Gagarin’s native city to celebrate anniversary of first cosmonaut.

ITAR-TASS ^ | 09.03.2009, 04.05

[pobeda1945]

GAGARIN (Smolensk region), March 9 (Itar-Tass) -- The celebrations dedicated to the 75th birthday anniversary of Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) will be held in the native city of the first world cosmonaut – Gagarin (Gzhatsk) in the Smolensk region on Monday.

Local residents and guests from various Russian regions will participate in the festivities. “Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin’s relatives, delegations from enterprises of the space industry, pilot-cosmonauts Alexei Leonov, Boris Volynov, Sergei Volkov, Viktor Gorbatko, Viktor Afanasyev, Yuri Baturin and young cosmonauts, who are still training to make their first flight are among the guests,” chief of the Gagarin district authorities Vladimir Ivanov told Itar-Tass. They will visit the house-museum of the Gagarin family in the village of Klushino. “According to the tradition cosmonauts arrive here before a space flight to drink some water from Gagarin’s well-known well,” Ivanov said.

One of the major events of the festivities will be the opening ceremony of the 36th public scientific readings dedicated to Gagarin. The readings, which Gagarin’s friend and Soviet pilot-cosmonaut Alexei Leonov initiated, are dated back to March 9, 1974. At first the readings were held as meetings of pilot-cosmonauts, friends and teachers of Gagarin and turned into public scientific readings 20 years later.

The guests will also attend the presentation of the school of space thinking entitled “The Road into the Space Begins from the Earth.” The school of space thinking will be inaugurated at the first secondary school, where Gagarin studied. The schoolchildren have already received congratulations from the ISS crewmembers.

Specific exhibitions, including the interregional art exhibition “Gagarin’s Spring” are timed to Gagarin’s birthday anniversary. A ceremonial evening and a festive concert will be given at the local palace of culture.