je ne sais pas

Yuri Gagarin. What a guy. It's all right if you're not entirely sure who he was. This is an environment of welcoming. Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and he was awesome.

Yuri Gagarin

He went up and looked at the earth for about two hours, then parachuted back down to Mother Russia and continued to be an all around genuinely nice guy. That's almost the entire reason why he was chosen to be the first cosmonaut, really. It was between him and another Air Force pilot named Gherman Titov. Gagarin was friendly, modest, and grew up on a collective farm; Titov was an aloof middle classman. Everybody expected the CPSU to choose him to fly the first manned mission into space, but they went ahead and showed that bourgeois bastard what for by picking Gagarin because they felt that the people of the Soviet Union would better relate to him.

And relate they did. He was even a hero in America. America. During the Cold War. He's the kind of guy who you could look up to as a kid. I feel like you could send him a letter all the way from the United States, never expecting a reply, and then months later receive a handwritten response in thoroughly charming broken English. It'd probably close with some cheesy salutation like "keep reaching for the stars!" He seems like the kind of guy who ended a few too many of his sentences with exclamation points. I love that. First man in space, and he was still the kind of guy who ended every damn sentence with an exclamation point. I don't know about you, but I find that admirable as hell. It makes him seem that much more genuine to me, and I can't quite tell you why.

Yuri Gagarin again

Can you take me back where I came from?

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