The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing is still about a week away, but the celebratory posts are everywhere. Many of them are awe-inspiring and some are a nostalgic trip down memory lane. But this list of 50 facts about Apollo 11 includes some facts that feel right at home here at Neatorama.
7. The Apollo 11 astronauts consumed a lot of fizzy water.
Due to a problem with the spacecraft’s hydrogen-gas filters, the men’s drinking water was always a bit bubbly. “The drinking water is laced with hydrogen bubbles (a consequence of fuel-cell technology which demonstrates that H2 and O join imperfectly to form H2O)," Michael Collins wrote in Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys, his 1974 memoir.
8. All those bubbles meant that there was a lot of farting.
As if being in tight quarters for several days didn’t already present enough challenges, all those fizzy drinks led to some serious flatulence. “These bubbles produced gross flatulence in the lower bowel, resulting in a not-so-subtle and pervasive aroma which reminds me of a mixture of wet dog and marsh gas,” Collins wrote.
9. Normal bodily functions weren’t a thing that NASA had adequately planned for with Apollo 11.
Speaking of bodily functions: NASA hadn’t fully worked out all the challenges the astronauts might face when attempting to go to the bathroom in a zero-gravity situation. One Apollo 11 astronaut spent the entire trip loading up on anti-diarrhea medication so that he could forgo having to deal with that situation altogether (though the identity of that astronaut has never been made public).
Read the rest of the Apollo 11 trivia collection at Mental Floss.