Man went into space for the first time.
Dogs got there first but nobody ever talks about that
Doesn't it only count if they make it back?
It seems at least possible that the first men didn't make it back, either.
That reads like a reference to the Judica-Cordiglia tape recordings, which were of dubious provenance, to say the least:
Since the 1960s critical analysis of the recordings has cast doubt on their provenance. For instance, audio transcripts reveal that none of the cosmonauts, who were supposed to be Soviet air force pilots, followed standard communication protocols, such as identifying themselves when speaking or using correct technical terminology.
...
hough some of the transcripts record cosmonauts saying they are leaving Earth's orbit (i.e. heading into interplanetary or "deep" space), the crewed Vostok 3KAs could not reach escape velocity because their designs never contained secondary-burn propulsion units. This was inherent to the Vostok programme, a project to put the first Soviet citizens into low Earth orbit and return them safely. OKB-1 only required spacecraft with velocities that could reach Earth orbit (28,160 km/h or 17,500 mph) far less than the speed needed to break orbit (40,320 km/h or 25,050 mph). Propulsion units powerful enough to leave Earth's orbit did not begin to appear until the test firing of the RD-270 engine in 1969; and it was not until the N1 moon rocket (with the NK-33 engines) in 1974 that the Soviets built a spacecraft able to reach open space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judica-Cordiglia_brothersThe fourth tape released -purportedly of a capsule making three orbits a few days before Gagarin's flight - may well be what prompted the Daily Worker to claim that the USSR had put a man in space before Gagarin had even climbed into his Vostok capsule:
... rumors had surfaced that the Soviets had successfully launched a man into space before Gagarin set foot in Vostok 1, and the talk was that one cosmonaut had done so on April 7, just five days earlier.
Dennis Ogden, the Moscow-based correspondent for the British Communist Party newspaper, Daily Worker, reported as such, his story splashed across the publication's front page with the headline: "The First Man In Space". It informed readers that the spaceman — "the test-pilot son of a top-ranking aircraft designer" — was "back alive, but suffering from [the] effects of his flight".
https://www.space.com/yuri-gagarin-conspiracy-theoryGranted, it took the Soviets nearly 20 years to admit to the death of
Valentin Bondarenko in a ground-based experiment and the
Nedelin Disaster was hushed up for nearly 30 years, but they did eventually come clean, and it follows that if the mishaps purportedly recorded by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers had happened, we'd have heard about them by now.
One of the arguments against the faked Moon landings tinfoilism is that the Soviets would have been tracking American space flights, and if they had any grounds to believe that NASA was faking it, they'd have seized the propaganda opportunity. The reverse applies too - had there been Soviet manned space flights ahead of Vostok 1 which had gone wrong, does anyone think that the Americans would have kept quiet?