{"id":791,"date":"2015-05-05T13:27:46","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=791"},"modified":"2015-05-05T13:29:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:56","slug":"first-american-in-space-may-5-1961","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=791","title":{"rendered":"First American in Space &#8211; May 5, 1961"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty four years ago today, on\u00c2\u00a0May 5, 1961, a long time before I knew anything about\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/holidays\/cinco-de-mayo\" target=\"blank\">Cinco de Mayo<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mercury_Seven\" target=\"blank\">Mercury Astronaut<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsc.nasa.gov\/Bios\/htmlbios\/shepard-alan.html\" target=\"blank\">Alan B. Shepard Jr.<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0blasted off in his\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/14392-mercury-space-capsule-freedom-7-moves.html\" target=\"blank\">Freedom 7 capsule<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0atop a\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mercury-Redstone_Launch_Vehicle\" target=\"blank\">Mercury-Redstone rocket<\/a>. His 15-minute sub-orbital flight made him the\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.com\/this-day-in-history\/the-first-american-in-space\" target=\"blank\">first American in space<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His flight further fueled my love for space travel that had been building since the\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.com\/this-day-in-history\/sputnik-launched\" target=\"blank\">Sputnik<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/content\/vanguard-satellite-1958\" target=\"blank\">Vanguard<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0satellites were launched a few years previously.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/multimedia\/imagegallery\/image_feature_171.html\" target=\"blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" title=\"space1.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.discoveringidentity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/space1.jpg\" alt=\"Alan Shepard, Mercury-Redstone Rocket\" width=\"516\" height=\"376\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty four years ago today, on\u00c2\u00a0May 5, 1961, a long time before I knew anything about\u00c2\u00a0Cinco de Mayo,\u00c2\u00a0Mercury Astronaut\u00c2\u00a0Alan B. Shepard Jr.\u00c2\u00a0blasted off in his\u00c2\u00a0Freedom 7 capsule\u00c2\u00a0atop a\u00c2\u00a0Mercury-Redstone rocket. His 15-minute sub-orbital flight made him the\u00c2\u00a0first American in space.\u00c2\u00a0 His &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=791\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[188],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel","tag-astronaut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}