Fun fact: the most popular years for babies named Glenn and John was 1962 and 1963 respectively [0,1], and you can see a little spike in births for both around the time John Glenn orbited the earth. Glenn entered the NASA test program without the required degree in a scientific field. He was the oldest man to fly in space, at age 77, and one of the last people to receive a ticker tape parade (the last one to receive multiple ticker-tape parades)
IMHO if he qualified as one of a handful of people to get a ticker-tape parade, he definitely qualifies for a black bar.
My (then teenaged) brother had a change to meet John in the early 90s. He asked him, "Why don't you go back to space?" and suggested he go back up if the opportunity presented itself.
We'll never know if that had any bearing on John Glenn's decision to return (maybe he already planned to I don't know), but I like to think it certainly did. Maybe just hearing the idea out loud, even from a teen, made the thought of it less crazy.
Fun fact: the most popular years for babies named Glenn and John was 1962 and 1963 respectively [0,1], and you can see a little spike in births for both around the time John Glenn orbited the earth. Glenn entered the NASA test program without the required degree in a scientific field. He was the oldest man to fly in space, at age 77, and one of the last people to receive a ticker tape parade (the last one to receive multiple ticker-tape parades)
IMHO if he qualified as one of a handful of people to get a ticker-tape parade, he definitely qualifies for a black bar.
[0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=first+name+john
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=first+name+glenn