Origin of Hampton Mercury Lions

The Hampton-Mercury Lions club was chartered on March 16, 1965. The Club was named after Project Mercury the first human spaceflight program of the United States running from 1959 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a solo human into Earth orbit and return the person safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it spanned twenty unmanned developmental missions involving test animals, and successful missions completed by six of the seven Mercury astronauts.