The Soviet Union took a comfortable early lead in the Space Race – they sent up the first satellite (Sputnik), animal (Laika the dog) and man (Yuri Gagarin). Ten, in mid-1963, the Russians were first to put a woman into orbit.
Valentina Tereshkova had volunteered for cosmonaut training in the wake of Gagarin’s historic flight in 1961. She wrote a letter begging to go to space, citing amateur parachuting as her experience, and was selected as her poor textile worker image fit the Soviet ideal of a proletarian hero.
“ HEY SKY, TAKE OFF YOUR HAT! I’M COMING TO SEE YOU!”
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