• Below is an email message circulating on the Internet. We do not know if it is true, but it proves a point.

When NASA started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work at zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 million developing a pen that wrote at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 C.

The Russians used a pencil.