passenger, Lieutenant Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Air Force. She becomes the first woman in space.

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937 in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, about 180 miles northeast of Moscow. While employed as a textile worker, she took parachuting lessons. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the 1st person in space. In response, America's NASA announced that it was training female pilots. It was a lie, but the Soviets bought it, and began training their own. In 1962, Valentina was chosen as 1 of the 1st 4 female "cosmonauts" (the Soviets' name for astronauts).

Vostok 6 was the last Vostok mission. Her call sign was "Chaika," meaning "Seagull," and when she reached orbit, she reported, "It is I, Seagull! Everything is fine. I see the horizon: It's a sky blue with a dark strip. How beautiful the Earth is. Everything is going well." She took photographs, which were later used to identify aerosol layers within the atmosphere. She orbited the Earth for 3 days, longer than all American astronauts combined had to that point.

As planned in all Vostok missions, she ejected from the capsule during its descent, at about 4 miles above the Earth, and made a parachute landing near Altai Krai, Russia. She had a little trouble with the parachute, due to high winds, and the landing bruised her nose. Some villagers helped her out of her spacesuit, and shared their dinner with her.

She remains the youngest woman ever to fly in space, 26; and the only woman ever to go into space alone. She was awarded the Order of Lenin and the highest honor the country could offer, Hero of the Soviet Union.

She married Vostok 3 cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev. Their daughter Elena was the 1st person born to a mother and a father who had both traveled in space. The couple split up, and she later remarried. She retired from the Soviet Air Force with the rank of Major General, and has been a member of the Russian national legislature, the State Duma, since 2011.

Tereshkova and her Vostok 6 capsule, 2015

There would not be another woman in space until July 19, 1982, when Svetlana Savitskaya flew on the Soyuz T-5 mission to the Salyut 7 space station. And there wouldn't be an American woman in space until June 18, 1983, when Sally Ride flew on the Space Shuttle Challenger. As of June 16, 2022, there have been 73 women in space: 56 Americans, 5 Russians, 2 Canadians, 2 Japanese, 2 Chinese, 1 British (English), 1 French, 1 Indian, 1 Iranian (who had become an American citizen and flew on an American flight), 1 South Korean and 1 Italian.

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June 16, 1963 was a Sunday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium. They won the opener, 4-0. Ralph Terry pitched a 4-hit shutout. Tony Kubek hit a home run. Yogi Berra went 0-for-3 with a walk. Roger Maris went 1-for-4.

They won the nightcap, 6-3. Bill Stafford won it, and Elston Howard hit a home run, on the way to winning the American League's Most Valuable Player award. Berra and Maris did not play. Mickey Mantle was injured, and did not play in either game.

* The New York Mets were swept in a doubleheader by the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, 11-5 and 10-3. Frank Robinson went 2-for-6 with a walk and 4 RBIs, and eventual National League Rookie of the Year Pete Rose went 3-for-8 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Boston Red Sox swept a doubleheader from the Baltimore Orioles at Fenway Park in Boston, 8-1 and 12-5. Roman Mejias hit 2 home runs for the Sox in the 1st game, and 1 in the 2nd game. Brooks Robinson went 3-for-9 with an RBI, and Carl Yastrzemski went 5-for-9.

* The Cleveland Indians swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, 4-2 and 6-4.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Athletics at Comiskey Park in Chicago, 2-1 and 3-2.

* A doubleheader was split at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Milwaukee Braves won the 1st game, 5-3. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 2nd game, 7-4, when Tony Taylor and Tony Gonzalez singled home the winning runs for the Phils in the top of the 11th. Hank Aaron went 2-for-9 with 2 RBIs.

* The Los Angeles Angels swept a doubleheader from the Minnesota Twins, at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota, 5-3 and 5-4. In the 2nd game, Earl Battey hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th to send the game to extra innings. The Angels scored 2 runs in the top of the 11th, and the Twins only got 1 in the bottom of the 11th.

* A doubleheader was split at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game over the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-3. Bob Gibson started, but was not the losing pitcher: Al McBean, the last Pirate pitcher, hit a home run off Ed Bauta in the top of the 12th inning. The Cardinals won the 2nd game, 11-7.

Over the 2 games, Roberto Clemente went 3-for-10 with an RBI, Willie Stargell went 1-for-9 with an RBI, and Stan Musial, in his final season, went 0-for-3 in the 1st game and did not play in the 2nd.

* A doubleheader was split at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The Chicago Cubs won the 1st game, 8-3. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2nd game, 2-0, as Nick Willhite pitched a 5-hit shutout. Ernie Banks went 2-for-9 over the doubleheader.

* And a doubleheader was split at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The Houston Colt .45s (they became the Astros in 1965) won the 1st game, 3-0, as Don Nottebart and Jim Umbricht combined on a 4-hit shutout. The San Francisco Giants won the 2nd game, 4-3. Willie Mays went 2-for-7.

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.