John Glenn

American astronaut, one of the original seven astronauts and the first American to orbit the earth on 20 February 1962. On his 4-hour 55-minute flight, he hurtled through space at an astonishing speed of 17,500 mph. The spacecrafts splashdown near Grand Turk Island in the Bahamas set off a national celebration centered around the red-haired, 40-year-old Marine pilot. President John Kennedy flew to Cape Canaveral to congratulate him, a joint session of Congress cheered him and some four million people lined Manhattan streets and showered him and wife Annie with ticker tape. The son of a plumber with an normal upbringing and youth, Glenns life never returned to normal after his amazing experience. His popularity helped propel him to the Senate in 1974, where he served four terms, focusing on education, cutting government waste and controlling the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. He announced on 21 February 1997 that he would not, at 75, seek a fifth term. On paper, he seemed a man of encompassing vision, not tied to traditional lobbies and dogma. In reality, he tended to be narrowly focused on details. He also had some political troubles: dull speeches, a $3 million debt from his bid for the 1985 Democratic Presidential nomination that was not settled for a decade and an accusation that he used his clout to aid S&L mogul Charles Keating. He and Annie Castor Glenn had a rock-solid marriage from 1943. At 77, Glenn still felt the pull of deep space, taking on another dangerous mission. On the morning of 29 October 1998, he was aboard the space shuttle Discovery, testing how space flights affect the cardiovascular system of older people inasmuch as the changes that occur in the human body in space are remarkably similar to what happens to people in old age. After being a spokesman for the Mercury Program, he was now a representative of the Senior generation. The space mission blast-off was on 29 October 1998, 2:19 PM, Orlando, FL. On 7 November 1998, 9:04 AM PST, Glenn returned from his journey of nearly four million miles after the space shuttle Discovery touched down at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Glenn and his wife were in a car accident on 5 August 2006 in Columbus, Ohio, and hospitalized overnight. Glenn sustained a minor fracture in his sternum and his wife was bruised. In June 2014, Glenn underwent a successful heart valve replacement surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. He died on the afternoon of 8 December 2016 at Columbus, Ohio, aged 95. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less