51 years ago on April 12, 1961, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history as the first human in space. The Russian pilot blasted off in his Vostok spacecraft and completed one orbit of planet earth before returning to the Soviet Union.

Upon learning of the achievement, President John F. Kennedy announced:

THE ACHIEVEMENT by the USSR of orbiting a man and returning him safely to ground is an outstanding technical accomplishment. We congratulate the Soviet scientists and engineers who made this feat possible. The exploration of our solar system is an ambition which we and all mankind share with the Soviet Union and this is an important step toward that goal. Our own Mercury man-in-space program is directed toward that same end.

In 1962, Kennedy would challenge NASA to send a man to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Gagarin became an international celebrity and a symbol of the first win in the space race between America and Russia. Due to his iconic status, Gagarin was not permitted to fly for eight years. Sadly, when he returned to the skies on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach.

Tags: JFK, Kennedy, NASA, Popular Culture, Space Program