What are the origins of this fun-filled festive custom?
Less than a month before Shepard went into space, the Soviet Union beat the US in the space race by sending the world's first person to space. Yuri Gagarin became an international celebrity after his return to Earth.
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. She was also the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32.
The first animal to make an orbital spaceflight around the Earth was the dog Laika, aboard the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. She died of overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit.
Sources: (Newsweek) (Stacker)
Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon in 1969. He and Buzz Aldrin walked around the moon for 2.5 hours, exploring and collecting samples before returning to Earth with Michael Collins, who had stayed in orbit on the Apollo 11.
Soviet astronaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963. She spent 71 hours in space.
Helen Sharman was the first British astronaut and the first female visitor to the Mir space station in 1991.
On April 30, 2001, US millionaire Dennis Tito (left) arrived at the International Space Station via a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming the world's first space tourist.
A sign that the Cold War had finally ended was that the American space station Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir met in space for the first time.
American Eileen Marie Collins became the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission. She also piloted a rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir.
A combination of American and Russian astronauts, the first crew boarded the International Space Station in 2000.
The Saudi Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud (right) became the first royal in space. A member of the Saudi Air Force, he had 1,000 hours of flight experience when he joined NASA's Discovery mission in 1985.
The Atlantis took approximately half the time of earlier space shuttles to construct.
In 1988, Discovery became the first space shuttle to take off after the Challenger disaster in 1986. The Challenger exploded on takeoff, killing all seven aboard.
The first space shuttle, the Columbia, reached orbit in 1981.
In a tragic space first, Soviet astronauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev became the first to die in space on June 30, 1971. A broken breathing valve caused a drop in pressure inside their spacecraft, asphyxiating them within seconds.
Launched by NASA, three crews visited over the course of the next two years, as massive amounts of outer space data were transmitted back to mission control in Houston.
Guion S. Bluford was the first African American to go to space in 1983. However, the first black person in space was Cuban astronaut Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez in 1980. He was part of a Soviet program to fly non-Soviet astronauts aboard a Soviet spacecraft.
Locked in a space race for decades, the two nations teamed up in 1975 for the first international manned spaceflight. An American Apollo spacecraft met up with a Soviet Soyuz, and their crews performed several experiments together.
Soviet astronaut Alexei Leonov was the first person to walk in space in March 1965. Leonov's first words on exiting the spacecraft were: "The Earth is round!"
John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Glenn was a member of the Mercury 7, and circled the globe three times in less than five hours.
The first American astronauts were introduced in 1959. Members of the group were finalists from a competitive process that began with more than 500 candidates. These "Original Seven" were eventually called the "Mercury Seven" after the name of the space project, the Mercury Program.
On March 16, 1966, a staffed spacecraft made its first docking exchange in space. The Gemini VIII, manned by Armstrong, linked up with the unmanned Agena target vehicle, making it the first time that two spacecraft linked together outside Earth's orbit.
Alan Shepard became the first American in space, in a journey that lasted just over 15 minutes.
The flyby came as close as 8,000 miles (12,874 km) to Pluto's surface, taking close-up images of its terrain.
NASA's Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, along with the first aircraft to ever land on another planet, the Ingenuity helicopter.
The first photograph of the Earth was taken from the moon's orbit on August 23, 1966, by a NASA shuttle.
In contrast to the much-shorter flights that had occurred earlier that year, Soviet astronaut Gherman S. Titov's (right) flight lasted more than 25 hours. Thus, Titov also became the first person to sleep in space.
Project Mercury aimed to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth and research how humans could function in space. The project made six manned flights between 1961 and 1963.
Elon Musk's SpaceX made the first commercial visit to the International Space Station in 2012. The company was under contract by NASA to provide supplies to the station.
While outer space has long fascinated human beings, it wasn't until the second half of the 20th century that space travel became a reality, enabling humans to see beyond our planet. From the first woman in space to the first images of Earth, scientists, astronauts, and astronomers around the world have worked hard to explore the cosmos.
The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was a major factor influencing the advances of space activity. Both countries competed for dominance in outer space, and many of the firsts achieved in space were due to the desire of both countries to be "the first."
So click on to discover the remarkable firsts in space history.
A history of famous firsts in space
Significant moments in mankind's progress toward exploring space
LIFESTYLE Outer space
While outer space has long fascinated human beings, it wasn't until the second half of the 20th century that space travel became a reality, enabling humans to see beyond our planet. From the first woman in space to the first images of Earth, scientists, astronauts, and astronomers around the world have worked hard to explore the cosmos.
The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was a major factor influencing the advances of space activity. Both countries competed for dominance in outer space, and many of the firsts achieved in space were due to the desire of both countries to be "the first."
So click on to discover the remarkable firsts in space history.