when did jessica watson sail around the world
Jessica Watson Jessica Watson, OAM (born 18 May 1993) is an Australian sailor who was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for completing a southern hemisphere solo circumnavigation[1] at the age of 16. Departing Sydney on 18 October 2009, Watson headed north-east crossing the equator in the Pacific Ocean before crossing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. She returned to Sydney on 15Â May 2010, three days before her 17th birthday.[2] The voyage was shorter than the required 21,600 nautical miles to be considered a global circumnavigation,[3] and Watson never claimed the voyage to be an attempt at such, preferring the less formal term 'around the world'. In recognition of her achievement Watson was named the 2011 Young Australian of the Year,[4] and the following year was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.[5] She currently resides in Buderim, Queensland.
Alan Shepard A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard saw action with the surface navy during World War II. He became a naval aviator in 1946, and a test pilot in 1950. He was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made the first manned Project Mercury flight, MR-3, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. His craft entered space, but did not achieve orbit. He became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space, and the first person to manually control the orientation of his spacecraft. In the final stages of Project Mercury, Shepard was scheduled to pilot the Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10), which was planned as a three-day mission. He named Mercury Spacecraft 15B Freedom 7 II in honor of his first spacecraft, but the mission was cancelled.