Yuri Gagarin or also Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on March 9^th, 1934. He was born in Klushino near Moscow, Russia (Wikipedia, 2007). As he was growing up he started getting more and more involved with flying because his teachers were part of the Red Army Air Force (Wikipedia, 2007). In 1960 Yuri was chosen by the Soviet Space Program, as one of the 20 cosmonauts (Wikipedia, 2007). On April 12, 1962 Gagarin became the first human to go into space on the Vostok 3KA-2 or Vostok 1(Wikipedia, 2007). There he successfully contacted the Earth and sent them a few simple messages (Wikipedia, 2007). After his successful flight he became and instant celebrity on Earth and has led many people into going to space (Wikipedia, 2007).