Social Studies: Ham

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Greeting Ham after his landing in the Atlantic, January 31, 1961.

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Ham is a lunch meat. Ham is also the name of the first chimpanzee in space.

Ham was born July 1956 in Cameroon, captured by animal trappers and sent to Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida.He was purchased by the United States Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959. Officially, Ham was known as #65 before his flight, and only renamed "Ham" upon his successful return to earth.

H.A.M. stands for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center the lab where he was trained.

Beginning in July 1959, the two-year-old chimpanzee was trained at the Holloman Air Force Base Aero Medical Field Laboratory to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds.

On January 31, 1961, Ham was secured in a Project Mercury capsule labeled MR-2 and launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, into outer space. Ham had his vital signs and tasks monitored using computers back on Earth. The capsule suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, but Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm. Ham's lever-pushing performance in space was only a fraction of a second slower than on Earth, demonstrating that tasks could be performed in space. Ham's capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and was recovered by a rescue ship later that day. He only suffered a bruised nose. His flight was 16 minutes and 39 seconds long.

After the flight, Ham lived for 17 years in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., then at the North Carolina Zoo before his death at the age of 26 on January 19, 1983.

Sources: Wikipedia