The Remarkable Story of the First Corned Beef Sandwich in Space

This is not the actual sandwich. This corned beef sandwich sealed in acrylic is a memorial to a particular incident on the Gemini 3 spaceflight. 50 years ago this past Monday, pilot John Young snuck a corned beef sandwich onto the spacecraft, which was then launched into Earth orbit. This was contraband, but Young as a practical joker.
This joke, though, was a bad idea. When he bit into the sandwich, Young learned something important: corned beef sandwiches fall apart easily--especially in zero gravity. Crumbs floated around the cabin. It got him into trouble. Discovery reports:

"A couple of congressmen became upset, thinking that, by smuggling in the sandwich and eating part of it, Gus and I had ignored the actual space food that we were up there to evaluate, costing the country millions of dollars," Young wrote in his 2012 memoirs, "Forever Young."

Nonetheless, Young got to claim the title of having eaten the first corned beef sandwich in space. He also got to eat corned beef in space again when he commanded the first Space Shuttle mission in 1981. This time, he ate it in the form of cubes.