For half a century now, the “yellow” press has been promoting the myth about “Gagarin’s predecessors” who went into space before him (Alexey Dedovsky - in 1957, Terenty Shiborin - in 1958, Andrei Mitkov - in 1959), but , since these flights ended unsuccessfully and the first cosmonauts did not return from orbit, their names were consigned to oblivion, their feat was classified, the history of space exploration was completely rewritten, and Yuri Gagarin was ordered to be considered the first... And no matter how much historians refute this misinformation, no matter how much they prove on the contrary, the list of “ghost cosmonauts” is becoming longer and longer - today they number in the hundreds! Who and when was the first to launch the “canard” about Gagarin’s predecessors, how the myth of “phantoms in orbit” was created and why it turned out to be so tenacious - read in this sensational book!