When did Yuri Gagarin first fly in a space ship?

Yuri Gagarin was the pilot of the first manned spacecraft to orbit earth.

He was launched, aboard the Vostok-1, on April 12, 1961. The launch

took place from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ... part of the

USSR at that time.

Gagarin made almost but not quite one complete orbit of the earth, and landed

108 minutes after launch.

It was his first flight into space, and also his last. He never went to space again,

and was killed a few years later in the crash of a small training aircraft.