Inside the life of the first man in space - from a Nazi mud hut to his mysterious death
dailystar.co.ukElon Musk and Jeff Bezos reach for the stars with their own personal vanity space programmes, it's easy to take manned spaceflight for granted in 2022.But it was only 61 years ago today that humanity travelled boldly towards the stars.On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin strapped himself into a creaking rocket that was about as powerful as a modern calculator and blasted off.Unsure whether he would die up there or not in the weightless expanse of the stratosphere, Gagarin had only three words to say to his colleagues before leaving Earth: "off we go!"Upon his return, Gagarin became an international sensation with adoring fans around the world.
He was so popular, in fact, that President John F. Kennedy banned him from visiting the United States over fears he would stoke communist sympathies.But long before Gagarin changed the fate of humanity forever, he was forcibly raised in a mud hut and even became an anti-Nazi saboteur.Born in 1934 to parents who worked on a Stalinist collective farm, Gagarin was the third of four children.His parents' farm was right in the war path of Adolf Hitler.
In 1941, retreating Nazis captured his village and burned down his school, cutting off Gagarin's education early.The Gagarin family residence was then taken over by a German officer who booted them out of their house but let them build a three-metre mud hut in the back garden, where Gagarin was forced to live until the German occupation ended.After a German officer tried to hang his brother, Gagarin became a saboteur, destroying tank batteries and randomly mixing up chemical supplies.
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