I am too young, but I did witness the first moon landing and read about Yuri Gagarin with breathless wonder as a boy.
The shame being that in a plot worthy of a Dan Brown novel, once the USSR fell it was revealed Gagarin's achievement turned out to be possibly a propaganda exercise to cover the fact that Vladimir Ilyushin in the 'Rossiya' spacecraft was actually the first man to orbit earth in space but had died during his return to earth, five days before Vostok "1" was launched.
Ilyushin purportedly died in a car crash on the same day Rossiya was tracked by French military radar returning to earth.
To this day Russia insist that Rossiya was unmanned and that the credit go to Gagarin, undoubtedly time will tell.

Yes I can just remember it. Yuri was a global hero, in a way which transcended politics. So sad that he died so young.