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During the space race the Soviets just loved to show up Americans. They got there first with Yuri Gagarin, and they put a woman in space twenty years before the U.S. did. Valentina Tereshkova did 48 laps around Earth and is still the youngest woman to ever go into space. She’s also the only woman to ever complete a solo space flight.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: June 16, 1963--
Tereshkova’s father was a Soviet tank commander who died in World War II when she was only a toddler. After finishing high school she worked in a textile mill and took up competitive parachuting as a hobby, hiding the dangerous sport from her family. She was a good little communist, but had no desire to become a cosmonaut. It was the director of cosmonaut training who selected Valentina based on her parachuting because he was determined to get a woman into space before those asshole Americans did.
In January 1962, 400 female candidates were selected. A month later, that number was whittled down to only five. The next sixteen months was relentless training. Part of the reason she was selected was for the PR value of her father being a dead war hero.
Two year’s previous, Yuri Gagarin began a tradition of cosmonauts pissing on the tire of the bus that drove them to the launch pad. Not wanting to break with the lucky protocol, Valentina pissed on it as well before boarding her Vostok 6 spacecraft. On June 16, 1963, after a two-hour countdown, 26-year-old Valentina Tereshkova was flawlessly hurtled toward vacuum via a mega explosion of kerosene and liquid oxygen.
Soviet state television had a camera inside the capsule to broadcast live video of Tereshkova’s travels in space. She barfed when she tried to eat, but blamed it on the taste of the food. Being that there aren’t a plethora of restaurants offering Russian cuisine around the world, she might have been telling the truth. Valentina orbited the Earth for almost three days. In typical Soviet clusterfuck fashion, they packed toothpaste for her, but forgot to provide her with a toothbrush.
It’s worth mentioning there was another flight at the same time, Vostok 5. But that was manned by a dude, and that had been done, which is why few remember the name Valery Bykovsky.
The reason they wanted parachutists for cosmonauts was that Tereshkova had to return to Earth the same way all other cosmonauts had up to that point, including Gagarin. After re-entering the atmosphere, they had to jump. Valentina reported strong winds making controlling her parachute difficult but landed safely and was picked up by local villagers in Kazakhstan who helped her out of her spacesuit and fed her a dinner that probably tasted better than Soviet space food.
Afterward, Tereshkova entered politics. She is still alive and serving as a member of the United Russia party.
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