Day Tripping: April 12
Obituaries, Orbiters, and More Orbiters
Untimely End
Only weeks away from an Allied victory over Nazi Germany, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly while in Georgia. A painter named Elizabeth Shoumatoff was beginning her portrait of the President and while at lunch, he complained of “terrific pain in the back of my head”.
FDR died that day of a cerebral haemorrhage and Vice President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as President. The painting was never completed.
Major First
On the heels of launching the world's first space satellite four years earlier, the Soviet Union took another fist step in the Cold War Space Race by putting a man in Earth’s orbit in 1961. Cosmonaut Yuri Sagarin became a national hero as was not only the first human in space but also the first to complete a full orbit of the planet which took 89 minutes.
Gagarin’s entire flight in Vostok 1 lasted 108 minutes though the craft was supplied with ten days of provisions in case of emergency. OK.
Sadly, Yuri Gagarin died less than seven years later during a test flight of a new MiG fighter jet. US Apollo 11 astronauts left a commemorative plaque bearing Gagarin’s name on the moon one year later.
