In the day after Yuri Gagarin's momentous ride into space, a strange story cropped in newspapers across the world. Sergei Bouterline, an MIT instructor, made the explosive claim that Gagarin -- standard-bearer for the Soviet proletariat -- was actually his nephew and a descendant of nobles. Despite no evidence that Bouterline was Gagarin's uncle, the story was too juicy not to print. "If Gagarin were a relative [of Bouterline], it would mean the Communists selected a descendant of the aristocracy they hated so much to carry out their finest achievement in space," UPI chuckled.

But it was no laughing matter to Gagarin or the Soviets. The story became such a big deal that Gagarin's very first public speech about the flight begins with him addressing the rumors of his origins.

Many people are interested in my biography. I have read in the newspapers that some irresponsible persons in the United States of America, who are distant relatives of the Gagarin nobility, consider that I am one of their offsprings. I will have to disillusion them. They have acted very stupidly. I am a simple Soviet man... The older generation of my family, my grandfather and grandmother, were also poor peasants, and there were no princes or counts in our family. Therefore, I will be forced to disillusion my self-appointed relatives in America.

There is one obvious reason the story had the power to spread around the world so quickly: Americans would have liked nothing better than if the Communists looked stupid in their selection of an inauthentic proletarian. We could just stop with the Cold War explanation, but there are a couple of more interesting ways to look at the power of this particular story.