Once upon a time, very far away, men began to travel all around the world, from north to south, east to west, trying to place limits and borders everywhere. Since the 20th century, the world has become a small place, and you can find people drinking Coca-Cola in every corner of the planet. After adventurers such as Marco Polo, Juan Sebastian Elcano or Doctor Livingstone, I suppose the world seemed to be totally explored, and the horizontal ride was not exciting enough, and so people started to look upwards, seeking new goals and more exciting adventures. Let’s climb then, and reach for the sky, with two amazing pioneers. Their accomplishments are up there.
Let’s go first to the summit of Everest, and after this even higher, taking a ride around the earth in outer space.
History tell us that Sir Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first reached the top of Everest in 1953, but today many experts claim that they were not really the first. Almost 30 years before, George Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, took part in a British expedition and disappeared in the last meters.
It was 1924, and the last person who saw them alive said that they were very close to the top, like two black points moving forward in the distance until the clouds covered the sky and they vanished. During all those years, everyone accepted that they had failed and hadn’t reached the summit, until in 1999 a climber discovered Mallory’s body and everything changed.
Although no one knows what really happened, some facts support the theory that they actually made it. First of all, Mallory’s sunglasses were in his pocket. This means that when he died it was dark, and so he would have had time enough to reach the summit, and was descending. Secondly, the frozen body was found with all his belongings intact, except a photograph of Ruth, his wife, which Mallory had promised to place at the summit.
What’s more, his camera was not found. This means that it must be with Irvine Irvine Irvine
Their last picture
In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, flying around the world on the Vostok 1 spaceship for 108 minutes.
Four years earlier, Laika the dog had been the first animal in orbit. She never returned to earth and spent the last weeks of her life spinning around the world, thinking night and day about Nikita Kruschev’s mother. A dog’s coffin would be a second satellite.
Yuri Gagarin, however, was able to return safely.
When Gagarin was on his way to the launch pad, he told the bus driver to stop so that he could go to the toilet for the last time before the flight. The problem was that they were in the middle of an enormous airfield, so he had to urinate against the right rear tyre of the bus. After this, every cosmonaut repeated the ritual just before the launch, urinating on the same tyre at the same point in the road. Thankfully, female cosmonauts could bring their own jar of urine, previously filled, to splash on the wheel.
After his flight, Yuri landed in the middle of the steppe. An old babushka saw him, with his huge orange spacesuit, moving quietly, almost floating, and she pronounced very slowly: “Hi, do you come from outer space?” Gagarin, raising his right hand too, answered: “Yes, but don’t be afraid, I’m a Soviet too”
Today Gagarin is the name of a town, launch pad, moon crater, ice-hockey cup, planetarium, airliner, asteroid and holiday. April 12 is Cosmonaut’s Day, better known as Yuri’s Night.
Please remember Yuri when you have to urinate on a tyre, no matter what the reason.
Van Trung
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