Born in London in 1831, March this year was the 190th anniversary of her birth. Dorothea Beale’s roots were firmly in Gloucestershire and it was here, in Cheltenham, that she was instrumental in her role as a teacher and education reformer for girls’ education. After a number of roles as a teacher and headmistress, she became the second head teacher of Cheltenham Ladies College where she remained until the end of her career. She founded St Hilda’s College, Oxford for training teachers and was involved in a multitude of efforts for educational and philanthropic progress, receiving an honorary doctorate (LL.D.) from Edinburgh University for her services to education. Her legacy lives on in girls’ education throughout the world. Her ashes are interred in a small vault on the south side of the Lady Chapel of Gloucester Cathedral.

Vostok 1 (Восто́к in Russian, which means East or Orient), was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first Human spaceflight in history. 60 years ago, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin blasted into space as the Vostok 3KA Space capsule was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This made him the first human to cross the frontier of outer space.

The orbital flight consisted of a single orbit around Earth which just skated over the upper atmosphere at 169 kilometers (91 nautical miles) at its lowest point, in a flight lasting 108 minutes from launch to landing. (The NASA definition of the boundary of space is  50 miles or 80 km above sea level). After ejecting from his capsule, Gagarin parachuted to the ground from his an altitude of 7 km (23,000 ft). He could certainly be classified as a Pioneer himself!