Virgil (Gus) Grissom is pulled from the ocean
July 21, 1961 — Grissom's flight was identical to Shepard's — with a somewhat less lovely ending. The explosive bolts on his hatch blew too quickly after the landing, flooding the capsule and causing it to plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic. Grissom wriggled out in time, but as his space suit held on to water, he nearly sank too. He was pulled, sodden and dripping, from the ocean and made it to the carrier deck alive. He never quite escaped the whispers that he had panicked and blown the hatch too early. He insisted it was a malfunction, and a NASA investigation agreed with him. He would fly again, brilliantly, and eventually perish tragically — during a launchpad training exercise at Cape Kennedy.