How the first man in space actually died. He was the first human to leave Earth—and less than seven years later, he fell back to it under mysterious circumstances. Yuri Gagarin’s 1968 plane crash has never had a clean explanation, stoking decades of speculation ranging from pilot error to sabotage. With more records unearthed, the most likely answer may be most unsettling one: a series of small mistakes in a system that really couldn’t afford any.
—Andrew Daniels, Director of News
