Renowned astronaut and former U.S. Ohio Sen. John Glenn was hospitalized in his hometown of Columbus, according to multiple reports Wednesday afternoon.
Glenn, 95, was taken to a local hospital on Wednesday. Officials with the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University did not immediately disclose the specific reason.
“[For] anybody who’s 95, any illness is always bad,” college spokesman Hank Wilson told Cleveland.com. Two years ago, Glenn underwent heart-valve replacement surgery and suffered a stroke.
Glenn’s long career in the military, science and politics began in the 1940s. He served from 1941 to 1965 in the Navy and Marine Corps and fought in World War II and the Korean War. In 1959, NASA selected him as one of the “Mercury Seven” military test pilots to become the country’s first astronauts. Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962, making him a household name during America’s Space Race while John F. Kennedy was president. He received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978 and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990.
In 1974, he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat and served four terms until retiring in 1999. During his second to last year in the Senate, he flew in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs, making him the oldest person to fly in space at 77 years old. He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, signed a bill in June renaming Port Columbus International Airport in Glenn’s honor.
