Today is the anniversary of the first American to orbit the Earth, meaning there was only one man we could feature: John Glenn.
Born in Cambridge, Ohio, John Glenn got his first taste of flying from fighting in World War II with the Navy in their aviation unit, and later as a marine. As a fighter pilot, he flew 59 missions in the South Pacific, and later flew again as a fighter in the Korean War.
Having been a test pilot for the first supersonic transcontinental flight in an F-8, Glenn had enough experience to be taken into NASA as one of the astronauts who would form part of Project Mercury, the first program from the United States to attempt human spaceflight in 1959.
On February 20th of 1962, Glenn was launched into space to become the first ever American man to orbit the Earth, travelling around our planet three times in just under five hours. At the time, Glenn was the fifth person to have ever travelled into space, and was a pioneer in the early days of manned space missions.
He became a national hero, so much so that the Kennedy administration was concerned about sending him on the Apollo missions to the moon due to how big a superstar he had become. They felt that if something went wrong with such a high profile astronaut, it could mean the end of public support for NASA.
On the back of this huge public support, Glenn was able to run for senator in his home state of Ohio and was sworn into office in 1974. He served for nearly 25 years in government, and even ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, losing to Walter Mondale.
In 1998, John Glenn broke another record in space travel when he became the oldest man to go into space at age 77, meaning he was probably in pretty great shape physically and mentally at that age, not bad going!
If you want the chance to make history like John Glenn and travel into space, then all you’ve got to do is head over to lynxapollo.com to become the first Irishman to leave the planet.
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