Sideswipe: December 23: Never give labour saving devices at Christmas

(Via Mr-Irrelevance on Reddit)

Lost in space

On the second day of Apollo 16's trip to the moon in 1972, command module pilot Ken Mattingly lost his wedding ring. "It just floated off somewhere, and none of us could find it," lunar module pilot Charlie Duke told Wired in 2016. Mattingly looked for it intermittently over the ensuing week, with no luck. By the eighth day, Duke and Commander John Young had visited the moon and rejoined him, but there was still no sign of the ring. But during a spacewalk the following day, Mattingly was just heading back toward the open hatch when Duke said, "Look at that!" The ring was floating just outside the hatch. "I grabbed it," he said, "and we put it in the pocket. We had the chances of a gazillion to one." Duke said later: "You plan and plan and plan but the unexpected always jumps up and bites you." (From Ben Evans, Foothold in the Heavens: The Seventies, 2010.)

Cone Christmas in Orakei

Christmas traditions

A reader writes: "As a child in the 1950s, I remember my mother ironing Christmas wrapping paper after we had unwrapped our presents to use it again the next year. Very sustainable by today's standards. I guess she was ahead of her time."

Dangerous hiding place?

Nah, I'm the only one who ever turns on the dishwasher.

Driving test nostalgia

In Dunedin, in 1963, Johnny Mac's car licence appointment was two days before Christmas. "The officer got in the car with me and told me to drive up George St and double park outside the butchers, which I figured was a ruse to test me. Fortunately, there was a parking space close by and he asked me to reverse into it in the traditional way, which I did with style. The officer got out, went into the butchers and came back with his Christmas meat order. He then asked me to drive to the North East Valley Rd, where, arriving at his house, he went inside and put the meat in his fridge. I passed, he thanked me. I can't see it happening today."