I won’t lie to you. Despite the fact that I’m 28 years old, I’ve found TikTok to be incredibly informative and educational. And it’s where I learned this story about Jack Black and his mom.
From how to cut certain foods and other various life hacks that make you think, “What was the point of all those years of school?” I have more knowledge than I know what to do with thanks to a handful of TikTok users.
Most recently, I stumbled across a video about actor Jack Black and the information inside that video was so wild, I needed confirmation.
After all, TikTok is still the internet and we all know the internet holds a vast variety of misinformation.
Nonetheless, thanks to Snopes, I now know that what TikTok has been saying about Jack Black is true.
Did you know Jack Black’s mother was in labor with him while working on the Apollo 13 rescue mission?
It’s true. Allow me to explain.
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According to Snopes, Jack Black’s mother, Judith Love Cohen, helped created the Abort-Guidance system that was implemented prior to the launch of Apollo 13.
And if you paid attention in any of your history classes, the words, “Okay, Houston…we’ve had a problem here” may sound familiar to you. After being launched into space, Apollo 13 was meant to be the third space program to land on the moon.
But when the oxygen tank in the service module failed two days into the mission, it turned into a rescue mission.
As Snopes reports, because Love Cohen helped create the system that was used to safely rescue Apollo 13, she “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 then went on to give birth to her son,” who is now the legendary actor Jack Black.
How has this not been made into a biopic yet?
This story was further confirmed in Love Cohen’s obituary, which was written by Black’s half-brother, Neil Siegel.
In the 2016 obituary, Siegel said that the Apollo 13 project was her greatest professional accomplishment.
According to Vulture, the obituary read, in part:
“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.”
What an incredible story! And what a strong woman Judith Love Cohen was!