Sally Ride — physicist, first American woman in space, and heroine of my youth — would have been 64 today.

Ride's accomplishments were extraordinary. But as Ann Friedman pointed out in her excellent profile of the astronaut, being first also had its burdens. Including, for instance, the need to disabuse NASA's male scientists of their spectacularly wrong expectations with regard to tampons:

[In preparation for Ride's trip aboard the Space Shuttle] Tampons were packed with their strings connecting them, like a strip of sausages, so they wouldn’t float away. Engineers asked Ride, "Is 100 the right number?" She would be in space for a week. "That would not be the right number," she told them.

Apparently, the male engineers then replied that "we just want to be safe."

That's right. NASA was under the impression that Sally Ride's seven days in space would require 100 tampons. We have many, many questions about the logic behind that theory: