Valentina Tereshkova, born in 1937, was the first woman in space. In 1963, she spent 3 days in space and orbited the earth 48 times.

Valentina was the youngest of three children. Her father was a tractor driver. He fought with the Soviet Army in World War II and was killed before she was three years old. Her mother struggled to raise three children alone. As a child she had to help her mother with farm chores and she didn’t attend school until she was ten years old. Eventually they left the farm and went to live in the city, where her mother worked in a cotton mill. At 17 she started working in factories. First she worked in a tire factory, and then she joined her mother and sister in the cotton mill. She finished her schooling by correspondence course, and graduated from the Light Industry Technical School. This was by no means the end of her education, though.

Valentina was a great believer in the communist system and joined the young communists leagues at the factory. She later became a full member of the communist party. She also joined an amateur parachuting club and became an expert parachutist.

Valentina was at work with her mother and sister when Yuri Gagarin, the first ever astronaut, went into space. Her mother commented that next time it should be a woman that went. Valentina was inspired.

Every person in the Soviet Union was entitled to apply to the space program. Valentina applied and was accepted. Her parachuting experience was one of the reasons she got in, along with three other women. The Soviets wanted to send a woman to space, just once, to see if they could endure the hardships as well as men. In order to become a cosmonaut (a Soviet astronaut) she had to join the Air Force as an Officer.

She began her training in 1961 and it took 18 months. It wasn’t easy. She had to spend hours studying technical manuals, rocket science and spaceship design. She also underwent strenuous physical training.

On June 16, 1963, as a Junior Lieutenant and chief pilot of the Vostok VI, she became the first ever woman to go into space. She orbited Earth 48 times, and parachuted out of the spacecraft following its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. She had proven that women could withstand the physical and emotional stresses of space flight as well as any man.

She was awarded a medal at the Kremlin three days later and proclaimed as a Hero of the Soviet Union. She never returned to space, but worked in the Space Program and married another Cosmonaut in 1963. One year later their daughter, Elena, was born. She was the first child to be born to parents who had both been to space. Doctors were a little worried that she would not be normal, but Elena, now a doctor, proved them wrong.

She worked for the Communist party and headed the Soviet Union’s International Cultural and Friendship Union from 1987 to 1991.

She also worked tirelessly for the Soviet feminist movement. She wanted Soviet women to be treated the same as men. Even so, she is famous for the fact that she said and believed that a woman’s most important job is to be caring and a mother. Here was a woman who had done perhaps the most difficult job on Earth, and off it, and still thought being a mother was more important!

The Great Pyramid at Giza

The Outside

When people talk about Egyptian pyramids the ones that spring to mind are the pyramids of Giza. Of these, the largest is the known as the Great Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Khufu. Who built it and why? What exactly did it look like?

Although there are pyramids found in other parts of the world, when someone says “pyramid” people usually think of the three Egyptian pyramids that are world famous. The Ancient Egyptians built many pyramids, but these three in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, are the best preserved and the ones we know most about.

The largest of the three was built by King Khufu, otherwise known as King Cheops (pronounced as Key ops). He was called Cheops by the Greeks. His pyramid was the first one to be built at Giza and, being the largest, is known as the Great Pyramid. It was built in about 2,500 B.C. (about 4,500 years ago). It covers an area of 13 acres. Each side is 756 ft long (give or take an inch or two). It was originally 481 ft tall, but has been eroded by sand and wind, and now stands slightly shorter. That makes it about the same height as a forty-story building.

The pyramid was built as a tomb for the King (or Pharaoh as he was known then). He wanted to have a bigger and better tomb than any of his ancestors, so he asked the best architects in the land to design one for him. In those days, as soon as someone became a Pharaoh they started planning their funeral. It seems odd to us today, but for them the funeral was the most important part of their lives (or actually, to be more precise, their deaths!) King Khufu reigned for 23 years, and the pyramid was completed in his lifetime. No one is sure exactly how long it took to build, they are only sure that it took less than 23 years.

Designing the Pyramid

For years the Egyptians built their tombs underground, with a large flat building above them. They looked very much like a large bench. The Ancient Egyptians were very vain, and were always trying to out do everyone else. Someone decided that the bench tombs were plain and boring, so they started to build bigger and grander tombs. These tombs were the very first Egyptian pyramids. Instead of building an underground tomb with one bench on top, they put a series of benches on top, each one smaller than the previous one. It was called a step pyramid. The most famous one isn’t far from the Great Pyramid of Giza, in a place called Saqqara.

From the step pyramid came the true pyramid, like the ones at Giza, made by flattening the sides of the step pyramid, so that there was a gradual slope to the side, rather than the giant steps.

Building the Pyramid

Once a tomb had been designed the next step was to choose a site for it. It couldn’t be just anywhere, so the priests and important people would decide on an auspicious site (just a fancy way of saying lucky). Most of the Pharaoh’s tombs are built on the West side of the Nile, since the sun sets in the West. They believed that you traveled to a New World after you died, and since you traveled towards the darkness, if you started out where the sun set you wouldn’t have as far to go.

The first thing that needed to be done was to clear the sand away until they reached rock beneath the desert. Then the rock had to be flattened out so that the pyramid would be level. Next they marked the area that would be the base of the pyramid, with one side facing each of the main compass points (north, south east and west). This might all sound fairly simple so far, but you have to remember that everything was done by hand; no jackhammers or earthmovers were around in those days. The Ancient Egyptians didn’t have compasses either, but knew the direction by watching the sun and the stars.

Next they needed to get the stones. Some were cut from hills nearby and others were taken from the other side of the Nile. They also took granite and marble from Aswan, in the South of Egypt, to build a cover for the pyramid. Each stone was cut very precisely, and weighed between 21/2 and 5 tons. To build the pyramid they used 2,300,000 blocks of stone. If it took them the whole 23 years to build, that was 273 stones that they had to cut and move every day. If you look at the picture below, it will give you some idea of the size of the blocks.

The stones were transported to the site on wooden sledges on the land, and barges on the river. The river could only be used when it was flooded, which happened twice a year.

Once the stones reached the site they were smoothed to fit exactly with the surrounding ones. They didn’t use mortar or cement to build the pyramid; they just cut the stones so perfectly that they fitted onto each other. Even after all these years, they fit so perfectly together that it is impossible to slide a sheet of paper between most of them.

We really aren’t sure how the stones were lifted into place. There were no machines, and the Egyptians didn’t have pulleys. The most likely theory is that they built ramps up the side of the pyramid, and dragged the stones on sledges up the ramps. As the building got higher they made the ramps higher and longer. If they didn’t make them longer the slope would have been too steep to drag the stones up. Once the entire pyramid was built, the workmen covered it with marble, to give it a smooth and beautiful finish.

The Workmen

Some people think that slaves built the pyramids, but this probably isn’t true. The farmers didn’t have much to do, or to eat when the Nile was flooded. Since that is the time that they could transport the stones most easily, it is most likely the time when the pyramids were built. The best theory that historians have come up with is that King Khufu used the farmers, during the flood, and paid them with food. Since the farmers had to pay food to the King every year, as a form of tax, it really didn’t cost him anything.

The outside of the pyramid has changed over the years. It is no longer covered in marble. The Ancient Egyptians grew lazy over time, and when they built palaces and grand houses in Cairo, instead of sending to Aswan for their marble, they just took it off the pyramids. By then King Khufu had been dead a very long time, so no one thought he would mind much.

Now read about the inside of the pyramid.

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