THIS WEEK IN 1976: Birthday '˜party' a real gas
Having their cake and eating it in unusual surroundings, three Royal Navy trainees cut their coming-of-age cake while nearly isolated in a research unit at the navy's medical school, at Alverstoke.
Birthday messages travelled by hotline into the environmentally-controlled, self-contained living quarters where the
sailors were taking part in a four-week experiment to monitor the effects of carbon monoxide on the human body.
‘Our birthday cards are waiting for us when we come out tomorrow,’ Stephen Owen said over atelephone connection between the laboratory and experimental chamber, ‘and I’ll have my presents when I go home.’
The trio, with three other young non-smoking volunteers, had every sleeping and waking minute monitored and their work efficiency measured after exposure to small amounts of the gas