Six years ago today, the Universe’s first intergalactic pizza party occurred in the International Space Station with a crew of Americans, Russians and an Italian astronaut called Luca Parmitano, who, the record shows, made the dish in a big wood-fired oven using one of those flat wooden-handled iron shovel things. Everybody dined sitting at a small table covered in a traditional red and white table cloth while floating around in zero gravity. The Chianti flowed like wine and, after a while, the drunk Russians sang Cossack folk songs, the Americans overate and argued about baseball and Parmitano cried because he missed his mother. Then Luca’s toque hit a sensor, setting off the fire alarm and water doused the wood-fired oven and the drippy wax candles in the old Chianti bottles on the table and two inches of tepid water sloshed about the space station for three days. Mission control in Kazakhstan called NASA, but nobody in Houston could understand a word they said. So, anyway, here’s the history of pizza.
© 2024 John Oliver
Substack is the home for great culture