Woman of the Week: Valentina Tereshkova

By Emma Bartley

Valentina Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937, in a village in Russia. She was the second of three children, and her father was killed fighting in WWII when she was just two years old. Her mother raised her and her sister and brother single-handedly.

Valentina started school at the age of eight and started working in a textile mill in 1954, at the age of seventeen. She continued taking classes and learned how to parachute in her free time.

Her parachuting experience led her to be chosen in the Space Race between the US and Soviet Union in the late 1950s and 1960s.

On June 16, 1963, the Vostok 6 was launched, with Valentina on board. She was the first woman to travel in space! As the craft took off, she screamed, “Hey sky! Take off your hat! I’m on my way!”

Valentina orbited the earth 48 times in a little under three days. The four male American astronauts who flew before her had only orbited the earth a total of 36 times between all of them.

When she returned from space, Valentina parachuted from 20,000 feet above the earth and was awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union.” It would be another 19 years before another woman would travel to space (Svetlana Savitskaya, another woman from the Soviet Union). The first American woman to go to space was Sally Ride in 1983.

On November 3, 1963, Valentina married Andrian Nikolayev. They had their daughter, Yelena, in 1964, but they divorced in 1980.

Valentina headed the Soviet Committee for Women from 1968 to 1987. She became a spokesperson for the Soviet Union and received the United Nations Gold Medal of Peace. She was also pictured on postage stamps and had a crater on the moon named after her! She is still alive to this day.