'First Orbit' Reveals What Yuri Gagarin Saw

By Jennifer Ouellette

"The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended." -- Yuri Gagarin on being the first human in space

On April 12, 1961, a Russian cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin made space history when he became the first human being to blast off into space, aboard a bell-shaped capsule known as Voystok 1.

In 108 minutes, he circled the Earth, passing over the Pacific Ocean, the Straits of Magellan, the Atlantic and Africa before Voystok 1 reentered the Earth's atmosphere and landed near Engels, Russia.

Gagarin became a national hero overnight, and his untimely death seven years later while piloting a MiG-15 fighter jet during a routine training flight was a national tragedy in the Soviet Union. But Gagarin's status as a hero now transcends Mother Russia: "Yuri's Night" is a global Webcast celebration, held each year on April 12 in his honor.