London's monument to Yuri Gagarin
London has a new monument to Yuri Gagarin. The statue was just unveiled this summer, and when I was in town last week, some friends were kind enough to take me around to see it. Personally, I feel like you can't just stand in front of an epic Socialist Realism-style statue with a pleasant smile and your hands folded neatly at your waist.
What's particularly interesting about this statue to me, as an American, is that it commemorates Gagarin's triumphant visit to London, post-space flight. I'm so used to the American textbook version of modern history, that it honestly had not occurred to me that Gagarin would have visited other, non-Soviet countries after his trip to space. The way that story is presented to us, it's all about how terrified all the free people of the world were by the Russian lead in the space race. It's interesting to run across this different perspective where Londoners—even ones who wouldn't have been particularly pleased with the Soviet Union itself—could still celebrate the achievement of the first space flight with more excitement than fear.
Share this post
Read more Culture History Space travel
show full bio
Maggie Koerth-Baker
I do the Twitter, the Google+, and (to a much lesser extent) the Facebook.
Books
• Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us
Upcoming Appearances
• April 2 at Skeptics in the Pub, Boston, Mass.— 7:00 pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square. Please RSVP.
•April 4 at MIT: "Shedding Light, Online", a discussion about how blogging and a dynamic audience helped shape my book, Before the Lights Go Out—4:00 pm in Maseeh Hall. Please RSVP.
• April 6 at Carnegie Mellon University: More details to come
• April 9-13 at University of Colorado, Boulder: 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs
• April 10 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—3:30 pm in the Rocky Mountain Innosphere.
• April 19 at The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis: Book Launch Party! Come enjoy snacks, a presentation by me, and some fun with the Bakken's Leyden jar.
• April 21 at Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul: Earth Day Tweetup event with Will Steger and Sean Otto—events run 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• May 2 at University of California, Berkeley: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—6:00 pm, location TBA.
• May 3 at the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter—Lunchtime lecture, time and location TBA.
• May 3 at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito, Cali.—7:00 pm.
• May 30 in New York City—Panel on local and DIY energy with the New America Foundation
• June 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado: Aspen Environment Forum
• July 5-8 at CONvergence in Minneapolis, Minn.—exact times and dates TBA
Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.