On April 12, 1961, The Huntsville Times reported the era of human spaceflight beginning when the Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in his Vostock I spacecraft. The flight lasted 108 minutes. Other accompanying reports testify to Americas's lost at having been beaten by the Russians in the race to put humans in space. Wernher von Braun (lower right), a German American who worked to develop rockets for space flight.