6 Surprising Facts About the First Manned Space Mission

(via Live Science) Fifty-seven years ago, on April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Reaching unprecedented speeds for manned travel, the spacecraft broke free of the Earth’s gravitational pull and entered orbit around the planet, circling once before re-entering the atmosphere and landing back on Soviet soil. Here are six little-known facts about Gagarin’s historic mission.