Astronaut John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich into space from now closed Wolfie's at the Ramada Inn, Cocoa Beach. (Photo : hdbikeswallpapers.com)
About two hours into the launch of NASA's Gemini 3 on in March 23, 1965, which is the space agency's first two man mission, pilot John Young reached for something into his spacesuit and revealed a corned beef sandwich.
The sandwich was the idea of Grissom's fellow Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra who is known for his practical jokes. Schirra apparently purchased the sandwich from Wolfie's Restaurant and Sandwich Shop at the Ramada Inn, Cocoa Beach, Florida some two days before the mission.
He then gave the gift to Young in the morning of the launch of the Gemini 3 via a Titan II rocket from Cape Canaveral.
NASA designed the Gemini mission in order to learn new techniques and practices for the next Apollo lunar missions. The program carried out some 10 manned spaceflights between 1965 to 1966 which also featured the first NASA spacewalk to be ever conducted.
Apart from these, Gemini also did an evaluation of differnet types of food that the astronauts would later eat for longer manned missions.
However, this corned beef sandwich did not pass the test, as crumbs were floating away in space that could cause damage to electrical panels and even get into an astronaut's eye.
Food that was supplied to the Gemini missions were covered in a gelatin layer to prevent these problems.
However, upon the discovery of deli delivery in space, some were not amused by this antic and caught the attention of Congress.
Young wrote in his memoirs that a couple of congressmen were rather upset by the smuggling of the sandwich and him having a bite of it where they were accused him of costing the country millions of dollars in taxpayers' money just because they did not eat the NASA food they were supposed to evaluate.
Unfortunately, the orginal Wolfie's where Schirra purchased the infamous corned beef sandwich closed down in 2002.
