From Today I Found Out.

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1,500 kilometres southeast of Moscow, sprawling over the rugged steppes of Kazakhstan, lies Baikonur Cosmodrome, the world’s first gateway to space. It is from this hallowed ground that Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, blasted off on their historic missions – and remains the world’s primary gateway to the International Space Station. Unsurprisingly given the site’s storied past and the often fraught nature of space travel, a great many superstitions have grown up around Baikonur over the decades. For example, prior to a launch cosmonauts traditionally watch the 1970 Soviet film White Sun of the Desert as a good luck ritual. They also urinate on the back-right tyre of the bus that carries them to the launch pad – as Yuri Gagarin is rumoured to have done in 1961. But one tradition is rather less cheerful and quirky: at Baikonur, rockets are never launched on October 24. This ominous taboo dates back to a largely forgotten 1960 incident in which an explosion on the launch pad led to the horrific deaths of nearly 200 people. This is the story of the Nedelin Catastrophe, Baikonur’s “Black Day”.

Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila