John Glenn: Aviation Pioneer

Fifty two years ago today, John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, traveling around the Earth three times during his approximate 5-hour flight aboard the Friendship 7, part of the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. At the time, Glenn was only the fifth person to travel into space, and only the third American.

John Herschel Glenn, Jr. was born July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. He studied engineering at Muskingum College, but left school when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941 and the US thrust into World War II. He would eventually earn his bachelor's degree, though not until 1962.

Glenn enlisted first in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and then in the U.S. Navy as an aviation cadet. He was eventually reassigned to the U.S. Marine Corps, flying transport planes before transferring to combat duty. He would fly 59 combat missions in the Pacific Theatre before 1945. After the war he flew patrols about China and became a flight instructor for the Navy. Glenn would go on to be an outstanding fighter pilot in the Korean War, completing a total of 90 combat missions between 1950 - 1953.

Following the Korean War ceasefire, Glenn worked as an elite test pilot, testing plane armaments. As a major in the Marine Corps and assigned to the Test Pilot School, he piloted the first supersonic transcontinental flight in 1957.

In 1959, shortly after the creation of NASA, Glenn was one of seven men recruited to pioneer the astronaut program; the group would come to be known as the Mercury Seven. Glenn's status as the first American in orbit cemented him as a hero in the eyes of the American public.

On January 30, 1964, Glenn resigned from NASA to pursue a career in politics. He would serve as a U.S. Senator for 24 years, and even made a bid for the vice-presidency in 1976, and for the presidency in 1984.

Glenn's part in the Mercury-Atlas mission was immortalized in the 1983 motion picture The Right Stuff, with Academy Award nominee Ed Harris portraying Glenn.

Glenn would return to space in 1998 aboard the space shuttle Discovery, this time to study the effects of space flight on the elderly. At the time of his second historic space flight, Glenn was the 77th oldest person to ever go into orbit.

John Glenn, who married his childhood sweetheart Anne Margaret Castor in 1943, has received countless awards and honors. The high school in his hometown of New Concord, Ohio, now bears his name, as well as several others scattered across six states. Presently 92, Glenn is the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven, and very much an American hero.