Today in History: February 20, John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the Earth

Today is Friday, Feb. 20, the 51st day of 2026. There are 314 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the globe three times aboard Project Mercury's Friendship 7 spacecraft in a flight lasting 4 hours and 55 minutes before splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.

Also on this date:

In 1792, President George Washington signed an act creating the United States Post Office Department, the predecessor of the U.S. Postal Service.

In 1862, William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House from what was believed to be typhoid fever.

In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upheld, 7-2, compulsory vaccination laws intended to protect the public's health.

In 1939, more than 20,000 people attended a rally held by the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization, at New York's Madison Square Garden.

In 1965, America's Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed into the moon's surface, as planned, after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.

In 1998, American Tara Lipinski, age 15, became the youngest-ever Olympic figure skating gold medalist when she won the ladies' title at the Nagano (NAH'-guh-noh) Olympic Winter Games; American teammate Michelle Kwan took silver.

In 2003, a fire sparked by pyrotechnics broke out during a concert by the rock group Great White at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, killing 100 people and injuring over 200 others.

In 2016, a Michigan man shot and killed six strangers and wounded two others over several hours in the Kalamazoo area in between picking up passengers for a ride service. (Jason Dalton pleaded guilty in 2019 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.)