Every year as the anniversary of the first human spaceflight approaches, I receive calls inquiring about the validity of Yuri Gagarin’s claim as the first human in space. The legitimate questions focus on the fact that Gagarin did not land inside his spacecraft.
Not only that he also had a pistol with him.
Did he? I know a special pistol was part of Soyuz missions. They didn’t want bears attacking cosmonauts when they landed in Siberia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82
Yeah they developed it because they feared the Makarov used before was not beefy enough.