Factual error: When Lovell's daughter is complaining that the Beatles have broken up, she slams the album Let It Be into her rack. The scene takes place on the day of the explosion, April 13th, 1970. Let It Be was not released until May 9th, 1970.
Great sites
Mistakes
The paint scheme shown on the Apollo 13 rocket is incorrect: The paint scheme shown in the movie is what was used on the development versions of the Saturn 1-B first stage, and featured a large black band around the middle. Technicians found it much too hot to work inside the pre-launch first stage from the heat generated from this paint scheme. Subsequently, the paint scheme was much simplified to a near all-white version for the first stage beginning with Apollo 11. All subsequent ship-stacks (including Apollo 13) featured this newer paint scheme. See more...
Trivia
Ron Howard's wife appears as one of the nuns in the VIP crowd for the launch. See more...
Apollo 13 (1995)
Directed by Ron Howard, starring Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hanks (add more)
Apollo 13 mistakes
Factual error: When the cabin temperature drops, an astronaut's breath is visible. His visible breath rises as he exhales. This is an effect of gravity - on earth the water vapor in breath, which is the component that becomes visible in the cold, rises because it is lighter than the surrounding air. Since the astronaut was in a "weightless" environment, his breath should have travelled in a straight path from his mouth into the surrounding atmosphere, rather than rising.
Factual error: In the scene right after the Apollo 11 landing, where Lovell is in the garden with his wife, he is playing with his thumb and the waxing moon. He covers the moon with his thumb repeatedly.
Usually the diameter of the moon disk is about half of the diameter of the thumbnail on an outstretched arm of an average adult. Since Lovell's arm is not fully stretched the moon should appear even smaller. In this scene we see a moon approximately of the size of the whole thumbnail. In relation to Lovell's thumbnail that moon is far too large.
Apollo 13 trivia
The Apollo 13 mission set a record for the greatest distance from Earth ever achieved by mankind. This occurred because unlike the other Apollos, Apollo 13 did not make a burn behind the moon to drop into lunar orbit. The free-return trajectory the mission followed took the spacecraft farther behind the moon than any other mission.
The Captain of the Iwo-Jima that Tom Hanks is talking to at the end of the movie is the real Jim Lovell.
The exchange between Lovell and his wife about holidays ("you know that Easter vacation? There's been a change of destination ... how about the moon?") in fact took place in 1968, when Lovell was assigned to Apollo 8 and so missed his planned Christmas vacation.
Apollo 13 quotes
Marilyn Lovell: I can't deal with cleaning up. Let's sell the house.
Fred Haise: It hurts when I urinate.
Jim Lovell: Well, you're not getting enough water.
Fred Haise: No, I'm drinkin' my rations, same as you... I think old Swigert gave me the clap. Been pissin' in my relief tube.
Jim Lovell: Well, that'd be a hot one at the debriefing for the flight surgeons... Another first for America's spacemen.
Marilyn Lovell: Blanche, Blanche, these nice young men are going to watch the television with you. This is Neil Armstrong, and this is Buzz... Aldrin.
Neil Armstrong: Hi.
Blanche Lovell: Are you boys in the space program too?