as long as we're on it

I would be remiss in not also observing that forty-five years ago today, the era of manned space flight began with a shy young test pilot flying the Vostok 1 into orbit around the Earth and successfully landing an hour and forty-eight minutes later.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin left the ground a nobody and returned to Earth as the first spaceman. He lost his life in a plane crash in 1968, but in the short remaining time he lived after his historic flight, he also married the first woman in space, fellow cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.