Video: 'Yuri Gagarin: First Man In Space | Chasing the Moon | American Experience | PBS'

(Wednesday, April 12, 1961, at 12:07 p.m. Alma-Ata Time; during the Space Race and the Cold War) — Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, 27, became the first human to go into outer space today, launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site No.1, a spaceport in an area of southern Kazakhstan leased to Russia, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.

Gagarin made one orbit of the Earth before re-entering, and landed 1 hour, 48 minutes later, 15 miles southwest of the city of Engels in Russia’s Saratov Oblast.

Video: 'Our World - April 12, 1961' (first human in space at 17:54)