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Grissom reaches space; his capsule sinks under him at splashdown

The hatch blows early, and Liberty Bell 7 goes to the bottom while a Navy helicopter fights to keep Grissom afloat.

Ten weeks after Alan Shepard's suborbital flight, NASA needed to know the first success wasn't luck. On July 21, 1961, Gus Grissom rode Mercury-Redstone 4 to more than 102 nautical miles up and 262 nautical miles downrange, a fifteen-minute arc that made him the second American in space. Then, bobbing in the Atlantic, the hatch cover blew off Liberty Bell 7 without warning. Water poured in and the capsule started sinking. Grissom swam clear while a helicopter crew fought to keep the flooding spacecraft from taking him down with it…

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More from July 21

Green troops collide at Bull Run; the Union army breaks and runs for Washington

Spectators drove out from the capital with picnic baskets to watch; they fled home in the same traffic jam as the soldiers.

Old Ironsides sails again; Cronkite takes the helm off Marblehead

The 1797 frigate moves under her own canvas for the first time in 116 years, on sails paid for through a national campaign of citizen and student donations.

Marines and soldiers storm Guam's beaches, opening a three-week fight to retake it

Two and a half years after its surrender, the island is under American naval gunfire again.

Twelve nations bound themselves to treat an attack on one as an attack on all.

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More from Cold War America

A geyser of radioactive water rises 6,000 feet over Bikini Lagoon

Ninety feet down, the Baker device throws a column of sea into the sky and drenches the target fleet in fallout no one had planned for.

Armistice ends the fighting in Korea; the peace that follows is only a truce

Two years of talks end in a tent at Panmunjom, but South Korea's own president will not put his name on it.

Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11: Nixon obstructed justice

Six Republicans join every Democrat on the panel, three days after the Supreme Court ordered the tapes handed over.

Johnson orders U.S. troops in Vietnam raised from 75,000 to 125,000

The advisory war becomes an American war, on Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's recommendation.

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