The commander of Apollo 7 had the first space cold.

[anikadicara]

I stumbled upon these articles about the Apollo 7 mission, during which commander Wally Schirra got a bad cold.  Apparently colds are really bad in space because your nose never drains without gravity, and the crew refused to wear their helmets when returning to Earth because they wanted to be able to blow their noses.  It apparently caused a lot of tension between Schirra - who was sick and grumpy - and ground control.  A pretty fun read!

 

Highlights:

"Schirra wasn’t happy, and his grumpiness got worse after he woke up the first day with a terrible head cold. In the zero-gravity environment of space, mucus accumulates in the nasal passage and does not drain out of the head. Schirra tried blowing into tissues but found it only made his eardrums more painful."

"“It quickly turned our cozy little spacecraft into a used Kleenex container,” Cunningham said"

“By the third day Wally was miserable. In our on-board storage we had included a large supply of vacuum-packed tissues. They were useful for wiping off the grime, catching urine drops, or any other of the many required body ablutions. Fortunately, we had overstocked on this item. However, the used ones were not vacuum-packed and, consequently, took up twice as much space."

"As soon as we were squared away in orbit, Wally began blowing his nose, and within a short time we were stuffing used tissues in every empty spot we could find. Wally showed no interest in conserving them, and Donn and I began to worry whether a tissue crisis could end the mission. When we suggested to Wally that he might try to get more than one blow out of each tissue, our pleas fell on deaf ears."

Edited July 26, 2020 by anikadicara

[nothin2sneeze@]

Daaaaang! I don't think I've ever thought about what it would be like to have a cold in space, thanks for posting this! That's gotta be super miserable though and I feel bad for the guy. I wonder what the sneezes were like...

[NoV]

There have been quite a few references to sneezing from the world of space exploration. This one concerns the particularly irritating nature of lunar dust when inhaled.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91628/apollo-astronaut-who-was-allergic-moon

[solitaire-au]

I suspect the effects of the cold Wally Schirra got are what led to NASA implementing their policy of quarantining astronauts before they leave for a mission.