YURI GAGARIN (1934-68)

Yuri Gagarin was the first cosmonaut in the world. Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was born on the 9th of March, 1934. He was born in the village of Klushino in the Smolensk region.

Yura was an active, brave and curious boy. His father was jack of all trades and he helped his son when Yura made toy planes by hand. But the war began. Yuri Gagarin and his mother, father, brother and sister left their house and had to live in a dug-out.

After the war Gagarin's family moved to Gzhatsk. Now it is Gagarin. It was named after the first cosmonaut.

In 1951 Gagarin graduated from a voca­tional school in Lyubertsy near Moscow.

Yuri Gagarin attended an aeroclub and began to fly when he was a student of a technical secondary school in Saratov.

In 1955 he entered a school for pilots. Then he became a pilot and joined the first group of cosmonauts.

In 1960 Gagarin began to prepare for the flight into space.

On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin flew into space and spent 108 minutes there. Jt was the first time in history that the Russian spaceship "Vostok" with the man on board was in space. After his flight he visited many countries and saw millions of people. Gagarin became a Hero of our country.

He died in 1968, but people always re­member the first Russian cosmonaut.

THE MASS MEDIA

Newspapers

There are many kinds of newspapers in our country. It is possible to buy them al­most everywhere. But we can't read all the newspapers. We know that it is neces­sary to read newspapers. Reading them we can learn a lot of interesting and use­ful things. I think that everyone must read newspapers every day. I read many newspapers and magazines.

Everyone has its favourite newspa­pers. I like "Vechernaya Moskva" best of all. This newspaper was published on the 6th of December, 1923 for the first time. It usually has 8 pages. You can read some news on the 1st page. You can't know a lot about these events, you read only some facts, which are usually short, but

interesting. If you turn the second page, you can read about our life. You can read out events abroad and about your favourite artists and singers, too. You л see some advertisements on each page the newspaper and use them. You can learn about the weather from the pages of is newspaper.

If you are fond of football, basket-ball tennis, you read articles about sport events in our country and about our famous sportsmen. If you want to buy something you have to read the last page. There are some humorous stories in this newspaper.

Magazines

It is interesting to look through some magazines or read them. It is possible to subscribe to some of them or buy them. We usually subscribe to the maga­zine "At the wheel". As we have a car it is useful for us to read it. My mother prefer to read the magazine "Liza". She says that it even helps her in some cases.

Television and radio

I think that they are very popular means of information. They are popular among young people in our country. We can know a lot of news watching TV or lis­tening to the radio set. All members of our family watch TV very regularly. We like such programme as "My family". I prefer to discuss some problems with my parents after it. I have many favourite TV programmes but I haven't enough time to watch all of them.