John Glenn John Glenn, Jr. was born July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. He and his wife have two grown children and two grandchildren. Dr. Glenn received an honorary Doctor of Science degree in engineering and since then has received honorary doctoral degrees from nine colleges or universities. He also won many awards and medals for his service in World War II, in which he flew 59 combat missions. After the war, Dr. Glenn remained in the military service, where he has flown over 9,000 hours, with about 3,000 hours in jet aircraft. In 1959 John Glenn was selected to be one of the first seven astronauts in the U.S. space program. On February 20, 1962, Glenn made history by completing a successful three-orbit mission around the earth as pilot of the Mercury-Atlas 6 "Friendship 7" spacecraft. He was in space for 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. He resigned from the Manned Spacecraft Center on January 16, 1964. He was a business executive from 1965 until being elected to the United States Senate in November 1974. To the surprise of many people, John Glenn returned to space in 1998, becoming the oldest astronaut so far. He worked aboard the STS-95 Discovery, a 9-day research mission that traveled 134 Earth orbits (a distance of 3.6 million miles) in 213 hours and 44 minutes.