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Yuri’s Night spans the planet: Global festival to mark Gagarin’s milestone spaceflight

Yuri’s Night events have been held around the globe since 2001 in commemoration of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person to conquer space on April 12, 1961

Yuri Gagarin TASS

Yuri Gagarin

NEW YORK, April 12. /TASS/. A celebration spanning the globe will mark the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s revolutionary space flight. Known as Yuri’s Night, the event will have more than 180 events in over 48 countries as part of the festivities, the coordinators stated on Twitter.

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"Yuri's Night is being celebrated by at least 20,000 people by our/your estimates at 180+ parties in 48+ countries all over the world this year! We're glad that you're celebrating the past, present, & future of human spaceflight with us!" the coordinators wrote on Twitter.

According to organizers, the events as part of the Yuri’s Night will be held around the world. The 57th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight aboard the Vostok 1 spaceship will be marked in the expedition camp in the heart of the Sakhara, at the US Palmer Station in Antarctica, and at schools in India and Japan. The celebrations will be also held in Finland’s Tampere Lenin Museum and the British Interplanetary Society in London, the masquerade ball in Ireland’s Dublin, in the H.R. MacMillan Space Center in Canada’s Vancouver, the Space Station Museum in Novato, California, and the Space Foundation Discovery Center and in the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

A special show devoted to Gagarin flight’s anniversary will be held in the Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium in New Haven, Connecticut. The Georgia Institute of Technology will host a lecture, "Why Do We Look Up at the Heavens?"

At the American Space Museum in Titusville, Florida, Bob Sieck, former NASA space shuttle launch director, will speak about the beginning of the space era.

Yuri’s Night events have been held around the globe since 2001 in commemoration of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person to conquer space on April 12, 1961.

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