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Yuri Gagarin

by Lena from Samara, Russia

Yuri Gagarin (http://www.peoples.ru/military/cosmos/gagarin/)
Yuri Gagarin (http://www.peoples.ru/military/cosmos/gagarin/)

To my mind a hero is a well–known person who contributed a lot to the nation. Only a hard–working and a reliable person can be a real hero. One of these people’s greatest qualities is initiative. They can think themselves and take the necessary action. They don’t need to wait for orders all the time. I want to tell you about one of such people - about Yuri Gagarin.I think that he is a hero. Yuri Gagarin was the first cosmonaut in the world. He was very brave, that’s why he was the first.

Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was born on the 9th of March in 1934. Yuri was an active, brave and curious boy. His father helped him to make planes. Gagarin’s «space» biography began at a lecture about the work of Tsiolkovsky. Then, he fell ill with a "disease" that has no name in medicine: a desire to go up into the sky, a desire to fly.

Yuri Gagarin (http://allday.ru/index.php?newsid=70110)
Yuri Gagarin (http://allday.ru/index.php?newsid=70110)

April 12, 1961 will never be forgotten. On that day Yuri Gagarin was launched into space. He circled the globe in the spaceship «Vostok» for 108 minutes. Gagarin was taking an enormous risk, because at that time nobody knew how a human being would stand up to space flight. It was the greatest flight. Yuri Gagarin's name has become a legend, a symbol of heroism in the name of science and progress.Yuri Gagarin was deeply engaged in public and political activity, but he could not stand aside from training his friends for new flights. He gave all his knowledge and enthusiasm to the preparation for each new flight. He taught others and studied himself. He dreamed of the time when spaceships would undertake interplanetary flights and he would be on board that Spaceship. For the sake of this dream Yuri Gagarin worked and lived.

Yuri Gagarin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)
Yuri Gagarin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)

On March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin died in a mig-15 trainer crash. He was only 34. On that day we lost a man of remarkable courage and spiritual beauty. It was impossible to say what a man’s life would have been like if he remained alive. He put his soul, all his strength into «cosmic work».

The story of Gagarin influenced my life because he was kind, generous and hard-working. He was kind and easy-going and one of his best traits was optimism. Only an optimistic and a hard-working person can gain success and fame. And I wish I would also be the first, maybe not in space exploration, but in some other sphere.

Gagarin’s name will remain immortal in the history of mankind, in the history of the Earth, which he called the Blue Planet.

Page created on 4/28/2009 12:00:00 AM

Last edited 4/28/2009 12:00:00 AM

The beliefs, viewpoints and opinions expressed in this hero submission on the website are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, viewpoints and opinions of The MY HERO Project and its staff.

Related Links

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Encyclopedia Astronautica - Information about space
Wikipedia - Information about Yuri Gagarin