Well he was my hero growing up so this is at least relevant to me.

Just to put in perspective, Gagarin was _the_ superhero of every boy in ex-Soviet Union. It wasn't someone like Brittney Spears or Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a real human being who flew into space. If you can discard all the communist propaganda and other party bullshit, it is pretty cool to have a real cosmonaut as your hero growing up instead of a fictional character or just an actor.

"On-topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Lots of hackers want to go to space. See the space startups of Allen, Bezos, Carmack, Musk; the trips to Mir by Shuttleworth, Ansari, Simonyi, and Garriott. It's fitting to remember the first man in space went there 49 years ago today.

It is relevant in many, many different ways: 1. In short - it is relevant in the same way as talks about banking system, unemployment e.t.c - indirectly but in a profound way. 2. It is also relevant in a way that this was a major event of the Cold War, and that war was a vehicle of many technological advances of USA. 3. It is also relevant for general knowledge of the world around - especially for brainwashed American people, who might have been thinking that American were first in space, and that happened in mid-80s.