1934-1968

Soviet Cosmonaut

When Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born in 1934, his parents had no way of knowing that he was destined for a unique place in world history: the first human to travel in space. His father, a carpenter by trade, left the collective farm where the family lived in Gzhatsk, about 100 miles from Moscow. Gagarin senior chose to join the Russian army when his not-yet-famous son was seven years old. He wanted to protect his family from the German invaders and insisted that his wife take Yuri and his two older siblings away from the battlefront. There was no place near Moscow where Yuri could be accepted in elementary school, so instead he enrolled in a trade school in nearby Lyubertsy. When he graduated in 1951, he had a degree in metal working but had become interested in aviation.

While he was continuing his...