The Explorers' Club Special

Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 60th Anniversary of Mercury-Redstone 4
21 July 1961: Mercury 4 lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, carrying Gus Grissom (1926-1967), U.S.A.F. aboard the Mercury capsule Liberty Bell 7 atop a Redstone rocket for a suborbital flight; the escape hatch blew unexpectedly shortly after splashdown, the Liberty Bell 7 filled with seawater, & sank into the Atlantic Ocean; Grissom was recovered by the U.S.S. Randolph.

Wayback Machine: № DCCLX, "The Space Race—The 59th Anniversary of Mercury-Redstone 4"

Commentary: Grissom was the second American & the third man in space; with Mercury-Redstone 4, the United States claimed its first "first" in the Space Race: the first nation to launch a second astronaut/cosmonaut into space. Just as Yuri Gagarin had beaten Alan Shepard by three weeks in the race to be the first man in space, Gus Grissom beat Gherman Titov by three weeks in the race to be his nation's second man in space.

Semper exploro.