On this day in history, on May 5th, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space- piloting the spacecraft “Freedom 7” during a 15 minute suborbital flight that reached an altitude of 116 miles above the earth. Shepard’s success occurred 23 days after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first-ever human in space. The 1960s marked an era during which there was an intense technological competition between the Russians and Americans called the Space Race. #ProgressIsPossible
