18.12.2022
A boy who “had enough for everything: studies, childish pranks, and participation in amateur art activities. A young man who helped his friends to pass their exams and to enter a technical school.
An exemplary pupil, activist, participant of different groups and sections, a pilot and the first man who went into space. It seems that from childhood Yuri Gagarin was the role model, who could be put on the cover of magazines and in movie characters. But nothing human was alien to Gagarin. On the day of the 60th anniversary of the first manned space flight, we found some little-known facts that “humanize” Yuri Gagarin.
He was almost expelled from the flight school
As literary critic and writer Lev Danilkin, author of the biography of Yuri Gagarin (the book appeared in the ZhZL series of the Molodaya Gvardia publishing house) wrote, the cosmonaut was on the verge of being expelled from the flight school. Although he demonstrated excellent results in almost everything, he never managed to land the plane well. It came to the head of the school, Major General Vasily Makarov, and he realized that the small height of Gagarin (165 cm) prevents him from feeling the ground – he just saw the runway at a different angle. The problem was solved when Gagarin started putting a cushion on the seat.
Lost his pencil in space
With the first human flight into space, everything was not so smooth. For example, it is known that the total weight of Yuri Gagarin, his spacesuit and chair exceeded the maximum allowable load by 13.6 kg, so engineers dismantled part of the internal equipment “Vostok” to reduce the weight. There were no serious malfunctions during the space voyage, but there was no escape from everyday problems. For example, as the Russian writer, journalist and novelist Yuri Nagibin wrote in his book “Stories about Gagarin” (1978), in zero gravity a pencil lost its hold on Gagarin and the astronaut could not take notes in his logbook.
– Gagarin brought back to Earth an almost empty logbook,” Nagibin wrote. – According to him, he could only write one entry because the pencil he was writing with was badly fixed and simply flew away in zero gravity.
The cosmonaut recounted this episode himself – he mentioned it during his report to the State Commission after the space flight.
– I had to write another report – said Gagarin. – Took a tablet and a pencil was not there. It flew away somewhere. The ear was fastened to the pencil with a screw, but apparently it should have been glued or tightened. The screw came off, and the pencil flew away. I rolled up the logbook and put it in my pocket: it wouldn’t be of any use anyway, there was nothing to write with.
I carried spare buttons with me.
Literary critic and writer Leo Danilkin said that Gagarin “was forced to carry a box of buttons and sew them on after the next meeting, because the old ones were torn. Spare buttons were always with the cosmonaut. When meeting them, admirers tried not only to touch, hug or kiss their idol, but also to grab something to remember him by. Most often it was the buttons from the uniform that came to their hand.
Lunch with the Queen and the rules of etiquette
Have you ever tasted tea “the Gagarinsky way”? We are sure that you have. After his flight, the first cosmonaut toured dozens of countries on a “peace mission.” In July 1961, he arrived in England at the request of the union of foundry workers, where, among other things, he met with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Queen Elizabeth II. And at this meeting there were several mishaps related to court etiquette. The British researcher on the history of world space, Christopher Riley, spoke about them.
The rules of British court etiquette at that time did not allow the royals to be photographed with the commoners. But Elizabeth II elegantly got around this prohibition, saying that Gagarin is not an earthly man, but a heavenly man, practically a celestial, and convinced everyone that there would be no violation if they took a picture together. However, no one has been able to find that picture: most likely, it is stored in the royal archives. Now let’s go to the table. During the formal dinner, Gagarin saw a pile of cutlery he didn’t know, got a bit confused (with what and how to eat?), and honestly confessed it to the Queen. In response, Elizabeth II remarked that she herself does not know what to do – just that the footmen serve the necessary cutlery every time. And to get rid of embarrassment, she offered everyone to eat with what they were used to and what was convenient, took a simple spoon and together with Gagarin began to eat lobster pâté with it.
When it came to tea, Gagarin (like everyone else) was served tea with lemon. He drank it, naturally, took out a slice of lemon with his spoon and ate it. But if in the USSR and Russia it is a common thing, then at the royal court such an action is an unheard-of breach of etiquette, like eating with your hands and wiping them on the tablecloth. The queen found a way out of this situation as well, telling everyone to “drink tea the Gagarin way,” she took her lemon out of the cup and ate it.
The string of socks came off
After the first flight Gagarin was solemnly welcomed on the Red Square in Moscow. The newsreels show that Gagarin’s shoelace came undone while walking toward Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. And this detail only added to the people’s love for the cosmonaut.
Later, in an interview with the BBC, Khrushchev’s son Sergei (who was also at the ceremony) said that the shoelace was in fact not a sock brace. “Before, they made socks without elastic bands and wore suspenders on the calves, so the socks wouldn’t slip off. Gagarin had this elastic band unhooked on one leg, and the iron buckle hurt him a lot on his leg.
Medal “For the Development of the virgin lands.
It would seem that where is the cosmonautics and where is the field work. But the first award that Gagarin received after his flight was the medal “For the Development of Virgin Lands”. The fact is that because of a failure in the braking system the descent vehicle with Gagarin landed not in the planned area (110 km from Stalingrad), and in the Saratov region, near Engels, in the area, which belonged to the virgin and fallow lands.
– Strangely enough, later it became something like a tradition, and after Gagarin many cosmonauts received it (the medal “For the development of virgin lands”. – Ed.) immediately after landing – wrote the critic and writer Leo Danilkin. – Characteristically, the cosmonauts themselves perceived themselves as virgin landsmen, and the semantics of the virgin lands extended much further than one might think.
“I’m burning, farewell, comrades!”
When the Vostok 1 spacecraft began to descend, Yuri Gagarin uttered a phrase that had long been silenced: “I’m burning, farewell, comrades!” The thing is that before April 12, 1961 no one really knew what exactly happens when the spacecraft passes the dense layers of the atmosphere during descent. So Gagarin, when he saw the raging flames in the window, assumed that the spacecraft was on fire and that he himself had only seconds to live. In fact, the friction of the spacecraft’s heat-resistant shell against the atmosphere is a working moment that occurs during every flight. But now every astronaut is ready for the fire show overboard.
Became a pioneer at age 31
Before Gagarin reported a successful landing, an “unidentified flying object” was spotted by anti-aircraft gunners from an air defense unit. They were unaware of the space flight and decided to first find out what had fallen and then report back to their superiors. First they found the capsule and then Gagarin himself (they landed separately). The cosmonaut was already in the company of local residents. This is how eyewitnesses remember this meeting.
– Mechanics were working and four of them were the first to arrive: Ivan Rudenko, Ivan Kazachenko, Yakov Lysenko and Alexey Verevka – told the podcast “Babylon Moscow” by one of the witnesses Natalya Sviridenko. – At first Takhtarova, an old lady, was planting potatoes with her granddaughter Rita, and he called her over. But she was frightened at first. He says, “Help me take off my suit. It was so heavy that he could hardly move. Our guys ran up and helped him. And he immediately said: “Where should I call to let him know I’ve landed?” Grandma said: “On the horse.” And he said, “No, that’s not the speed.” And at that time a car from the military unit pulled up. They pushed our men away, and they quickly picked him up and took him by car. And here he was from the division and reported. And we even had Mishanin (mechanic of collective farm named after Taras Shevchenko Anatoliy Semenovich Mishanin. – Editor’s note) climbed into the ship, took the tubes. And the radio was ransacked. But then they found everything and gave it back. The guys removed the screws from the hull.
The authors of the book “The Gagarin Phenomenon” (Letopis Press, 2001) describe it this way:
– Seryogin (chairman of Ternovsky District Executive Committee Petr Ivanovich Seryogin. – Ed.) left and Mishanin got into the cabin again, opened the white cupboard and saw in it several tubes that looked like toothpaste. He took them, read the inscriptions: “Mashed meat”, “Chocolate sauce”, “Raspberry sauce”, bread that looked like chocolate candies. Tried them – liked them. I put them in my pocket. Then the fellow villagers began running up. Mishanin began to treat this strange food. Some started to rip off the paneling of the cabin. Later, the KGB went around the villages and stripped the population of what was left of the space cabin. They found a radio and Gagarin’s inflatable rubber boat.
But some items were still left with the villagers. They used them to create a small corner in the village, then – Gagarin’s room, which was called “Gagarin’s museum”. In 1965 Gagarin came here himself. Then the locals organized a solemn meeting, gave the cosmonaut a collective farmer’s book and accepted him as an honorary pioneer.
