Half a century ago...

...humanity first ventured into space.

That brings to mind a question someone asked me several years ago at my former workplace. A colleague came up to me in the hall and asked if I knew which composer of classical music was the first to have his or her work performed in space. I didn't know.

My colleague did: Dmitri Shostakovich. The piece of music in question was this song. The performer was Major Yuri Gagarin, fifty years ago today.