One orbit, 108 minutes

Yuri Gagarin went round the Earth once and came down in a field near Saratov, where a farmer and her daughter found him walking about in an orange suit.

He did not land in the capsule; he ejected at seven kilometres and parachuted separately, which the Soviet Union concealed for years because the aviation record body required a pilot to land with the aircraft. The record was awarded anyway, and corrected much later.