John Herschel Glenn Jr. was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman and politician. He was the third person and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II, China and Korea. He shot down three MiG-15s, and was awarded six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen Air Medals. Glenn served from 1974 to 1999 as a Democratic United States Senator from Ohio. In 1998, while still a sitting senator, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission, making him, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space. Glenn died at the age of 95 in 2016.
About John Glenn in brief
John Herschel Glenn Jr. was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman and politician. He was the third person and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II, China and Korea. He shot down three MiG-15s, and was awarded six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen Air Medals. Glenn served from 1974 to 1999 as a Democratic United States Senator from Ohio. In 1998, while still a sitting senator, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission, making him, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space. Glenn, both the oldest and the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven, died at the age of 95 in 2016. His boyhood home in New Concord, Ohio, has been restored as a historic house museum and education center. He first flew in an airplane with his father when he was eight years old. He became fascinated by flight, and built model airplanes from balsa wood kits. He washed cars and sold rhubarb to earn money to buy a bicycle, after which he took a job delivering The Columbus Dispatch newspaper. His parents had married shortly before John Sr. left for the Western Front during World War I. His father started his own business, the Glenn Plumbing Company. Glenn attended New Concord High School, where he played on the varsity football team as a center and linebacker. He also made his first solo flight in March 1942.
Glenn married Annie Castor in a Presbyterian Church Drive ceremony on April 6, 1943. The couple had two children, John Herschel Jr. and Anna Margaret Castor, whom he would later marry. Glenn quit college to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps. In March 1943, Glenn was commissioned as a second lieutenant at Camp Kearny, California, which he was assigned to fly F-4D Grumman transport planes. He flew his first military aircraft at Camp Christi Christi for primary training in March 1943. He accepted an offer to transfer to U. S. Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas in April 1943. Glenn died in March 2016 at age 95, and is survived by his wife, Annie, and their three children, all of whom live in Columbus, Ohio. He is buried in Mount Airy, near his childhood home of New Concord. His son, John Glenn III, served as a member of Congress from Ohio from 1973 to 1999. He died in December 2013 at age 94. He had served in the Marine Corps from 1942 to 1943, and as a Marine Corps pilot from 1943 to 1945. He served in Korea from 1945 to 1947, and served as an officer in the United States Air Corps from 1947 to 1949. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Glenn is the only person to have flown in the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs.
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This page is based on the article John Glenn published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 17, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
