John Glenn orbits the Earth
1962 · Event
Friendship 7 carries the first American around the world three times; Glenn returns a national hero — and flies again at 77 aboard the shuttle.
On these timelines: Spaceflight, The Space Race, Master, USA, Cold War
More from Spaceflight
- Apollo 8 orbits the Moon (1968)
- Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket (1926)
- First Space Shuttle flight (1981)
- V-2: the first rocket to reach space (1942)
- Apollo 17: the last Moon landing (1972)
- Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation (1903)
- First spacewalk (1965)
- Mir space station (1986)
Around 1962
- Six-Day War (1967)
- Cuban Revolutionary War (1953)
- Watergate scandal (1972)
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
- Apollo 11 moon landing (1969)
- The Troubles (1968)
- Decolonisation of Africa (1952)
- Prague Spring (1968)
- US Civil Rights Movement (1954)
- Suez Crisis (1956)