By New Worker
correspondent
On
12th April 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man
in space. He soon became an icon for the Soviet Union in a tour of the world
that included over 30 countries. This was during the height of the Cold War and
the American president, JF Kennedy, predictably barred Gagarin from visiting
the USA. The British Conservative government, however, took a more mature
approach to the Soviet cosmonaut, who received a rapturous reception from the
crowds in London and Manchester in a tour that ended with a meeting with the
Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and tea with the Queen at Buckingham
Palace.
Sadly this foundry-worker turned spaceman
died whilst on a routine training flight in 1968 – but his memory lives on in
the former Soviet Union and throughout the global aerospace community.
Gagarin’s ashes are now buried by the
Kremlin Wall but you don’t have to go to Moscow to pay your respects to the
legendary cosmonaut. His statue stands outside the Royal Observatory in
Greenwich, depicting Gagarin in his spacesuit astride the world.
It is, in fact, a copy of a monument that
stands in Lyubertsy, the town where Gagarin worked as a foundry-man before
joining the Soviet Air Force. The London statue was given to the British people
in 2011 by Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency. Originally displayed in the
Mall, it was subsequently moved in 2013 to its permanent home at the Royal
Observatory in Greenwich Park in south-east London, in grounds renamed Gagarin
Terrace.
Greenwich Park is
open from 6am for pedestrians and 7am for traffic all year round. Admission is
free.
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