Fifty Years Ago Today

I was a sophomore in high school.. and I, along with everyone else in the world, was absolutely stunned to hear Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to orbit the earth.  You can ride along with Mr. Gagarin and see exactly what he saw in this brilliant film made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this historic flight:

From FNC's web site, which is where I found this film:

As he edited together the film, Riley made an unusual discovery: Gagarin's short bursts of communication from the cockpit were very much akin to modern Twitter chatter. In addition to being the first man in space, Riley called him the first man on Twitter.

“It’s clear Yuri spoke in 'tweets’ -- as communications to the mission controllers were always brief and to the point," he said. " Today a text-based tweet is composed of up to no more than 140 characters, so in essence Yuri was the first perfect tweeter."

First man to orbit the earth and the first Tweets (sorta)... ain't that sumthin'?  Yeah, the film IS long, but it's also worthwhile.