Friends!

Today is a birthday of the first astronaut of independent Ukraine Leonid Kadeniuk!



He was born in Chernivtsi region in the family of rural teachers. Once, to become an astronaut, he added a year to his metric, because was allowed to train as an astronaut Only at the age of 17 years. He was allowed because people believed that one day the boy will appear with the flowers near the spaceport. And so it happened.



In 1997, he had been flying in space for 17 days in the international expedition.



Ukrainian flew on the shuttle "Columbia" which was filmed in the movie "Armageddon" with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. During filming Kadeniuk trained at NASA. Unfortunately, the shuttle was burnt down in 2003, when he returned to Earth.



Did you know that in order to wake up the astronauts on the ship, they use special songs alarms, that are chosen by members of the expedition? Leonid Kadeniuk chose anthem of Ukraine. So several times during the fly expedition got up with the music of Michael Verbitsky.



I heartily congratulate this great Ukrainian on his Birthday! I wish you health, joy, harmony and peace!