Yuri's Night

April 12, 1961 - Vostok I
Fourty-six years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. Six years Nearly seven years later, on March 27, 1968, Gagarin and his flight instructor, Seregin, died in a crash of their MiG-15.
(Photo from Russian Institute of Radionavigation and Time http://www.rirt.ru/ )

April 12, 1981 - STS-1
Twenty-six years ago today, John Young and Robert Crippen launched on the first shuttle flight aboard the shuttle Columbia. Nearly twenty-two years years later, on February 1, 2003, Columbia and her crew of seven would be lost during the retry of STS-107, her 28th mission and the 113th shuttle flight overall.
(Photo from NASA)