Monday 8 June 2009

Astronaut and US Senator John Glenn sends students a signed photo!!!



That’s right. In the mail today was a brown envelope from Columbus, Ohio (USA). That is where Senator Glenn currently works both as a US Senator and as Ohio State University. His responding letter stated this:

“Thank you very much for your letter and for all the letters and pictures from your students. That was an excellent group of letters and I hope they all got an “A” for their efforts!
Please pass along my best regards to your students.
John Glenn”

WHO WAS JOHN GLENN?

Born: 18 July 1921
Birthplace: Cambridge, Ohio
Best Known As: The first American to orbit Earth

John Glenn, Jr. circled Earth on the Mercury 6 space mission in 1962, becoming the first American to make a complete Earth orbit. Glenn was a fighter pilot in both World War II and the Korean War. He became one of America's original seven Mercury astronauts and orbited Earth three times on 20 February 1962 in the capsule Friendship 7. (Alan Shepard had been the first American astronaut in space in 1961, but Glenn was the first American to circle the globe. Glenn was elected senator from Ohio in 1974, serving until 1998, and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. He returned to orbit in late 1998, joining the crew of the space shuttle Discovery in a mission that became a nostalgic salute to a space pioneer. A true American Hero!