Mercury Seven a team and solo. Grissom, Cooper, and Slayton were Air Force pilots; Shepard, Carpenter, and Schirra were Navy pilots, and Glenn was a Marine Corps pilot. All seven had attended a variety of postsecondary institutions in the 1940s. Of the five astronauts who had completed undergraduate degrees before being selected, two (Shepard and Schirra) were graduates of the United States Naval Academy. Having earned a Master of Arts degree in 1957 at the Naval War College, Shepard was the only selectee who held an advanced degree. Following a decade of intermittent studies, Cooper completed his degree as a mid-career student
The Seven Bearded Sisters 1975 book "The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World they Shaped" by Anthony Sampson. The book was about how seven of the biggest oil companies in the world conspired to overthrow governments. Njonjo used the word 'bearded' to draw a comparison with Karl Marx, as he saw these MPs to uphold Marxist ideologies. The MPs were left wing backbenchers who had been vocal in opposing most of the government's policies, especially what they saw as the government's close association with Western powers. The group was unofficial and most of them only knew each other through the motions