The picture above was taken during an International Space Station (ISS) mission (Expedition 7). It's a snapshot of a sunset over the Pacific Ocean - with anvil-shaped clouds adorning the view. Here's a quick question: Who was the first person to ever see Earth from outer space/orbit?

The answer: cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin. And today, April 12, 2008 marks the 47th anniversary of the first ever human trip to space. In 1961, he went up into space aboard the Vostok 1 and became the first man to travel into space and return. He was up in space for an hour and 48 minutes, and described the view as, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly." Yuri Gagarin became a hero and subsequently, a legend.

Now that spaceflight is being geared toward commercial (but insanely expensive) trips in orbit, will there come a time when we'll all get to see our planet from this point of view?