John Glenn, the all-American astronaut and senator who rocketed into history on flights 36 years apart as the first American to orbit the Earth and the oldest person in space, died Thursday, Dec. 8 at age 95.

"We are saddened by the loss of Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. A true American hero. Godspeed, John Glenn," NASA tweeted immediately after his death was anounced.

Glenn died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalized for more than a week.

"With John's passing, our nation has lost an icon and Michelle and I have lost a friend. John spent his life breaking barriers, from defending our freedom as a decorated Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, to setting a transcontinental speed record, to becoming, at age 77, the oldest human to touch the stars," President Obama said in a statement.

Glenn, who was known for his small-town decency and calm heroics, was the last of the original Mercury 7 astronauts who launched the US space program. He later served for four terms as a Democratic senator from Ohio.

Never could figure him being a democrat.

Democrats were once quite different than they are today....

many of us on the campfire, from the south, grew up in Democrat House Holds....

that is long before the party went socialist and then communist...

and party leadership was infested and then taken over by Anti American, Silver Spoon in their Mouth, 60s Hippie radicals...


back on topic...

Glenn was an outstanding American... regardless of his political affiliation...

Certainly had a storied career but I lost a lot of respect for him when he traded his support for Bill Clinton during Clinton's impeachment for a ride on the space shuttle. He bumped into line above lots of other who had been waiting years.

he was an anti gun puke from the word go......good riddance....

Glenn did much more for America than against it. Of the Mercury 7, I only met two (Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard) so I can't speak to John Glenn as a person. I've never understood why true American heroes like Glenn and McCain turned to what we now think of as the "Dark Side" and became Democrats, but I suspect that it was the D Party that approached them first. More shame to the Republicans, in my view. Not the men.

Glenn was a Marine, a fighter pilot, a combat veteran and hero, an astronaut, and a Senator. It does not befit any of us to belittle him as a man. Because he was more of a man than any of us.

Glenn did much more for America than against it. Of the Mercury 7, I only met two (Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard) so I can't speak to John Glenn as a person. I've never understood why true American heroes like Glenn and McCain turned to what we now think of as the "Dark Side" and became Democrats, but I suspect that it was the D Party that approached them first. More shame to the Republicans, in my view. Not the men.

Glenn was a Marine, a fighter pilot, a combat veteran and hero, an astronaut, and a Senator. It does not befit any of us to belittle him as a man. Because he was more of a man than any of us.

Self centered Idiot of the day!! Congrats!

From Ohio to Orbit

John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. He attended primary and secondary schools in New Concord, Ohio. He received a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Muskingum College in New Concord.

Muskingum College is among nine colleges or universities that subsequently awarded him honorary doctoral degrees.

Glenn entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in March 1942. He graduated and was commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1943. After advanced training, he joined Marine Fighter Squadron 155 and spent a year flying F-4U fighters in the Marshall Islands. He flew 59 combat missions during World War II.

After the war, he was a member of Marine Fighter Squadron 218 on the North China patrol and served on Guam. From June 1948 to December 1950 he served as an instructor in advanced flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas. He then attended Amphibious Warfare Training at Quantico, Va.

In Korea he flew 63 missions with Marine Fighter Squadron 311. As an exchange pilot with the Air Force Glenn flew 27 missions in the F-86 Sabre. In the last nine days of fighting in Korea, Glenn shot down three MiGs in combat along the Yalu River.



Glenn attended Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Md. After graduation, he was project officer on a number of aircraft. He was assigned to the Fighter Design Branch of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics (now Bureau of Naval Weapons) in Washington from November 1956 to April 1959. During that time he also attended the University of Maryland.

In July 1957, while he was project officer of the F-8U Crusader, he set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York -- 3 hours and 23 minutes. It was the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed.

Glenn accumulated nearly 9,000 hours of flying time, about 3,000 of it in jets.

After his selection as a Mercury astronaut, Glenn was assigned to the NASA Space Task Group at Langley, Va., in April 1959. The Space Task Group was moved to Houston and became part of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center in Houston) in 1962. Before his 4-hour, 55-minute flight in the Friendship 7 capsule, Glenn had served as backup pilot for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space who flew on May 5, 1961, and to Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who followed Shepard on a suborbital flight of his own.

When astronauts were assigned to provide pilot input for the design and development of spacecraft, Glenn specialized in cockpit layout and control functioning, including some of the early designs for the Apollo Project.

Glenn was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on six occasions, and holds the Air Medal with 18 Clusters for his service during World War II and Korea. Glenn also received the Navy Unit Commendation for service in Korea, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the China Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation, the Navy's astronaut Wings, the Marine Corps' Astronaut Medal, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Glenn resigned as an astronaut on Jan. 16, 1964. He was promoted to colonel in October 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps on Jan. 1, 1965.

He became an executive with Royal Crown International, but took an active part in Ohio politics and environmental protection efforts. He won his Senate seat in 1974, carrying all 88 counties of Ohio. He was re-elected in 1980 with the largest margin in Ohio history.

Ohio returned him to the Senate for a third term in 1986, again with a substantial majority. In 1992 he was elected again, becoming the first popularly elected senator from his state to win four consecutive terms.

During his last term he was the ranking member of both the Governmental Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Air/Land Forces in the Senate Armed Services Committee. He also served on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Special Committee on Aging.

He was considered one of the Senate's leading experts on technical and scientific matters, and won wide respect for his work to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He took pride in using his position on the Governmental Affairs Committee to root out waste in government and to clean up the nation's nuclear materials production plants.

In 1998, Glenn flew on the STS-95 Discovery shuttle flight, a 9-day mission during which the crew supported a variety of research payloads including deployment of the Spartan solar-observing spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope Orbital Systems Test Platform, and Glenn's investigations on space flight and the aging process.

Glenn did much more for America than against it. Of the Mercury 7, I only met two (Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard) so I can't speak to John Glenn as a person. I've never understood why true American heroes like Glenn and McCain turned to what we now think of as the "Dark Side" and became Democrats, but I suspect that it was the D Party that approached them first. More shame to the Republicans, in my view. Not the men.

Glenn was a Marine, a fighter pilot, a combat veteran and hero, an astronaut, and a Senator. It does not befit any of us to belittle him as a man. Because he was more of a man than any of us.