How I Did It - Yuri Gagarin

Daily Mail dated Thursday April 13th 1961

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Lady Gaga the first person to orbit the Earth? No – that’s Gaga as in barmy, this is Gaga as in Gagarin. 

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born in 1934 and died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed. In 1961 he was the first human to go into Space, when, on his one and only spaceflight, he completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.

Suddenly all those yellow covered Golanz Sci-Fi novels we borrowed from the local library were about to come true.  A colony on the Moon by 1969? No problem.  Next stop Mars?  Why not?

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Or we could leave it to the expert – Russian Space Scientist Blogonravov - who gets it equally wrong.

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Whilst still on the front page – it was not a good day for Television Producers – one is caught trying to murder a fellow producer and another is indicted in the USA for importing a woman for the purpose of prostitution.  These days they just inflict ‘X Factor’ and ‘Big Brother’ on the viewing public.

Coal vending machines - how hard would you have to hit it if the bag got stuck halfway down the chute?  

The website for the Lincolnshire Film Archive has this entry for an unmissable film from 1961 -

“Frederick Clegg’s ingenious coin-in-the-slot machine for selling small quantities of coal.  Intended to benefit flat-dwellers and others for whom the traditional one ton delivery was impractical, the machine is shown being used and heartily endorsed by Lord Robens, Chairman of the National Coal Board; but sadly it failed to catch on – though the retailing of coal in relatively small bags did indeed become quite widespread.”

I wonder if Lovefilms has it?

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The lad on the left is the Chelsea, Tottenham and England footballer Jimmy Greaves.  He was in the news because he was due to join the Italian club A C Milan. In fact he was back in England before the end of the year and went on to play for England in the 1962 World Cup and to just miss playing in the 1966 World Cup Final due to an injury.

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Not exactly wide-screen 3D with surround-sound, but this is what Herge’s Adventures of Tintin looked like in those far off days.  The bowler-hatted Thompson Twins haven’t aged a jot.