In Yuri Gagarin's carry-on bag

According to Mary Roach on Twitter, Yuri Gagarin carried two personal items with him on his historic first spaceflight. First, cognac. Second, shark repellent. The shark repellent was in case he landed in the sea.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Anonymous

@melvino
slow clap..
tylerkaraszewski

it would be cooler if it was for repelling space sharks.
- wigg1es
  
  It would be useless against their lasers.
rebdav

I would have expected the whole pilots survival vest considering he had to by design bail out before landing combined with the huge CEP of his vessel.

Totaly bummed though, I had My satellite tracker running on my all day and had my Radio charged and attached to my 2m/70cm yaggi antenna, never had a chance to listen to an ISS overpass.
BB

Was he afraid of being sued for some reason?

Yes, ladies and gents, I’ll be here all week, tip your boingboing servers.
melvino

Batman would be proud.
- Anonymous
  
  That was my first thought as well. great minds, and ours.
- The Hamster King
  
  “Batman would be proud”
  
  Well played, sir.
Jake0748

And the cognac was strictly for medicinal purposes.
- irksome
  
  WC Fields spoke of always carrying alcohol to be used as snake-bite remedy; also, he always carried a snake.
Jake0748

I was at a lunch at the KSC in ’05 celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Apollo/Soyuz flight. Alexey Leonov had a story about how some Russian technicians told him they had secreted a few tubes filled with vodka on board before the flight. But all five of the fliers were disappointed when they opened them to find borscht instead of vodka. :D
Brainspore

- One forty-five caliber automatic
- Two boxes of ammunition
- Four days’ concentrated emergency rations
- One drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine,
vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
- One miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible
- One hundred dollars in rubles
- One hundred dollars in gold
- Nine packs of chewing gum
- One issue of prophylactics
- Three lipsticks
- Three pair of nylon stockings.

Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
- Michael Smith
  
  I reckon TJ Kong must have finished the chewing gum by the time he rode that bomb into the ground.
Mister44

Fun fact – Cosmonauts also carry guns into space – small ‘survival’ arms for when they land in bum-fuck-nowhere-stan and need to ward off wolves/angry villagers.

I love the Russian program. I did a drawing of Gagarin for the Cosmosphere tour guide map. I wish I could post it – but it is actually on a floppy disc somewhere.
Anonymous

this is the new Chuck Norris meme:

“On his first space flight Yuri Gagarin carried a glass of Dom Perignon ’46 and didn’t spill a drop”
Anonymous

Good thing that rocket wasn’t run by Spirit Airlines or he’d been charged for that carry on.