historygirl added an item called Globe - Space Race Souvenir, Russia, 1961
31 Jul 2009
This small gold globe was made to commemorate Yuri Gagarin's 1961 space voyage. Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, launching to orbit aboard the Vostok 1. On the souvenir you can see a small red model of the Vostok 1 orbit the globe. His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar; Russian: ????), which is stamped into the bakelite base of the globe.
During his flight, Gagarin famously noted
“ The Earth is blue. [...] How wonderful. It is amazing. ”
—Gagarin, to ground control.
Later inspiration for David Bowie's Space Oddity single in 1969 which coincidentally was then used by the BBC in its broadcast of the Moon Landing also in 1969.