London unveils Gagarin statue

London has unveiled a statue next to the city's Admiralty Arch to honor the memory of Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.The 3.5m figure, which features the cosmonaut in his flight suit and standing on a globe, was unveiled during a ceremony attended by the cosmonaut's daughter, Elena Gagarina. "The 12th of April 1961 was one of the most remarkable days in history, uniting all people in all countries on all continents," said Gagarina, the current director of the Kremlin Museums. "I express my great gratitude to all Londoners and all the people of the UK," she added. The new head of the Russian space agency Vladimir Popovkin and the most experienced spaceman in history Sergei Krikalev were also among the dignitaries attending the event, the state-funded BBC reported. The figure is a gift from the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) to the British Council, which had originally sought to borrow an existing Gagarin sculpture from Russia. Many of them were too big to ship to Britain but one of them was found fit.The candidate was in the town of Lubertsy outside the Russian capital of Moscow, where Gagarin was trained as a foundry worker in his teenage years. The town, however, did not agree to send the original but provided the moulds to cast a copy. The original was made in 1984 to celebrate what would have been the cosmonaut's 50th birthday - he died in a plane crash aged just 34 years. Westminster City Council has granted a 12-month license for the statue and its Portland stone plinth. The statue is part of a series of cultural events to mark the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight which shocked the world when the cosmonaut circled the Earth in his Vostok capsule in 108 minutes.