Glenn was born in Ohio in 1921. In his early life he was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War. After the war he attended classes at the University of Maryland where he got a degree in chemistry.

Towards the end of the 1950s it had become clear that America was in fierce competition with the Soviet Union to send a man into space and bring him safely back to Earth. NASA chose 7 test pilots who would become astronauts in the Mercury program and John Glenn was one of them.

John Glenn was one of NASA’s first astronauts and the first American to orbit the Earth. He belonged to the “Mercury 7”.