This was possibly NASA's finest moment ever. If you've seen Apollo 13, you know what I'm talking about.

The one time in history when making a square peg fit into a round hole was a literal matter of life-and-death.

"This is the mother of all hacks, the genius device that saved the Apollo XIII crew from dying in their emergency return to Earth, as photographed during that trip using one of their Hasselblad cameras. Here are the actual step-by-step instructions that helped turn this mission into NASA's most successful failure ever."

Follow the link to read the actual instructions NASA cobbled together for building the adapter. The engineers who figured that thing out were a bunch of steely-eyed missile men.