In your report on the revived drilling project to Earth's mantle, you mention a prominent group of National Academy of Sciences members at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, who met in 1957 to outline the original Project Mohole (Nature 528, 16–17; 2015). The year before, I had already put the case for deep drilling through the oceanic crust to reach the Mohorovičić discontinuity (see Science 124, 686; 1956).

The members described their independent conception as happening over a “wine breakfast” by the ocean. This somewhat louche setting could not be a classed as a cocktail party, as you would have it. That might have been more accurate in my case, when a proper dry Martini at sunset may well have been involved.