Yuri Gagarin

(Newser) - Crushed into the pilot's seat by heavy G-forces, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin saw flames outside his spacecraft and prepared to die. His voice broke the tense silence at ground control: "I’m burning. Goodbye, comrades." Gagarin didn’t know that the blazing inferno he observed through a...

(Newser) - When Yuri Gagarin took the first manned flight into space in 1961, the Soviet Union touted it as a major Cold War triumph for Communist ideology. But the flight wasn’t as perfect as Soviet officials claimed, a new book asserts. In truth, due to two miscalculations by scientists, Gagarin...

(Newser) - He was never interested in politics, but Rudolf Nureyev was a KGB scourge for decades after his 1961 defection. The famed ballet dancer’s colleagues were glad to see him go—‘Rudik’ was a prima donna to management and competition for fellow performers—but the state was incensed, the...