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Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

hen cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth, showed off his Vostok spacecraft at the Paris International Air Show in 1965, the ongoing space race was part of a heated PR war between the Soviet Union and the United States. After Gagarin and the space capsule initially monopolized media and public attention at the show, the Americans quickly flew in vice president Hubert Humphrey and astronauts Edward White and James McDivitt on Air Force One. Star-struck attendees gazed at the renowned rocketeers, bringing the infatuation with the Russians back down to earth.



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