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[i]In the dozen years that had followed Yuri Gagarin's flight, the astronauts and cosmonauts had met a number of times. But these first meetings had been shadowed by the cold war. John Glenn and Gherman Titov had been the first rival spacemen to meet and exchange views, at the May 1962 COSPAR gathering in Washington. After the two men and their wives toured the capital and made a social call on President Kennedy at the White House, the space travelers held a news conference. Titov was circumspect in answering questions about his Vostok craft and would discuss space cooperation only in the context of disarmament. Three years passed before the next meeting. In June 1965, a very cool handshake was exchanged by three Americans - Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, astronauts James A. McDivitt, and Edward H. White - and Yuri Gagarin. This encounter at a Paris Air Show luncheon took place after a formal meeting between these men had failed to materialize. In September of the same year, Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad had a much warmer conversation with Leonov and Belyayev at an international meeting in Athens. As they exchanged lapel pins, the men agreed that they would have to meet again and compare notes about space flight. As the years passed, the cosmonauts and astronauts began to socialize more freely...[/i]
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