Sharkie

Yuri Gagarin, you have been my muse since I read your story— what you did transcends the barrier of nations. “The earth is blue,” you said.

verily.

you should have lived longer. There are people who theorize about your death. They say you were drunk, they say you were suicidal, but you could in no way be so selfish when there was another man on board and a country, a world that chanted your name with reverence. You died doing what you loved, you died flying, and you never lifted your hands from the controls. You’d never let gravity pin you down.

what you gave to this world was undeserved. It paved the way for spacefarers from all countries to achieve their own feats. To live the dream of breaking the chains of this atmosphere, this gravity. And be able to say the earth is blue. I wonder what you could say if you could see us now, could see the ISS, where astronauts and cosmonauts work hand in hand. You weren’t there for the Apollo-Soyuz test project, but I’m certain you guided its hand. Because what you did was a gift, comrade. What you did was wonder.

and your smile is unforgettable.

Над Чёрным Морем | Above the Black Sea;

Шахтарське Кохання | Miner's Love;

Day 1 of 11 Days of Apollo 11

July 16, 1969: Apollo 11 launches on the first manned lunar landing mission

Apollo 11 launched from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:32 AM EDT. Nearly one million people watched liftoff from Florida's Space Coast's beaches and highways and another 600 million watched live on TV. Former president Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President Spiro Agnew, rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, and aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh watched from the VIP section near the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Read more about Apollo 11 here!

Apollo–Soyuz Test Project by A.Leonov (1975)

☭ – Rest in Peace, Comrade Lenin! – ☭

On the 21st January of 1924, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more commonly known as Lenin, departed our world after a series of strokes left him incapacitated. 

From orchestrating the Great October Socialist Revolution to uniting the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with former territories of the Russian Empire to form the Soviet Union, the first workers state in the world, Lenin was the leader and symbol of the Soviet proletariat in its early beginnings, and beyond his death an immortal icon for all the peoples in the world struggling against capitalism and imperialism.

“You have seen during the past few days the pilgrimage of scores and hundreds of thousands of working people to Comrade Lenin’s bier. Before long you will see the pilgrimage of representatives of millions of working people to Comrade Lenin’s tomb. You need not doubt that the representatives of millions will be followed by representatives of scores and hundreds of millions from all parts of the earth, who will come to testify that Lenin was the leader not only of the Russian proletariat, not only of the European workers, not only of the colonial East, but of all the working people of the globe.”

British officer making sure the right German POW gets his photo back.