First In Space – Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. His flight, on April 12, 1961, lasted 108 minutes as he circled the Earth for a little more than one orbit in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft. Following the flight, Gagarin became a cultural hero in the Soviet Union.



Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly to space when she launched on the Vostok 6 mission June 16, 1963. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space. In 1963, she spent almost three days in space and orbited Earth 48 times in her space capsule, Vostok 6.

Before her selection for the Soviet space program, Tereshkova was a textile factory worker and an amateur skydiver. She joined the Air Force as part of the Cosmonaut Corps and was commissioned as an officer after completing her training. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, Tereshkova remained in the space program as a cosmonaut instructor. She later graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and re-qualified for spaceflight but never went to space again. She retired from the Air Force in 1997 having attained the rank of major general.

She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union but twice lost elections to the national State Duma in 1995 and 2003. Tereshkova was later elected in 2008 to her regional parliament, the Yaroslavl Oblast Duma. In 2011, she was elected to the national State Duma as a member of the United Russia party and re-elected in 2016.

Fritjof Capra The Web Of Life

Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter Summary
The Logic of the Mind – 1997

Those of us who have contributed to the new science of cybernetics stand in a moral position which is, to say the least, not very comfortable. We have contributed to the initiation of a new science which embraces technical developments with great possibilities for good and evil.'

Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. 

It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke. It is evident from these and other similar passages in Wiener's writings that he showed much more wisdom and foresight in his assessment of the social impact of computers than his successors. 

Today, forty years later, computers and the many other 'information technologies' developed in the meantime are rapidly becoming autonomous and totalitarian, redefining our basic concepts and eliminating alternative worldviews. 

As Neil Postman, Jerry Mander, and other technology critics have shown, this is typical of the 'megatechnologies' that have come to dominate industrial societies around the world.' Increasingly, all forms of culture are being subordinated to technology, and techno-logical innovation, rather than the increase in human well-being, has become synonymous with progress. 

The spiritual impoverishment and loss of cultural diversity through excessive use of computers is especially serious in the field of education. As Neil Postman put it succinctly, `When a computer is used for learning, the meaning of "learning" is changed.'' The use of computers in education is often praised as a revolution that will transform virtually every facet of the educational process. 

Aldermaston March Trafalgar Sqare 1960

70,000 pack in Trafalgar Square, London on April 18, 1960

In the 1950s Europe was gripped by a very real fear of nuclear conflict and, building on the work of earlier anti-war movements, CND was launched with a massive public meeting in London in February 1958. Shortly afterwards at Easter the first Aldermaston March attracted a good deal of attention and the CND symbol appeared everywhere. From the outset people from all sections of society got involved. There were scientists, more aware than anyone else of the full extent of the dangers which nuclear weapons represented, along with religious leaders such as Canon John Collins of St Paul’s Cathedral, concerned to resist the moral evil which nuclear weapons represented. The Society of Friends (Quakers) was very supportive, as well as a wide range of academics, journalists, writers, actors and musicians. Labour Party members and trade unionists were overwhelmingly sympathetic as were people who had been involved in earlier anti-bomb campaigns organised by the British Peace Committee or the Direct Action Committee.



In the early years membership increased rapidly. CND’s advocacy of unilateral nuclear disarmament – the proposal that Britain should take the initiative and get rid of its own nuclear weapons, irrespective of the actions of others – caught the imagination of many. Multilateral disarmament – simultaneously by negotiations between countries – was clearly not working, although CND also strongly supported the goal of global abolition. The US, Soviet Union and Britain, (and later France and China), were building ever more nuclear weapons. All attempts to control, let alone reverse the process broke down repeatedly. (As an example, negotiations for a treaty to halt the spread of nuclear weapons began in 1958 but the final agreement was not reached until 1968).

• From mid 1968 to mid 1969, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) campaigned intensively for land rights, with land rights marches continuing over the next four years.

A petition for the recognition of Aboriginal land ownership was drawn up by FCAATSI. Plans were developed to train speakers, lobby parliamentarians, distribute the petition to all states, publicise the campaign, and keep up a regular stream of letters to the editors of metropolitan dailies in order to attack the opposing arguments put by the pastoralists' lobby. FCAATSI also published a booklet setting out the case for land rights which it distributed widely. More than 100,000 people signed a petition which argued that 'common justice and international standards require recognition of traditional ownership rights of indigenous people

A. L. LLOYD—A TRIBUTE – Lucy Duran

ICTM has lost one of its most honoured and long-standing members—A. L. Lloyd has died at the age of 74 in his home in Greenwich, London.

Founder-member of the UK National Committee of the ICTM, he was its chairman from 1978 until his death. For those of on in the L.K. who were privileged to meet and work with him either through the ICI :A or London University, where he had been teaching for the pa ff ten years, the loss will be immense.

But he will be keenly missed by many more besides. For he was a scholar of international repu-tation- a man as conversant with East European folk music as with his own native English folk tradition, equally at home as a broadcaster, film scripter, recordist, and folksinger. Albert Lancaster Lloyd was born in London on February 29, 1908.

His parents died when he was in his early teens, and shortly afterwards, around 1924. he went to Australia as a migrant worker. There he worked on sheep stations, and his  knowledge of Australian ballads and songs dates from this period.

He returned to England in 1935 and found work on an Antarctic whaling ship; for the next two years he learnt many whaling and sea songs through first hand experience. Later on, in the 50s and 60s, as one of the pioneers of the English folksong revival, he brought these scarcely known repertoires to the attention of British audiences, both through his work in foil, cltiff. around the country and through two records on the Topic la bcq,

Leviathan and The Great Australian Legend. His vocal style, which was highly distinctive. always bore the mark of his direct personal involvement with traditional song and culture. In 1938 Lloyd produced his first BBC Radio documentary, about life on board a ship—from the lower-deck point of view. It provoked a considerable public response, and started him off on his career as broad-caster and journalist.

During the 1940s he joined Picture Post magazine, for whom he travelled in South America and the Middle East. bow around 1950, with an already extensive knowledge of different folk traditions, he began recording in Romania, Bulgaria and Albania; some of these recordings were issued on the Topic label and were among the first of their kind available in the United Kingdom.

Lloyd had a knack for getting the best performance out of a musician, and unearthed many treasures in the field, apparently effortlessly. His recordings are in them-selves a work of art. From the early 60s Lloyd collaborated in the production of many records and anthologies. He was a founder-member of Topic records and remained its artistic director until his death. His sleeve notes to a record featuring the Norfolk singer Walter Pardon, only just released, were among his last contributions to Topic.