Astronaut & Senator John Glenn — Dead At 95

John Glenn has passed away at the age of 95 years old — after a wild life that saw him pioneering space, becoming a United States senator, and even running for President of the United States! It's a tragic end to an exceptional life for an American hero. In a bizarre twist, though, it was his political career that put his life most at risk!

The country cheered when John became the first American to orbit the earth, circling the globe three times sitting in the Mercury VI on February 20, 1962. At the end of that year, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asked Glenn to run against an incumbent United States Senator from Ohio during the 1964 Democratic primary election. Glenn announced his political ambitions in Jan. 1964, but then suffered a concussion in March when falling in a bathroom.

The resultant concussion forced him to withdraw from the race. Glenn retired from the Marine Corps on January 1, 1965, and finally fulfilled his political ambitions when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 1974. From there, the popular politician often considered a run for President of the United States.

Glenn was always a popular candidate for the Vice-President slot, and he made his first run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1983 — with a poll showing him second only to Walter Mondale as the party's preferred candidate. He still lost the primary run to Mondale, although the Dems would continually promoted him as Vice=Presidential material through 1992.

That still wasn't the end of Glenn's heroics, though — and he became the oldest person to fly in space he flew as a Payload Specialist on a Discovery mission at the age of 77. His death came the same week that fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin was hospitalized during a trip to the South Pole at the age of 86.