Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer, Max.
Speaker 2: Williams Bally who indeed and your NOL.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben, And it turns out that since the three
Speaker 1: of us reside here in the United States, we love traveling,
Speaker 1: but it can be a little bit expensive. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to either go over the Pacific or over
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. It's weird when you think of how so
Speaker 1: many other countries are so much closer to each other.
Speaker 1: Like you can wake up in Europe and you can
Speaker 1: drive through you know, four countries. You can see the
Speaker 1: world pretty easily. But today's episode, NOL, we're learning about
Speaker 1: some folks who decided to take Europe to the States.
Speaker 2: You see the world right here at home, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, we do. We have states that are different
Speaker 2: enough culturally, I suppose, but usually you have to trek
Speaker 2: quite a bit farther than you do in Europe to
Speaker 2: see a real change in that culture in that landscape.
Speaker 2: We live on the East Coast, and today we're talking
Speaker 2: about the West Coast, which is basically kind of feels
Speaker 2: in some ways like going to another country. Things are
Speaker 2: very different. The land hits a little different, a little
Speaker 2: rockier terrain. You got your deserts, you got your snow
Speaker 2: capped mountains and all of that good stuff, and you
Speaker 2: got your your lake cities as well. California is lousy
Speaker 2: with variations in.
Speaker 1: Terrain, and today's episode features a nursery rhyme that I
Speaker 1: think is familiar to pretty much everybody in the English
Speaker 1: speaking world. London Bridge is falling down. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of an earworm. We don't have to sing it because
Speaker 1: it'll get.
Speaker 2: To you, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down,
Speaker 2: My Fair Lady. Not to be confused with the Rogers
Speaker 2: and Hammerstein musical My Fair Lady, which is quite a
Speaker 2: banger in and of itself, Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle
Speaker 2: and all of that. Pretty sure, that's where the name
Speaker 2: comes from, the old nursery rhyme of Yesteryear, which I
Speaker 2: believe dates back to the Middle Ages. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little bit misleading too as a nursery rhyme,
Speaker 1: because it seems to imply that there is only one
Speaker 1: London Bridge that could not be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: There has been some sort of bridge going across the
Speaker 1: Thames for nearly two thousand years and we're getting that
Speaker 1: actually from the Lake Havisty Area Chamber of Commerce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll just play at that seat.
Speaker 2: We'll get back to that far.
Speaker 1: The very first London bridge was built by Roman forces
Speaker 1: way way back in forty three CE, and throughout the history,
Speaker 1: thanks to our research associate mister Max Williams, there have
Speaker 1: been multiple bridges again built across the Thames, and not
Speaker 1: all of them stayed in London.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is no shade on the Romans.
Speaker 2: I mean the Romans kind of were first to market
Speaker 2: with bridge tech, you know, with their arches and all
Speaker 2: of that. They knew how to build themselves a bridge.
Speaker 2: No better way to ford a river or a stream
Speaker 2: or a lake than with a bridge, so you kind
Speaker 2: of got to have them. But then over time, you know,
Speaker 2: wear and tear sets in and then you got to
Speaker 2: update some things, and sometimes the whole thing just kind
Speaker 2: of comes tumbling and or falling down. So we'll get
Speaker 2: to that eventually. But McGill University had this to say
Speaker 2: on the history of the London bridges. London Bridge is
Speaker 2: a bridge in London, England, over the Thames, between the
Speaker 2: City of London and Southwark Southwark. I don't know, let's
Speaker 2: have some some Brits right in and tell us how
Speaker 2: we got that one wrong. I think it's it's got
Speaker 2: to be Southwark. That seems right. Sure, yeah, close enough
Speaker 2: for government work, right. But as you pointed up, in
Speaker 2: multiple bridges throughout history have been referred to as the
Speaker 2: titular London Bridge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like how multiple planes are Air Force
Speaker 1: one if the president'saw on them. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: this very first bridge again, according to the Lake Havistou
Speaker 1: area Chambers, we'll get to it. The first the first bridge,
Speaker 1: the one built by the Romans, was a pontoon bridge,
Speaker 1: so they had a row of boats that were anchored
Speaker 1: in the river and there were planks laid across the boats.
Speaker 1: They may have used ferry boats as well. And the
Speaker 1: the next record we have of a bridge in this
Speaker 1: area in London is it's weird. It's a mention in
Speaker 1: a very strange story in nine eight four CE, a
Speaker 1: widowed woman and her son are caught driving quote pins
Speaker 1: into the image of a man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did they draw the image. Did they scrawl it
Speaker 2: into the dirt? Unclear, but there was a woman at
Speaker 2: the time was thought to be a witch, right, definitely,
Speaker 2: some dark forces potentially trying to be manipulated there, and
Speaker 2: as you tend to do in these days with folks
Speaker 2: suspected of witchcraft, they're killed, they're drowned. Well, the intent
Speaker 2: was to drown the both of them. The woman unfortunately
Speaker 2: perishes in the Thames, while her son is able to escape.
Speaker 2: It always reminds me of that scene in Monty Python
Speaker 2: The Holy Grail where they talk about how to figure
Speaker 2: out if someone's a witch. You got it? What you know?
Speaker 2: See if they're made of wood, and wood floats and
Speaker 2: if they sink, then they're not made of wood and
Speaker 2: therefore not a witch. But then they also drown anyway,
Speaker 2: it's a good film.
Speaker 1: In ten fourteen, the Danish forces are holding London and
Speaker 1: we've got some returning cameos from previous episodes. The Saxons
Speaker 1: under King Ethel read the Unready, I love that name.
Speaker 1: They teamed up with some Vikings who were led by
Speaker 1: King Oloff from Norway. Together these forces sailed up the
Speaker 1: Thames to attack the London Bridge and attempt to divide
Speaker 1: the Danish forces. But these Danish forces protected their ships
Speaker 1: with thatched roofs pulled from cottages that stood on or
Speaker 1: around the bridge. These guys rode up under the bridge,
Speaker 1: they put their cables around the piles that supported it,
Speaker 1: you know, basically the post going into the river, and
Speaker 1: then they rode off at full speed. They pulled a
Speaker 1: bridge heist. London Bridge fell down.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, though, I gotta take a second and
Speaker 2: to talk about ethel Red the Unready. What a nickname
Speaker 2: that is? What did he do to deserve that? I mean,
Speaker 2: you know you've got your you know, Eric the Red,
Speaker 2: and this guy is the Unready. I have the check.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if he's the one that got shot
Speaker 3: by a crossbow while on the toilet, but he might
Speaker 3: have had.
Speaker 2: There's one.
Speaker 3: There's one of these guys in this in that family
Speaker 3: line who died that way. It's a little too dark
Speaker 3: for me to write about in a ridiculous thrill desk,
Speaker 3: but what might be it?
Speaker 2: Now? The whole shot. No spoilers for for the Game
Speaker 2: of Thrones TV series or the Song of Ice and Fire,
Speaker 2: but there is a very important character in the series
Speaker 2: that gets shot by a crossbow while I'm the toilet.
Speaker 1: And some in the novels as well. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: moment where these forces, these united forces pull down the bridge.
Speaker 1: This leads to the London Bridge from the nursery rhyme.
Speaker 1: You can go ahead and call that one the old
Speaker 1: London Bridge. In eleven seven six, the first Stone Bridge
Speaker 1: is built. It's kind of a ep you could say,
Speaker 1: by a guy named Peter of Coal Church, and it
Speaker 1: takes a while to build. It's not done until twelve
Speaker 1: oh nine, and so we're looking at what thirty three
Speaker 1: years to build, and it was a worthwhile investment. It
Speaker 1: lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years afterwards.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no big battle. Wolf's going to huff and
Speaker 2: puff and blow that one down. Stone was king in
Speaker 2: those days of construction. It had a road that was
Speaker 2: twenty feet wide and three hundred yards long. Again, we're
Speaker 2: back to sort of some construction details here. Gothic style
Speaker 2: architecture involving twenty art shows that we now are very
Speaker 2: good at bearing loads. There was also a drawbridge, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't draw bridge that could allow kind of the way
Speaker 2: it would disconnect in the middle. It could be let
Speaker 2: out and then ships could pass under it, and it
Speaker 2: also could be opened up to keep invaders from crossing.
Speaker 2: This was a very important strategic militaristic use, but also
Speaker 2: very practical just in terms of trade.
Speaker 1: And this bridge became part of the city, right. You
Speaker 1: would have houses, you would have shops built on the
Speaker 1: actual bridge, and it didn't take long for the whole
Speaker 1: thing to be covered with buildings. It was functionally a
Speaker 1: street across the river.
Speaker 3: Also, to jump back in here, it was Edmund Ironside
Speaker 3: who got shot on the toilet by crossbow who was
Speaker 3: unready sun ah.
Speaker 2: There is there, it is love it.
Speaker 1: In twelve twelve a disaster occurred. A bunch of people
Speaker 1: were on the bridge and they got caught between two fires.
Speaker 1: The fire code as we understand it in the modern
Speaker 1: world was not a thing back in the twelve hundreds.
Speaker 1: There's a thing called the stone Gatehouse on the bridge
Speaker 1: and it's roof these poles on it, and this feels
Speaker 1: like a pretty brutal practice, but people would put the
Speaker 1: heads of traders on these poles t R a I
Speaker 1: t o rs. Not just traders, not just like you know,
Speaker 1: avid collectors of coins or something. No, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like you know the old head on the pike routine
Speaker 1: to deter others from crossing, you know those in Power
Speaker 1: and Max. You've found this little twisted fact here that
Speaker 1: they actually dug up the body of Oliver Cromwell and
Speaker 1: decapitated his dead body and stuck that bad boy up
Speaker 1: on one of these pikes. Yeah, it was a it
Speaker 1: was a continuing practice. It was very it was a
Speaker 1: very popular fad for quite some time, and luckily it's
Speaker 1: not a fad that London is currently into. So back
Speaker 1: to these fires, disaster is the right word. They could
Speaker 1: absolutely spread very quickly through different buildings because of the
Speaker 1: material used to construct them. Let us remember the bridge's stone,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the buildings built on the bridge
Speaker 1: are wood and they're very close together. Again, there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as fire coat, so lots of people can
Speaker 1: die very easily, and this happens repeatedly. If we fast
Speaker 1: forward to sixteen twenty three, there is another fire on
Speaker 1: the bridge. A maid servant leaves a pail of ashes
Speaker 1: under some wooden stairs. Unfortunately, the environment is such that
Speaker 1: this causes a fire on the stairs in the blink
Speaker 1: of an eye, very quickly. Forty three houses are destroyed.
Speaker 1: A lot of the shops are burned beyond repair, like
Speaker 1: they're going to be teardowns, and people start moving away
Speaker 1: from the bridge.
Speaker 2: It's kind of going downhill, you know. The ashes detail
Speaker 2: made me think of another nursery rhyme, Ring around the
Speaker 2: Rosy pocket full of posy ashes. Ashes. We all fall down,
Speaker 2: as you know, as a reference to the plague. But
Speaker 2: if you want to do a little mashup of these,
Speaker 2: you could have the ashes as a detail in the
Speaker 2: old my Fair Lady rhyme caused this one to fall
Speaker 2: down as well.
Speaker 1: And it's funny that you mentioned that because according to Snopes,
Speaker 1: Ring around the Rosie is not about the Black plague,
Speaker 1: which was I thought that for such a such a
Speaker 1: long time. But please check out the neat little article
Speaker 1: on Snopes by David Michelson about Ring Around the Rosie
Speaker 1: and maybe we do a nursery rhymes episode two.
Speaker 2: There's so many are interesting and quite dark. Yeah, no
Speaker 2: doubt so. After the kind of tear down situation, the
Speaker 2: bridge was actually widened possibly, I don't know what you
Speaker 2: guys think, but maybe to give a little bit more
Speaker 2: space in between these these these buildings. Some of the
Speaker 2: fire wouldn't spread quite so quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think also
Speaker 1: they just needed to keep the bridge actually navigable for
Speaker 1: you know, carriages and things like that, because as these
Speaker 1: buildings got added on, the road just became.
Speaker 2: Narrower and narrower, right right, right right. And they also
Speaker 2: added another feature with a quite large center arch to
Speaker 2: add a little bit more support. That version of the
Speaker 2: bridge stood for quite some time until eighteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: when another new London Bridge was unveiled.
Speaker 1: Ah yes, so okay, the old London Bridge is gone.
Speaker 1: We're now in the era of the New London Bridge.
Speaker 1: This is still not the modern London Bridge. Lots of bridges,
Speaker 1: so it's eighteen twenty one. Parliament gets a committee together
Speaker 1: and they say, all right, let's look at this bridge.
Speaker 1: The bridge is the worse for wear again. It's been
Speaker 1: badly damaged during something called the Great Freeze. So they said, look,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be worth the time to just build a
Speaker 1: completely new bridge. It's going to have to be different
Speaker 1: from the other bridges. We need something bigger, better, bolder.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty four, the committee accepts the plans of
Speaker 1: a guy named John Rennie and his bridge design is
Speaker 1: erected about one hundred feet to the west of the
Speaker 1: old bridge, because that's where the Thames gets pretty narrow.
Speaker 1: The river is only about nine hundred feet across at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of tapers. So on June fifteenth, eighteen twenty five,
Speaker 2: construction begins. It's sort of like a I guess a
Speaker 2: ribbon cutting type situation with some luminaries and attendance the
Speaker 2: Mayor of London at the time, John Garrett, the old
Speaker 2: Duke of York, one of my favorite of the dukes.
Speaker 2: And then six years on, William the Fourth and Queen
Speaker 2: Adelaide unveil the new London Bridge and the old one
Speaker 2: is demolished. So the old one is still standing while
Speaker 2: they're building the new one. It's just like over further,
Speaker 2: like you said, Ben, to that, you know, reposition, to
Speaker 2: that point where the river taper is a bit more.
Speaker 2: The old one is still standing. During construction, they knock
Speaker 2: down the old one in a big show of you
Speaker 2: know whatever, huzzah, and then they unveil the new one
Speaker 2: and they go, now we've got new London Bridge.
Speaker 1: And it's instantly super duper busy. Uh, it just gets
Speaker 1: busier as the railroad becomes a thing in London and
Speaker 1: London Bridge Station opens just south of the bridge, and
Speaker 1: pretty soon we see a whole new species of traffic
Speaker 1: across the bridge as thousands of people are crossing it
Speaker 1: every single day and it becomes a commonplace aspect.
Speaker 2: Of the city. But again.
Speaker 1: It's taking a lot of punishment. It's taking a lot
Speaker 1: of wear and tear, and the new London Bridge, which
Speaker 1: is still not the modern London Bridge, had a bunch
Speaker 1: of issues. In nineteen sixty two, the high muckyy MUCKs
Speaker 1: and the boffins of London looked at the bridge and said, ah, man,
Speaker 1: this thing is literally falling down like that nursery rhyme
Speaker 1: we all love. It is sinking into the river because
Speaker 1: there's too much traffic for it, literally too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's I sort of like the idea
Speaker 2: of a foundation of a house can sort of start
Speaker 2: to settle in like really negative ways if you're not careful,
Speaker 2: and it can actually sink into into the earth.
Speaker 1: And that was they didn't want to destroy it. They
Speaker 1: wanted to do something with all that history.
Speaker 2: They did. It was at this point part of a
Speaker 2: rich legacy for the city of London, So they decided
Speaker 2: to uh sell it as some sort of interesting flex
Speaker 2: like for like like, Okay, this is an artifact. This
Speaker 2: represents all of this history of ingenuity of the good
Speaker 2: people of London town. So let's sell it. Let's put
Speaker 2: it up for auction and then use the proceeds of
Speaker 2: the sale to build a new one. But I gotta wonder, man,
Speaker 2: like who thinks this is gonna work? Like who who
Speaker 2: is the audience for this? Like who are they trying
Speaker 2: to sell this to? Very rich people who discovered oil
Speaker 2: most likely guess very eccentric wealthy people maybe or Decay,
Speaker 2: you know, Eastern European astocrat who's got an ax to
Speaker 2: grind with Western Europe. There are some weird potential customers,
Speaker 2: you know, if they if their auction for the whole
Speaker 2: bridge didn't work, they can maybe do something where they
Speaker 2: sell off pieces of it as memorabilia, like here is
Speaker 2: a brick from the Berlin Bridge. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 2: one of the people just grabbing it. You know, no
Speaker 2: one I don't like sold break Breakston.
Speaker 1: I have pieces I have pieces of the of the
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall, which is a weird thing to have. So
Speaker 1: fast forward the current or modern London Bridge is constructed.
Speaker 1: We're going to bracket the auction for a second.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But the modern London Bridge is constructed by a guy
Speaker 1: named John Maulim and his team works on it from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven to nineteen seventy two. Queen Elizabeth the
Speaker 1: Second officially opens the bridge on March seventeenth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: That's the bridge here today.
Speaker 2: And if you're.
Speaker 1: Thinking of that really cool iconic bridge that you see
Speaker 1: in almost every picture of London, that's not the London Bridge.
Speaker 1: That's the Tower Bridge, right.
Speaker 2: So again we will get back to the auction, and
Speaker 2: now all of your questions about what kind of weirdo
Speaker 2: buys a bridge will be answered. But it is sold
Speaker 2: and the proceeds do go to creating this more modern construction,
Speaker 2: which is made of concrete and it is nine hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty eight feet long. It cost four million pounds,
Speaker 2: which is kind of a steal. Seems like a pretty
Speaker 2: good deal, and that comes from the City of London's
Speaker 2: Bridge House Estates, which is I guess they're the ones
Speaker 2: who kind of handled all this bridge, this bridge business.
Speaker 1: And for everyone who is unfamiliar with this very strange,
Speaker 1: ridiculous situation. Yes, the City of London is different from
Speaker 1: London London. The City of London is a city inside
Speaker 1: of London called the City of London. And they've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of really weird rules. We did some on
Speaker 1: stuff they'll want you to know about it years and
Speaker 1: years back.
Speaker 2: So the previous bridge is sort of disassembled, I guess
Speaker 2: piece by piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as there as they're it's almost like they're phasing
Speaker 1: in one bridge and phasing out the other so that
Speaker 1: people can still traverse the river. And we said this, Yes,
Speaker 1: there was an auction for the other bridge. It is true, folks,
Speaker 1: it was sold. We'll go to Evan Andrews writing for
Speaker 1: history dot com. This bridge stood for over one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty years and it just wasn't worth renovating. So
Speaker 1: the City of London, when they said we're going to
Speaker 1: build a new bridge, we're gonna build a thing that
Speaker 1: can deal with automobile traffic. They came up with the
Speaker 1: idea of the auction because of a pretty pretty wily
Speaker 1: city councilor, Ivan Luckin, who said, hey, you guys, Americans
Speaker 1: will buy anything. And in nineteen six eight he went
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic, and he started trying to sell a
Speaker 1: bridge to strangers, which is the old school like stereotypical grift. Right,
Speaker 1: someone says, hey, I'll sell you I own the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Bridge for fifty bucks. You can have it. They might
Speaker 1: even give you a certificate or so on. So this
Speaker 1: is one of the only real cases of somebody selling
Speaker 1: a bridge in a way that was not a grift.
Speaker 1: He knew it was gonna be tough, and he leaned
Speaker 1: into the history aspect. He told he didn't emphasize the
Speaker 1: use or the efficacy of the bridge. He emphasized the history.
Speaker 1: You're not buying just a bridge, he said in a
Speaker 1: press conference in New York. It is the air to
Speaker 1: two thousand years of history, going back to the first
Speaker 1: century AD to the time of the Roman Lindinium. And
Speaker 1: most people politely declined except for one guy, a businessman
Speaker 1: named Robert McCullough.
Speaker 2: That's right, Robert McCullough, indeed, a resident of Missouri, lifelong
Speaker 2: resident Missouri, who was an industrialist who had created companies
Speaker 2: that sold oil and I was just teased a little
Speaker 2: bit earlier, sold oil motors and of course chainsaws. That's
Speaker 2: what you do that's the golden triad right there, oil
Speaker 2: motors and chainsaws. And he was, as you might imagine,
Speaker 2: a bit of a kooky fellow. He was known for
Speaker 2: spearheading some pretty out there business ideas which he stood
Speaker 2: behind completely. In nineteen sixty three, he bought thousands of
Speaker 2: acres of land near Lake Have A Sioux Have a
Speaker 2: Sue Have a Sue in Arizona, which is a body
Speaker 2: of water that was creative in the Colorado River was dammed,
Speaker 2: not like you know, by hell fire, but like by
Speaker 2: you know, a process of damming. McCullough then created or
Speaker 2: founded a community around the lake called Lake Have a
Speaker 2: Sioux City, and he intended to make it sort of
Speaker 2: like a resort community, a bit of a you know,
Speaker 2: tourist destination. Right. Yeah, but this is a problem.
Speaker 1: So the Lake have Asou community, Lake have Asoux City,
Speaker 1: as it's called. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's Arizona,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hot. They need something to jush it up.
Speaker 1: They need a reason for people to visit in the
Speaker 1: first place. And our buddy Robert says, I had this
Speaker 1: ridiculous idea of bringing the London Bridge to the Arizona desert,
Speaker 1: and he was joking with the folks at the Chicago
Speaker 1: Tribune magazine and he said, I needed the bridge, but.
Speaker 2: Even if I didn't, I might have bought it anyway.
Speaker 2: So wacky. Yeah, he's there, real kooks to that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he talks about how he he talked about
Speaker 1: how he essentially got hammered with the authorities from City
Speaker 1: of London to try to get a good deal. He said,
Speaker 1: we poured an awful lot of scotch try to loosen
Speaker 1: them up enough to give us some idea of how
Speaker 1: much they wanted. So what is the what is the
Speaker 1: actual price he ended up paying.
Speaker 2: I thought you were originally going to go to like
Speaker 2: he was getting hammered by the city with like regulations
Speaker 2: and rules as to know, he in fact was getting
Speaker 2: absolutely wasted with these folks pouring whiskeys and coming up
Speaker 2: with crazy ideas and then you know, just you it's
Speaker 2: a negotiating tactic, you know, the old social lubricant. He
Speaker 2: again was telling the Chicago Tribune that he learned that
Speaker 2: the cost of dismantling the bridge was one point two
Speaker 2: million dollars American to the folks over in London. So
Speaker 2: McCulloch and a busy associate of his who he had
Speaker 2: partnered with a fellow named would figure that it would
Speaker 2: be not too insulting of an offer if they just
Speaker 2: doubled that, right, but also a pretty good deal, you know,
Speaker 2: because they're covering the costs of the demolition. Again, it's
Speaker 2: not really like I keep seeing them using the word
Speaker 2: demolition feels like a little bit of a misnomer. It's
Speaker 2: the demolition I think of as being like exploding something
Speaker 2: into dust and debris and then you know, using a
Speaker 2: glorified industrial broom and dust pant of just get that
Speaker 2: stuff away out of there and like bury it or whatever.
Speaker 2: But no, they had to dismantle it. So that actually,
Speaker 2: once again in terms of like good deals, that seems
Speaker 2: like a pretty low price, you know, but a real
Speaker 2: demolition probably would have been cheaper.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And so he wanted to again put a
Speaker 1: personal spin on this. He said, I'll also just add
Speaker 1: another sixty thousand US dollars there, one thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: each year of my age when the bridge reopens here
Speaker 1: in Arizona. So this all together brings the price to
Speaker 1: two million, four hundred and sixty thousand dollars and boom.
Speaker 1: Robert is officially, when you think about it, the owner
Speaker 1: of the world's largest antique because it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: the whole bridge. And again that comes from the excellent
Speaker 1: article I mentioned earlier, Evan Andrews on history dot Com
Speaker 1: how London Bridge ended up in Arizona. As you can see,
Speaker 1: fella ridiculous. Historians couldn't give you the title right away.
Speaker 1: We had to build up to it.
Speaker 2: How indeed, that is the question, and very carefully because
Speaker 2: again we know that the process of you know, dismantling
Speaker 2: this bridge was sort of an engineering feat in and
Speaker 2: of itself. So now you got to put the thing
Speaker 2: back together after, of course shipping it. I wonder if
Speaker 2: the cost of shipping it was taken into account. It
Speaker 2: seems like it was, since at least in terms of
Speaker 2: the purchase price, so that would have been something that
Speaker 2: McCullough would have been responsible for. So they had to
Speaker 2: like package up each of these bricks, labeling them in
Speaker 2: such a way as to make it clear which one
Speaker 2: can to which one, so they could maintain the you know,
Speaker 2: the structural integrity of the thing. You know, you can't
Speaker 2: just these are arched pieces that have to connect, and
Speaker 2: it's exactly the right order to create those load bearing
Speaker 2: arch structures, right yeah, just so.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a crazy endeavor, but again there's
Speaker 1: a lot of money involved, and people are treating the
Speaker 1: bridge and the pieces of the bridge with immense respect.
Speaker 1: It is a incredibly meticulous, painstaking disassembly and assembly process.
Speaker 1: They do something weird. They ship it, you know, through
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal, so it arrives at Long Beach, California,
Speaker 1: and there's a convoy of trucks, a fleet of trucks
Speaker 1: carrying these crates across the desert, and construction crews are
Speaker 1: already kind of figuring out how to modernize the bridge.
Speaker 1: They build a hollow core of steel reinforced concrete, and
Speaker 1: over that kind of skeleton they they lay these ten
Speaker 1: thousand tons of that eighteen hundred's granted, it takes it
Speaker 1: takes a while. And they also are getting into some
Speaker 1: weird landscaping, like they make an artificial island essentially.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. I mean, this does seem just just
Speaker 2: screams like this is the idea of something of a
Speaker 2: mad man. You know. It reminds me of the Erner
Speaker 2: Herzog film starring Klauskinski called Fitzgeraldo, where the main character
Speaker 2: name of the film, Fitzgeraldo, decides to move an entire
Speaker 2: opera house into I believe, the Peruvian jungle. And in
Speaker 2: the making of the actual film, there is a making
Speaker 2: of it's called I Believe Something of dreams. But they
Speaker 2: actually do it. They really do do it. They move
Speaker 2: this opera house with cranes and lifts and pulleys and
Speaker 2: all this stuff, and it is a thing to behold.
Speaker 2: I believe this film was in the mid seventies, and
Speaker 2: this is just the only way they would have been
Speaker 2: able to do it, also to get it into this
Speaker 2: densely populated jungle. So not only is it about a
Speaker 2: eccentric person who was doing this, but also the actual
Speaker 2: creators of the film were very eccentric in and of themselves.
Speaker 2: You know, Herzog is a known interesting gentleman and creative
Speaker 2: genius and has lots of really interesting hot takes on
Speaker 2: culture and society, and he made that happen. So this
Speaker 2: I can't not think about that when we're talking about
Speaker 2: moving this bridge.
Speaker 1: And people did call it Rob's folly, mcculla's folly, just
Speaker 1: like how they used to clown the guy who purchased
Speaker 1: Alaska for the US for quite some time. What was
Speaker 1: that Seward's folly? So all told, if you're looking at
Speaker 1: the if they were to give him a receipt for
Speaker 1: this strange adventure, the tab would run up to seven
Speaker 1: million dollars, and that is seven times as much as
Speaker 1: Rob had spent buying the land that made up Lake
Speaker 1: Havasu City. It wasn't until October tenth, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: that London Bridge was ready for its debut in the
Speaker 1: United States. He makes this such a big party, such
Speaker 1: a big spectacle. You already know the guy. This is
Speaker 1: classic Rob. He's got skydivers, fireworks, multiple marching bands, hot
Speaker 1: air balloons. He's serving lobster and roast beef, like getting
Speaker 1: the lobster to Arizona. Already spare no expense. This guy
Speaker 1: is bawling and he serves the roast beef and lobster
Speaker 1: because it's the same meal, according to legend, that was
Speaker 1: served to King William the Fourth when the bridge originally
Speaker 1: opened in eighteen thirty one. The Lord Mayor of London
Speaker 1: shows up. He's got his whole shebang on. You know,
Speaker 1: his black robes, he's got a sword bearer walking around.
Speaker 1: Different celebrities of the day are there. And The New
Speaker 1: York Times quoted one British reporter say, it's a super gimmick.
Speaker 2: It's all quite mad.
Speaker 1: It could only happen in America, only in American and
Speaker 1: would think of investing that much in something as crazy
Speaker 1: as this in a weird way, you guys, it's an
Speaker 1: advertisement for the United States.
Speaker 2: Oh, one hundred percent, and FastTrack for me really quickly. Fitzgradi.
Speaker 2: He doesn't move an opera house. He moves a steamship.
Speaker 2: A little more doable undertaking, but absolutely insane to behold
Speaker 2: in the film, he wants to build an opera house
Speaker 2: in the Peruvian jungle in the Andes. So yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a very American undertaking. Ben, This is just kind
Speaker 2: of like, you know, the idea of ingenuity despite you know, come, come,
Speaker 2: what may you know we're gonna get this done. We're
Speaker 2: gonna pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make this happen,
Speaker 2: even if it seems like the stupidest idea ever. And
Speaker 2: of course there were a lot of people who thought
Speaker 2: this was entirely a crackpot game. The you know, like
Speaker 2: I said earlier, the people were calling it McColo's folly.
Speaker 2: A lot of folks predicted that he and his business
Speaker 2: associates would rule the day that they bought this bridge,
Speaker 2: and there was there was a funny statement in and
Speaker 2: of itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a rumor. It's kind of like anti
Speaker 1: anti McCullough propaganda. People would whisper this at dinner parties.
Speaker 1: They would say, you know, the Americans didn't think about
Speaker 1: what they were getting into. They bought the wrong bridge.
Speaker 1: They wanted the Tower Bridge, but they got our old,
Speaker 1: crappy London Bridge. And then these guys McCullough and crew
Speaker 1: vehemently deny this. They say, no, we did our research,
Speaker 1: we know the bridge we're buying. Why would we spend
Speaker 1: this much money on the wrong bridge. So that would
Speaker 1: be hilarious.
Speaker 4: Would be hilarious, but also kind of who cares at
Speaker 4: the end of the day, Like it's it's more about
Speaker 4: the the undertaking of doing it of you know, the
Speaker 4: Tower Bridge would have been historical as well, not as
Speaker 4: maybe quite as historical, but just the undertaking of moving
Speaker 4: this thing and transporting it and rebuilding it in a
Speaker 4: place that it had no business being nor served any
Speaker 4: real function.
Speaker 2: That in and of itself was the whole kind of Uh.
Speaker 2: I don't want to use the word grift because this
Speaker 2: really wasn't. He's not ripping anybody off per se. He's
Speaker 2: just you know, creating kind of a wow factor of like,
Speaker 2: you know, a display of absolutely bold, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of bravado in doing this thing. So which you ever
Speaker 2: bridge it was, I think it probably would have had
Speaker 2: roughly the same effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, And it's very smart too. Just because someone's
Speaker 1: eccentric doesn't mean they're dumb. It is exactly what Lake
Speaker 1: Havasu City needs. It saves the development because it was
Speaker 1: sort of fizzling before, Like he wanted to create this
Speaker 1: like resort community, this tourist attraction, it wasn't really working,
Speaker 1: and this was Yeah, it's hot, it's arid, it's in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. It's tough to convince people to go.
Speaker 1: There were only a few hundred flks living there in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen sixties. By nineteen seventy four, there were
Speaker 1: over ten thousand people there by nineteen seventy five. The
Speaker 1: Chamber of Commerce, which has done a great job with
Speaker 1: the you know, we're leaning on them as a source.
Speaker 1: The Lake Havasu City Chamber of Commerce says this bridge
Speaker 1: gets US two million visitors per year.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's impressive. Great.
Speaker 1: It worked crazy like a fox, you guys, rob is
Speaker 1: crazy like a fox, Wiley like coyote.
Speaker 2: Robert McCullough, you know, as we mentioned, he was a
Speaker 2: fan of these types of gambits, and he went on
Speaker 2: to launch a few others that are kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Standing in nineteen seventy seven, he promoted something called gyro
Speaker 2: planes as commuter vehicles. They're sort of like helicopter adjacents.
Speaker 2: I don't know, have you seen these ben Do they
Speaker 2: even exist or did it kind of not get off
Speaker 2: the ground at all.
Speaker 1: They look like, oh, yeah, you know how an El
Speaker 1: Camino looks like a car, then a truck that kind
Speaker 1: of became a truck at the end. This this looks
Speaker 1: like a plane that sort of fell into becoming a helicopter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like the kind of like shuttley thing
Speaker 2: you might ride in Tomorrowland at Disney World. It's like
Speaker 2: it's definitely intended to be very futuristic in its design.
Speaker 2: The autod at home, I can see that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's sort of like a maybe a two or three
Speaker 2: passenger vehicle maximum with Okay, yeah, it does seem so
Speaker 2: because the body of the thing is not very large. Uh,
Speaker 2: and it only has like it looks like, I mean,
Speaker 2: don't helicopters have more than two blades? Or is it
Speaker 2: just two blades? Is it the same exact orientation as
Speaker 2: a helicopter prop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same concept, but helicopter blades can vary,
Speaker 1: you know, anywhere from just two all the way up
Speaker 1: to like eight, and this one is just two, like
Speaker 1: straight across, you know, just a one line and then
Speaker 1: it spins and and gives the thing lift. But dud
Speaker 1: tape and confidence. That's a that's what a europlane is.
Speaker 2: It does seem like I love the idea of calling
Speaker 2: them a europlane. It sounds delicious.
Speaker 1: So spoiler, the flying car or flying transport thing doesn't
Speaker 1: work out, But that's how it is. When you're an
Speaker 1: idea man, you got to understand that even if ninety
Speaker 1: percent of your ideas don't work out, the one big
Speaker 1: one can make your legacy, right, It can cement your
Speaker 1: place in history. The London Bridge, the London Bridge gambit
Speaker 1: works and we know just a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the Old London Bridge. It wasn't lost completely to history.
Speaker 1: According to Ben Johnson in Remains of the Old London
Speaker 1: Bridge for Historic UK, there are lasting remnants of the
Speaker 1: old bridge and you can see them built into other
Speaker 1: pieces of London architecture. Specifically, Ben Johnson talks about the
Speaker 1: tower Saint Magnus the Martyr's Church on the Lower Thames Street.
Speaker 2: Yes, and one of the foundational archways under the very
Speaker 2: tower itself actually came from the old London Bridge that
Speaker 2: was dismantled in eighteen thirty one. It was actually originally
Speaker 2: the pedestrian entrance onto the bridge, So that piece in
Speaker 2: and of itself has an insane amount of history. Just
Speaker 2: think about all of the people on foot that would
Speaker 2: have passed under that arch.
Speaker 1: That's one of the cool things about London. Last time
Speaker 1: I was there, just walking around, I was in the
Speaker 1: City of London. Actually I was walking toward this restaurant
Speaker 1: that's run by one of my absolute favorite chefs in
Speaker 1: the world, is called Saint John's. The chef's name is
Speaker 1: Fergus Henderson. So I was walking in that direction and
Speaker 1: it it just happened by these plaques about like things
Speaker 1: that are ancient to me as an American. You know,
Speaker 1: it's crazy how close you can be to history in London.
Speaker 2: And you can get.
Speaker 1: Close to history too if you travel to Arizona. If
Speaker 1: you say I don't want to spring for a ticket
Speaker 1: for playing flight across the Atlantic, well not's worry, because
Speaker 1: we have a little bit of London at home. You
Speaker 1: can go to Lake Havasu today and you can see
Speaker 1: Rob McCullough's folly. It's still there. It's super cool, and honestly,
Speaker 1: I think we should go. It's right on the border
Speaker 1: of California in Arizona. What do you think we get
Speaker 1: accounting to pay for that accounting?
Speaker 2: We can just you know, it's better to ask for
Speaker 2: forgiveness than permission. So I say, let's go for this
Speaker 2: guy McCulloch man. He reminds I may have mentioned this
Speaker 2: on the show before, but I used to work for
Speaker 2: a fellow his name, I will not say, not a
Speaker 2: particularly awesome guy. He's not a great dude to work with,
Speaker 2: and sometimes eccentrics can be a little bit difficult as
Speaker 2: human beings. But he had all of these kind of
Speaker 2: little Piamusky kind of ideas, and he would talk about them.
Speaker 2: He would, you know, create kind of like it was
Speaker 2: a marketing company, so he would create kind of like
Speaker 2: fake logos and marketing around them, and then they would fizzle.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't actually do anything with them. But one of them,
Speaker 2: I swear he had his finger on the pulse. Right
Speaker 2: before this thing just really became real with no participation
Speaker 2: from him, he said, what if we had I came
Speaker 2: up with, what if we had this like additive for
Speaker 2: water that was like a powder and it made it
Speaker 2: flavored and gave it like extra minerals and electrolytes, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna call it H two woe. And I was like, man,
Speaker 2: that's kind of smart. And nothing happened with it, and
Speaker 2: now that stuff is everywhere. So just goes to show
Speaker 2: if you have what seemed like a pie in the
Speaker 2: sky idea, sometimes you're just ahead of the curve, you know,
Speaker 2: and definitely do your best to follow your dream. Just
Speaker 2: don't like stomp people into the dirt in the process.
Speaker 1: And tell us what kind of bridges you would like
Speaker 1: to sell. Kidding, kidding, but this is this is great.
Speaker 1: This is a cool piece of truly ridiculous history. And
Speaker 1: they gotta say, I've got a lot of respect for
Speaker 1: Rob McCullough. I love people with big ideas and I
Speaker 1: can't believe he pulled it off. Congratulations to you, sir,
Speaker 1: and thanks as always to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Alex Williams. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland. We should
Speaker 1: try to sell Jonathan a bridge.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure, I think he'd be here. You know,
Speaker 2: he has this the kind of Anglo file that if
Speaker 2: given the appropriate resources, he might well buy a bridge
Speaker 2: or portion of a bridge that contained pieces of English history.
Speaker 2: Also huge thanks to Christopher haciotis here in spirit, Eves,
Speaker 2: Jeff Coates, and you've Ben and thanks to you Noel.
Speaker 2: Thanks to you Max.
Speaker 1: Let's head off to London or Arizona. What's the difference
Speaker 1: really now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you think about it, you close your eyes.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you
Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows.