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Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space. Traveling in the Vostok 1 capsule, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961.

Yuri  was born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (now in Smolensk Oblast, Russia), on 9 March 1934. The town next to Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin in 1968 in his honour. His parents, Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, worked on a collective farm. While manual workers are thought as "peasants," this may be too-simple if applied to his parents — his mother was said to love reading, and his father was a skilled carpenter. Yuri was the third of four children, and his elder sister helped raise him while his parents worked. Like millions of people in the Soviet Union, the Gagarin family suffered during the Nazi invasion in World War II. His two elder siblings were sent out to Nazi Germany for slave work in 1943, and did not return until after the war. While a youth, Yuri became interested in space and planets, and began to dream about his space tour which would one day become a reality. Yuri was thought by his teachers, as smart and hard-working, sometimes mischievous. His mathematics and science teacher had flown in the Soviet Air Forces during the war, which was said to make some impression on young Gagarin.

After starting an apprenticeship in a metalworks as a foundryman, Gagarin was selected for further training at a technical high school in Saratov. While there, he joined the flight club, and learned to fly a light aircraft. In 1955, after finishing his technical schooling, he entered military flight training at the Orenburg Pilot's School. While there he met Valentina Goryacheva. Yuri married her in 1957, after gaining his pilot's wings in a MiG-15. Post-graduation, he was told to go to Luostari airbase in Murmansk Oblast, close to the Norwegian border, where bad weather made flying risky. As a full-grown man, Gagarin was 1.57 metres (5 ft 2 in) tall, which was an advantage in the small Vostok cockpit. He became a lieutenant of the Soviet Air Force on November 5, 1957 and on November 6, 1959 he got the rank of senior lieutenant.

Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and engineer and is known as the first person to walk on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in a small spacecraft that had been sent to the moon using the Saturn V rocket. The mission was called Apollo 11. They both walked on the moon, and millions of people watched and heard this event on live television

He earned a BSc degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Purdue University and an MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California. In 1970 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the Purdue University. In 1971 he became professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, serving as a civilian test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, Lancaster, Calif.

In 2005, he received the Honorary Doctorate of letters from the University of Southern California. The Houston Chronicle newspaper reported on October 1, 2006, that Australian computer programmer Peter Shann Ford found the missing "a" from Armstrong's famous first words on the Moon. Ford reported that he downloaded the audio recording from a NASA web site and analyzed it using editing software originally intended for use with hearing disabled people. Armstrong is said to have been pleased with Ford's finding of the missing "a".