50 Years Ago, America Put its First Man in Space [Video]

This was the scene on May 5, 1961, when Astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. Though his first flight was a brief 15minutes and suborbital, it was the beginning of a long and storied career for Shepard. He would go on command the Apollo 14 mission making him the fifth man to walk on the moon and the first and only to play golf on another planet.

NASA is commemorating Shepard’s first flight with a postage stamp, and has an interactive site up now with details about the mission that began America’s history as a space faring nation.