ON THIS DAY 7 18 2023

This Day in History: July 18

Featured Event

1962




John Glenn—the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in 1962—was born.



John Glenn
American astronaut and United States senator


John Glenn, in full John Herschel Glenn, Jr., also called John H. Glenn, Jr., (born July 18, 1921, Cambridge, Ohio, U.S.—died December 8, 2016, Columbus, Ohio), the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in 1962. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, had made a single orbit of Earth in 1961.)
Glenn joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942. He then joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943 and flew 59 missions in the South Pacific during World War II. In the Korean War, he flew 90 missions, and in the last nine days of the war, he shot down three MiGs. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1954 and flew on test projects involving the F-8 fighter. He made the first transcontinental flight with an average supersonic speed in 1957 when he flew from California to New York in 3 hours and 23 minutes. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1959.


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Featured Biography

M.I.A.
British-born Sri Lankan rapper




M.I.A., byname of Maya Arulpragasam, (born July 18, 1975, London, England), British-born Sri Lankan rapper who achieved global fame with politically charged dance music.
Although Arulpragasam was born in London, she spent much of her childhood in northern Sri Lanka. When the civil war between the Tamil minority in the north and the Sinhalese government in the south intensified in the 1980s, her father joined the militant Tamil Tigers, and the rest of her family fled Sri Lanka, eventually returning to London. There Arulpragasam studied visual arts, often creating works that were influenced by the conflict she had witnessed as a child. She received her first exposure to the music industry as the graphic designer for the British pop punk group Elastica, and she familiarized herself with the recording equipment used by dance music producers.


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