#john young

"According to Young, his contraband corned-beef sandwich was thanks to astronaut Wally Schirra, who had it prepared at a restaurant in Cocoa Beach before Gemini 3 launched. Schirra was well known as a practical joker. Young said Grissom was 'bored' with the official menus that they had practiced with in training, and packing a sandwich for the trip 'seemed like a fun idea at the time.'

It was not, as it turned out, quite so fun. When the Gemini astronauts got hungry, Young pulled out the smuggled sandwich. In the transcripts of the Gemini 3 mission, Young tells Grissom, 'Let's see how it tastes. Smells, doesn't it?' When Grissom took a bite, 'crumbs of rye bread started floating all around the cabin,' he told Life.

Grissom put the sandwich in his pocket for the duration of the flight, Young remarking 'It was a thought anyway… Not a very good one.'

It’s possible for tiny crumbs like that to pose a big threat during spaceflight—they can fly off and get wedged in any of the many pieces of equipment that keep a spacecraft running."

-pasaage from Smithsonian's article "How an Astronaut Smuggled a Sandwich Into Space" By Hillary Brady: link

Date: March 23, 1965

Apollo 16 Command and Service Module (CSM) Casper above the Moon, shot from the Lunar Module Orion. April 23, 1972.

Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972 / 2026