Glenn, John

Born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. US pilot and astronaut; marine colonel.

Glenn graduated from the flying school of the Naval Air Training Center in Texas in 1943, after which he served in various Marine Corps units. He graduated from the navy’s school for test pilots in Maryland in 1954, and he made a nonstop transcontinental flight in a supersonic airplane in 1957. He has been a member of a group of astronauts of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration since 1959. On Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn became the first person in the USA to make a five-hour (three-orbit) flight around the earth, in the spacecraft Friendship 7 (Project Mercury).