60 years ago today, a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother were in their field near the city of Engels in Western Russia, when they were met with an extremely strange sight.
Above them, they saw a large object crash to the Earth a few miles away. A few minutes later, a figure in a silver costume slowly descended in a parachute, and asked the two if he could use their telephone.
Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into outer space, on 12 April 1961. Inside his capsule, Vostok 1, he completed one full orbit of Earth, before returning to the planet 108 minutes after liftoff. The landing zones in early spaceflights weren't as precise as they were now (see footage of Space X flights where the rocket lands right next to the pad almost every time, or on the pad before exploding), and Gagarin was somewhat off course.