Gagarin was not the first man to fly to space. Just the first to live.

corentin · on Jan 27, 2008

"The unluckiest russian was Yuri Gagarin: he circled around the earth and landed back in the soviet union." (french humorist Coluche)

ivankirigin · on Jan 27, 2008

Stunning.

martey · on Jan 27, 2008

Hard to take it seriously when some of the articles linked on that page have headlines like "Dog gives birth to ugly mutant creature" and "Aliens caught on tape for the first time." Weekly World News called, they want their articles back.

See http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/ for less tabloidy information.

danohuiginn · on Jan 27, 2008

True or not, this is a persistent rumour, going all the way back to the 60s. Wikipedia, naturally, has the full rundown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program_conspiracy...).

But in brief: this is just one of a range cosmonaut conspiracy theories which put the 'moon landings were faked' crowd to shame. They're also much more widely believed than their US counterparts (not without reason). This one maybe not so much - but a decent percentage of Russians believe Yuri Gagarin was bumped off by the authorities.

Also, if you hadn't noticed, the article's from way back in 2001.