In 2020, many Russian media reported that a Florida district court declared Yuri Gagarin's flight a fake. Astronaut John Glenn was declared the first man in outer space. We checked if this is true.

The text that circulated in the Russian media in October 2020 looked something like this:

“The Florida District Court found Gagarin’s flight into space to be a hoax by a Russian film studio. As a result, the first man in space de jure became the American John Glenn. American bloggers fought for this decision, who allegedly collected evidence that the Russians filmed the flight of the first man into space.

It's funny, but previously the Americans were accused of filming the moon landing. Then the authors of the theory of Hollywood participation compared the shadows in the photographs of the landing and tried to expose NASA in the smallest details. As for the current judicial precedent, it is unlikely to affect the historical truth.

An American court has granted Woodrow Bakinsky's claim to recognize astronaut John Glenn as the first man in space. The judge found the evidence in favor of this decision compelling. It is noteworthy that among the evidence is a hoax of Yuri Gagarin himself. American bloggers believe that his role was played by theater actor Grigory Rastorguev. And the “flight” itself took place in the pavilion of the Odessa Film Studio.

The author of the lawsuit believes that he managed to restore justice and the Russians are obliged to admit to deception. There has not yet been a reaction from Russia to these statements and the court decision.”

As of April 2021, this information was present on such Russian resources as websites "Express newspapers", Society "Tsargrad", aggregator "Satellite". It was also posted on the portal "Rambler", legal forum 9111.ru and in a number of other publications.

In September 2020, even before the above sources, the news was spread by the Bulgarian branch of the famous portal Newsbeezer With link to one of the local media. But the search for sources of sensational information in overseas media is fruitless: nothing like this has been published in the United States. The absurdity of the information is enhanced by the fact that John Glenn was not even considered the first American astronaut - at one time Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom were ahead of him. True, Glenn owns a number of other records: in particular, he became the first American who made an orbital flight (the previous two were suborbital), and in 1998, at the age of 77, he decided to fly into space again and still leads by a wide margin list of oldest astronauts.

As for the original source of the message, it was the famous satirical website “Panorama” April 16, 2020, shortly after the celebration of Cosmonautics Day. Three days earlier, on April 13, the name Woodrow Bakinsky appeared in another "news" publications - then they were still talking about unofficial claims about Gagarin’s flight.

The very appearance of the satirical news, apparently, was not accidental. On April 12, 2020, the US State Department posted a festive message on its Russian-language Facebook page. message with the following content: “59 years ago the first manned flight into space was made.” To which the Russian Foreign Ministry responded statement: “We remind our colleagues from the US State Department that the first man in space was a Soviet cosmonaut, his name is Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. Not mentioning this is disinformation and a sneaky move of the post-truth era.” This reaction could well have become a source of fantasy for the authors of Panorama.