In 1961, Yuri Gagarin’s legendary space flight lasted just 108 minutes. A monument in Belgrade to the first person in space did not last much longer, being swiftly dismantled after causing online hilarity owing to its curiously small head.

On Sunday, a number of Serbian websites noticed that a monument to the cosmonaut had appeared on a street in the Serbian capital that beared his name. The large plinth and the small bust of Gagarin’s head prompted the website Noizz to quip: “The only way you can see it clearly is to launch yourself into the sky.”

The monument’s unfortunate proportions prompted a barrage of online sarcasm and inspired an array of parodies, including the following tweet.

The official unveiling was to take place on Thursday, Serbian media reported, but on Tuesday the monument was dismantled. A video published online showed a man climbing up a ladder and unceremoniously wrenching the undersized head from its plinth.



Goran Vesic, a city official, said a new monument would be commissioned and would be vetted by all relevant institutions before installation. “Gagarin will have a memorial in Belgrade worthy of the contribution that he has made to humanity,” he said in a statement reported by the wesbite B92.net.

There are dozens of monuments to Gagarin across the former Soviet Union. A town in western Russia close to his birthplace was renamed Gagarin in 1968 after the cosmonaut’s death in a plane crash.