What do Neil Armstrong, tortoises, and jelly beans have in common? Why, they’ve all been to space, of course. President Ronald Reagan was known for being a connoisseur of the chewy candy, so much so that he provided the astronauts aboard the Challenger shuttle with a bag full of them in 1983 — a gift that resulted in charming footage of them tossing the jelly beans in zero gravity before happily eating them. Reagan was also known to break the ice at high-level meetings by passing around jelly beans, even commenting that “you can tell a lot about a fella’s character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful.”
Jelly beans are far from the only unexpected items to have been in space: Musical instruments (including bells and a harmonica), Lego, Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, and a pizza delivery have also found themselves among the stars.
Back in the 1910s and ’20s, “jelly bean” didn’t just refer to candy. It was also used to describe a stylish young man, though it could be considered a case of damning someone with faint praise — in most cases, jelly beans weren’t thought to have much else going for them. The term could also be used for someone weak or unpleasant; in 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald published a short story called “The Jelly-Bean” about an idle loafer. The song “Jelly Bean (He's a Curbstone Cutie),” originally written in the 1920s, was made popular by Phil Harris’ 1940s rendition.