While not about Gargarin, here's a fun song about Sputnik: [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-mZ9pKvCmk[/yt]
I was busy gestating, so I don't remember the event, but Gagarin's flight kicked off the Space Age, which defined my childhood. He will be remembered forever among the great explorers; many ports and streets will be named for him on other worlds.
I think you'd be right if Gagarin's flight were 100 years after the end of the Civil War, but I think the first human spaceflight coming on the 100th anniversary of the start of an important war qualifies as irony.
No, that's pretty much not ironic at all. It might have been ironic if, on 12 April 1861, some famous scientist had said: "Man will never travel through space! Space travel will still be a dream, even one hundred years from now!"
Or the story about the wife of young Neil Armstrong’s neighbor Mr. Gorsky saying, “You’ll get a blowjob from me when the kid next door walks on the moon!”