Stay down to earth on Cosmonautics Day

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Tomorrow is a Friday, on which we show you our traditional Friday Lady. But it’s more than just that. In Russia and Poland the 12th of April is a commemorative day called Cosmonautics Day, also known as International Day of Human Space Flight. And the night is known as Yuri’s Night. All of the celebrations are dedicated to Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who made the first manned space flight on April 12th 1961, circling the earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes aboard the Vostol 1 spacecraft.

Remarkably, he was given a Matra-Bonnet Djet sports car some years later, which he can be seen with on a number of promotional photographs. The car was given to the cosmonaut in 1965 after having visited the rocket and space technology manufacturer Matra, which also jappened to produce sports cars. The story goes that the Djet coupe caught his eye while touring the factory. And once back in Moscow, Gagarin was presented one of the cars by the French government. Supposedly he drove the Djet just a few times as he was a humble and down to earth man, feeling rather awkward driving this expensive sports car, which was so exotic to regular Soviets.

After his death in 1968, the car was displayed in Moscow, but ended up in a Lithuanian collection in the 1990s. The well-known picture seen here originally came in black and white but has been colorized recently.

(Words editor, picture flickr)

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