WHAT CONNECTS...

CORNED BEEF AND THE TITANIC?

1.

In March 1965, NASA astronaut John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich onto the Gemini 3 spacecraft. He was reprimanded on returning to Earth, as the crumbs could have damaged the craft’s electronics.

2.

During the Gemini 3 mission, Young and crewmate

Gus Grissom completed three orbits of the Earth and carried out the first orbital manoeuvre in a crewed spacecraft. They nicknamed their spacecraft Molly Brown.

3.

The name was a playful reference to the Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown. On Grissom’s previous mission, he’d had to swim free of his spacecraft Liberty Bell 7 as it sank after splashdown.

4.

The musical was a fictionalised account of the life of Margaret Brown, a US socialite and philanthropist who was one of the survivors of the Titanic disaster in 1912.