The ongoing floods in Pakistan could have been largely prevented, writes ABDUL RAHMAN
When Yuri Gagarin gave Britain’s ruling class a headache
MAT COWARD recalls the occasion when the first man in space paid a visit to our shores in 1961
A crowd of people at Heathrow Airport, who had waited to see Major Yuri Gagarin (centre) the first man in space, as he arrived at the airport to fly home after a four day visit to the country, July 15, 1961
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At 80, Elizabeth Morley wished she could join Palestine Action’s ladder-climbing but found her perfect protest at Defend Our Juries, proving Britain’s elders won’t be silenced despite government crackdowns, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports on the Israeli national strike as thousands call for an end to the war
YURI GAGARIN, the first human to travel into outer space, was born on March 9 1934, so let’s celebrate his birthday by remembering the time he embarrassed a British Tory government simply by being charming.
The Soviet Union’s achievement in April 1961, in sending a crewed spaceship into orbit and bringing it safely back to Earth, was greeted worldwide as the start of a new scientific and historic epoch. Humankind had entered the space age, and as the cosmonaut at the centre of it, Gagarin, this humble, smiling son of a carpenter and a farmer, overnight became the word’s biggest celebrity.
He was sent on a celebratory world tour, which reached Britain in July. This was a political headache for the British government; the cold war meant that Britain, as an ally of the US, was reluctant to give a hero’s welcome to a representative of the enemy. It was particularly embarrassing to do so at a time when the US’s own space programme was struggling, and failing, to catch up with the USSR’s.
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