20 February
1962: On 20 February 1962, US Marine Colonel John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.
Glenn was one of the original NASA 'Mercury Seven' astronauts who piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 spacecraft, 'Friendship 7', on the first US manned orbital mission. Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, he completed three orbits around Earth, at a maximum altitude of about 162 miles and an orbital speed of about 26 000 kilometres per hour.
1928 On 20 February 1928, Antonio Abetti died.
Abetti was an Italian astronomer who was an authority on minor planets, or 'asteroids'. He was born on 19 June 1846. At first a civil engineer, he became an astronomer at the University of Padua (1868-93), with an interest in positional astronomy and made many observations of small planets, comets and star occultations.
In 1874, Abetti went to Muddapur, Bengal, to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun's disk where his use of a spectroscope was the first use of this kind. Later, he became director at the Arcetti Observatory and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florence.
