14 Common Misconceptions about American History

3. “Houston, We Have a Problem”

When things went sideways for the crew aboard Apollo 13, flight commander Jim Lovell famously declared, “Houston, we have a problem.” Except he didn’t. The actual line — “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” — wasn’t spoken by Lovell, but by Module Pilot Jack Swigert. Of course, when you have the chance to feed a line to either Tom Hanks or Kevin Bacon, you go with Hanks ten times out of ten, no question, so we can kind of understand a little revisionist history on this one.