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
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (musical) happy and want to marry the brothers. The story ends with a shotgun wedding of the six remaining couples. The stage musical version of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" was first performed in June 1978 in the Dallas Summer Musicals season with Howard Keel and Jane Powell reprising the lead roles they had played in the original movie 24 years earlier. The production - with Keel and Powell still attached - then proceeded on what was touted as a pre-Broadway tour playing limited engagements in St Louis, Kansas City (Missouri), Toronto and Atlanta. An engagement at the Pantages Theatre in