Around the world in 108 minutes

I was reading about the first human in space in 1961.  Yuri Gagarin made one orbit of the Earth.  It is funny, in retrospect, to read about his reentry and landing.  The launch trajectory was off, early in the flight he asked for the orbital parameters but the ground crew couldn't tell him because they hadn't been recalculated yet.  After Siberia he went out of radio contact and the flight was over the Pacific and South Atlantic.  The retrofire for reentry happened off the coast of Angola.  Then the spacecraft modules failed to separate correctly until some wires broke (not by design).  After an 8 g reentry he was ejected 23,000 feet above the ground to parachute the rest of the way.  However, he was 280 km (174 miles) from where he was supposed to land.  Luckily he did not end up in Siberia, the Caspian Sea, the Gobi desert, or the Himalayas but on a farm in Russia (he was supposed to land in Kazakhstan in Central Asia).  With a farmer and daughter watching, a creature in a bright orange suit and space helmet landed in their field.  The mission was a secret before the launch so they could not have known about it.  I wish I could see the look on their faces.  Gagarin said, "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"  I also wonder what Moscow was thinking, when they lost contact, realized the trajectory was off, and he didn't land when expected...