"Houston, we have a problem"

The calm voice of Commander Jim Lovell, played by Tom Hanks in Ron Howard's movie Apollo 13, still resonates as the voice of cool nearly 40 years later. Originally planned as moon landing, NASA's third, the Apollo 13's flight plans were dramatically changed by a fault in the service module's electrical system that caused an oxygen tank to explode, turning the mission into worldwide TV drama.

In actuality, however, Commader James A. (Jim) Lovell did not say that, nobody did, exactly. Command Module pilot John L. (Jack) Swigert, reporting the incident to NASA's Mission Control did say "Houston, we've had a problem here."

You can listen to the conversation by clicking here. Most of the voices belong to Mission Control personnel. Interestingly, before 13's report of the problem, MC engineers can be heard saying "... no problem here...".

More interesting and most curious, however is the number of times 13 (thirteen) occurs throughout the incident.

The Apollo 13 accident happened on April 13 and lift-off had occurred two days earlier at 13:13 Houston time - so when Lovell began the post-flight press conference, his first words: "I am not a superstitious person"...*

*retrieved from http://www.astronautix.com/details/apo18231.htm