Credit: Getty Images
Credit: Getty Images
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Former astronaut John Glenn is dead at age 95.

Born in 1921, he was the oldest person ever to have traveled into space.

He was a Marine Corps pilot, a former U.S. Senator and a personal friend of the Kennedy family.

Glenn was also one of the "Mercury Seven" in the 60's, a group of pilots selected to fly the first American space mission.

In February 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on the Friendship 7 mission.

Throughout his life, he was known as an advocate for space research.

Glenn represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate, as a Democrat, from 1974 to 1999.

In 1998, he returned to space at age 77 on the space shuttle "Discovery."

He received a Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990.

In 2012, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He also held a professorship at Ohio State University.

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