On Thursday, April 13th, 1961 there were echoes of Pravda in The Irish Times. Almost the entire front page was given over to Yuri Gagarin's 108-minute orbit of the earth; the headline "Soviet Space-Man returns safely" ran across all eight columns; and a sub-heading read "US Beaten in Costly Race".
In Russia it was reported that the population was "wild with joy" and Moscow Radio described the 27-year-old cosmonaut, Major Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, as "the Columbus of interplanetary space".
In today's Russia, Gagarin is still a superstar. The lead-up to the main evening news in Moscow still contains a recording of Gagarin's voice from the launch pad in Baikonur. As lift-off begins he utters the word Poyekhali ("Let's go"), the introductory music fades and the camera pans to the newsreader.
A huge monument on Gagarin Square in the south of the capital shows the cosmonaut shooting skywards on a bronze jet-trail. In Red Square, after tourists leave the Lenin Mausoleum, they walk beneath the Kremlin wall where the great personages of the Soviet Union and communism are buried. All but two of the graves feature the standard state issue of two red carnations.
Gagarin's grave is different, however. It is covered in flowers brought by members of the public. (The other flower-bedecked grave, incidentally, is that of Josef Stalin, who remains a hero to Russia's elderly women.)
But Gagarin is a hero to all age groups and young people still regard him with awe. Moscow rock groups pay him homage too. The song Gagarin I Loved You, describing the love of his widow, Valentina Gagarina, has been a hit for Crimea Underground and his voice is used in works by the group, Moscow Grooves Institute.
Not surprisingly, rock concerts will feature strongly tonight in Moscow as the 40th anniversary of Gagarin's space flight is celebrated.
The fondness for Gagarin may stem from the fact that he was a very human hero. The Irish Times office-cleaner in Moscow, Olga Borushek, a formidably built Soviet woman of a certain age with a gravity-defying beehive hairdo, knew him when she worked as a waitress at Kremlin receptions. She goes all wistful at very the mention of his name.
"He very much liked vodka and he very much liked women," she would say as a tear welled up in her eye.
His tragic death at 34 in an air crash was greeted with horror and disbelief. Conspiracy theories abounded. Some said he was murdered by the KGB. Others are sure he still lives. Others still, maintain he was abducted by aliens.
The Western figure who compares most closely in terms of adulation is undoubtedly Elvis Presley.