Jack Black seems like an all round good egg, doesn't he? Well, it all makes sense when you find out his mum was one of the NASA engineers that helped to rescue the Apollo 13 astronauts.
Judith Love Cohen actually helped with the development of technology called the Abort-Guidance System that brought the crew back home.
It seems Judith really was a woman to be reckoned with because apparently, as well as helping to create the life-saving technology, she also went to work on the day she was in labour with Black, who is now 51.
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A Reddit user in the Today I Learned subreddit shared the information, writing: "Judith Love Cohen, who helped create the Abort-Guidance System which rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts, went to work on the day she was in labor.
"She took a printout of a problem she was working on to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished the problem and gave birth to Jack Black."
Judith passed away in 2016 at the age of 82 following a short battle with cancer and Black's half-brother Neil Siegel - who is a professor of engineering - included an anecdote from the Apollo 13 mission in an obituary he wrote.
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Neil wrote: "She actually went to her office on the day that Jack was born. When it was time to go to the hospital, she took with her a computer printout of the problem she was working on. Later that day, she called her boss and told him that she had solved the problem. And... oh, yes, the baby was born, too."
The obit went on: "My mother usually considered her work on the Apollo program to be the highlight of her career. When disaster struck the Apollo 13 mission, it was the Abort-Guidance System that brought the astronauts home safely.
"Judy was there when the Apollo 13 astronauts paid a 'thank you' to the TRW facility in Redondo Beach."
As well as everything else she did, Judith was also a 'vigorous and tireless advocate of better treatment for women in the workplace'.
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Her work had a profound impact on equality in the workplace as she helped to implement things such as posting of job openings inside of a company so that anyone could apply and formal job descriptions for every position.
When it came to Judith retiring, she decided to write a book titled You Can Be a Woman Engineer which was targeted at young girls to encourage them to consider a career in engineering. She struggled to find a publisher for the book so instead decided to start her own book publisher with her husband David Katz.
Safe to say, we have a lot to thank Judith Love Cohen for.
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