Newspaper announcing 'Man Enters Space'. Front page of The Huntsville Times on Wednesday 12 April 1961 announcing that Yuri Gagarin (upper centre) had become the first man in space. The Soviet cosmonaut orbited the Earth once during his 108 minute-long flight in the spacecraft Vostok 1. Accompanying reports testify to America's disppointment at having been beaten by Russia in the race to put a man in space. Huntsville, Alabama, USA was the original home of America's space programme, where German-American rocket scientists, including Wernher von Braun (lower right), worked to develop rockets for space flight.