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Birthdays today : John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (born July 18, 1921), (Col, USMC, Ret.), is a Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, and United States senator. He was selected as one of the "Mercury Seven" group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA to become America's first astronauts and fly the Project Mercury spacecraft. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space, after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov and the sub-orbital flights of Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. Glenn is the earliest-born American to go to orbit, and the second earliest-born man overall after Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy. Glenn received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990. With the death of Scott Carpenter on October 10, 2013, Glenn became the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn https://youtu.be/jRmgkUWwM4E
Posted 8 y ago
Responses: 2
Posted 8 y ago
I was lucky enough to live just south of Port Orange FL in the 1960s...about 60 miles from the Cape. We watched every single manned space shot in the 60s and early 70s from our front yard or from the Port Orange Elementary School playground. I watched Senator Glenn's historic launch with the members of my 2d grade class. I think every single one of us wanted to be an astronaut when we grew up. Those seven guys were our real-life heroes.
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SGT John " Mac " McConnell
8 y
Thanks for sharing MSgt Richard Rountree I bet that was cool to watch..
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