Mercury Seven part-time student at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1956 to 1959. Both astronauts were ultimately awarded their bachelor's degrees after their 1962 space flights. NASA introduced the astronauts in Washington on April 9, 1959. Although the agency viewed Project Mercury's purpose as an experiment to determine whether humans could survive space travel, the seven men immediately became national heroes and were compared by "Time" magazine to "Columbus, Magellan, Daniel Boone, and the Wright brothers." Two hundred reporters overflowed the room used for the announcement and alarmed the astronauts, who were unused to such a large audience. Because they
The Seven Stars Inn for indicating the direction North. "The Plough" is also a common pub name. The reference to "seven stars in the sky" in the famous Green Grow the Rushes O! Teaching Song or Dilly Song gives further, if mystical, insights. The Seven Stars could be the Seven Stars referred to in Revelations as representing the seven angels of the Seven churches of Asia; or the Pleiades, or Ursa Major. The song is replete with Christian and Pre-Christian symbolism, and dates to medieval times, if not earlier. Shakespeare refers to the "seven stars" in King Lear Act 1, v The Seven Stars