5718–5721 AM · 1958 CE — 1961 CE · world history
Sputnik and Gagarin's Flight
Humanity reaches space: first a satellite, four years later a man.
On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union puts a metal sphere into orbit whose beeping is picked up by radio amateurs worldwide. America takes it as a defeat and creates NASA. Four years later, on 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin circles the Earth once in 108 minutes and returns alive, the first person to see the planet from outside.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the launch records: Sputnik (1957) and Gagarin’s flight (1961)
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — the space race of the two systems
Basis: documents and evidence.