On the morning of May 5th, 1961, 37-year-old Alan Shepard woke up, ate a breakfast (consisting of a filet mignon wrapped in bacon, scrambled eggs, and orange juice), strapped into the Freedom 7 rocket, and blasted off into space, becoming the first American astronaut to do so.
Shepard’s historic flight – and the first crewed flight of Project Mercury – did two things. It demonstrated that after getting beat to space by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, America was still in the race. And it proved the United States could safely send a human into space and back, helping to restore national confidence during the Cold War. Shepard’s flight only l …