Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Happy new Year.
Speaker 1: By the way, we are taking a little bit of
Speaker 1: time off here and we wanted to give you some
Speaker 1: of our favorite classic episodes. We called this one the
Speaker 1: Atomic Whoops, which is still a hilarious title.
Speaker 2: And it's hilarious. We've been in the spirit of reflection
Speaker 2: in this new year. Can you believe we've been doing
Speaker 2: this show for like, what more than five years?
Speaker 3: At this point, I think we're coming up on six years.
Speaker 3: I mean no, this was gonna be surprising to you
Speaker 3: because I think in April it'll be three years of
Speaker 3: me on the show. I don't believe it. It makes
Speaker 3: no sense.
Speaker 1: But you haven't only get rid.
Speaker 3: Of me yet.
Speaker 2: I we would never You're the soul of the show.
Speaker 1: The time lies by. And also it's what's great about this,
Speaker 1: what I think we're all thankful for, is that if
Speaker 1: you had if you had told us at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of this show the way our bosses did, that
Speaker 1: we'd only be doing this for six weeks, we would
Speaker 1: have said, that's a lot of time. But here we are,
Speaker 1: my friends, Max Doll, all our fellow Ridiculous Historians, we
Speaker 1: are having such a time we have so many adventures
Speaker 1: ahead and we are seeing so much ridiculous history. This
Speaker 1: story is about the time South Carolina was bombed not
Speaker 1: by enemy forces but by Uncle Sam.
Speaker 3: Yeah speaking, I think that don't make sense.
Speaker 2: The greg family of mars Bluff, South Carolina, was very
Speaker 2: much a where the Cold War was happening. They, however,
Speaker 2: did not realize that they were going to be kind
Speaker 2: of at the center of it. The ground zero, if
Speaker 2: you will, the X marks the spot and the cartoons
Speaker 2: where the bombs doth.
Speaker 3: Fall by accident. But boy, it was it a doozy
Speaker 3: and a real whoopsie for the US Air Force. Come
Speaker 3: dive in with us.
Speaker 1: Let's find out why we call it This episode the
Speaker 1: Atomic Whoops. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Boom
Speaker 1: or Not to Boom. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: My name is Ben.
Speaker 3: Ben. You startled me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, nol. It was not my intention to startle you.
Speaker 3: You startled me so much that I forgot to announce
Speaker 3: my name. But you did it for me, so thank
Speaker 3: you for that. You know how you did that though
Speaker 3: you dropped a bomb on me.
Speaker 1: Ben, you dropped the bomb on me, all right, just
Speaker 1: go beat be And of course we would be remiss
Speaker 1: if we did not shout out our super producer, good
Speaker 1: friend Casey Pegram who is who is sipping the coffee
Speaker 1: and gave us a cheerful a cheerful nod and toast
Speaker 1: a good day, A good day. Yeah. And we're at
Speaker 1: the very end of the year as we record this.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, yeah, I mean the magic of podcast post
Speaker 3: production will be giving you this episode later, but it
Speaker 3: is in fact very close to the end of the
Speaker 3: year as we sit and record this right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, And here in the podcast world, as we
Speaker 1: approach the end of the year, in vacation times and stuff,
Speaker 1: things can get a little hectic. So both of us
Speaker 1: are a little bit punchy and filled with some nervous
Speaker 1: energy as we're finishing everything up this week, right.
Speaker 3: Totally, And we can relate to this idea of multitasking
Speaker 3: and having to really scramble to get things done. And
Speaker 3: such was the case during the Cold War when America
Speaker 3: was gripped by paranoia surrounding a potential nuclear war with Russia,
Speaker 3: and part of that involved the clandestine transportation of atomic
Speaker 3: bombs over American soil. And again with that theme of
Speaker 3: multi ti asking and scrambling. Sometimes, you know, I mistakes
Speaker 3: are made.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Oh gosh, what an infamous understatement. Yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: mistakes were made. Multitasking is tricky. And when you feel
Speaker 1: like you are juggling something while you're driving something, while
Speaker 1: you're also doing a very difficult math in your head,
Speaker 1: maybe you begin to feel a little bit like something
Speaker 1: approaching a pilot.
Speaker 3: And imagine if one of those things you're juggling was
Speaker 3: a seventy six hundred pound or three point four metric
Speaker 3: ton nuclear warhead.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time, friends and neighbors. In January of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, the greg family moved into a home
Speaker 1: in a rural part of eastern South Carolina, and it
Speaker 1: was on land that their family had owned for a century.
Speaker 3: Would you describe it as idyllic?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, boucolic. Even they had no idea that five
Speaker 1: years later they I would earn a very strange, distinctive,
Speaker 1: and dangerous honor by becoming the first and only American
Speaker 1: family to survive the first and only atomic bomb dropped
Speaker 1: on American soil by Americans.
Speaker 3: Our pal Laurie L. Dove wrote this great article for
Speaker 3: how stuff works. She did not bury the leave. The
Speaker 3: title of the article is the US Air Force dropped
Speaker 3: an atomic bomb on South Carolina in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: and that, friends, is the subject of today's story.
Speaker 1: And we want to be clear it is an accidental bombing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as if the Air Force said, you know
Speaker 1: who's really bugging us? The Greg family.
Speaker 3: So on March eleventh of nineteen fifty eight, two of
Speaker 3: the children of Walter Greg Helen, aged six, and Francis,
Speaker 3: age nine, were playing with their nine year old cousin,
Speaker 3: Ella Davies. They were just paling around. They had a
Speaker 3: nice little playhouse in the backyard near a garden patch,
Speaker 3: and there Walter, along with their brother, Walter Junior. We're
Speaker 3: working on some projects in a nearby tool shed.
Speaker 1: Yes, a lovely day. Yeah, what could go wrong? You
Speaker 1: can almost hear the light music in the background right
Speaker 1: but elsewhere high in the air. At four nineteen pm,
Speaker 1: a member of the crew of the US Air Force
Speaker 1: B forty seven E bomber futs things up. A little
Speaker 1: mistakes were made, and the crew member accidentally released a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon that landed on the girl's playhouse while they
Speaker 1: were about two hundred feet away and the family's nearby garden,
Speaker 1: creating a massive crater that was at a circumference of
Speaker 1: about fifty feet oh and was more than thirty feet
Speaker 1: deep out of nowhere. Just but you know, a more
Speaker 1: dramatic sound, Yeah, significantly more dramatic. This created like a
Speaker 1: shock wave that's cracked windows, was and shook homes in
Speaker 1: the nearby community of Mars Bluff, And it flattened this
Speaker 1: playhouse just to nothing, And there were chickens that were
Speaker 1: described as having been vaporized.
Speaker 3: And it basically just put a herding on their entire property.
Speaker 3: All of the buildings, their outbuildings became uninhabitable. It literally
Speaker 3: changed the slope of their land such that the foundation
Speaker 3: of the home was no longer secure. And it injured
Speaker 3: at least somewhat everyone around, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, luckily it was not a fatal injury for everyone.
Speaker 1: But it's difficult, although we laugh about it out, it's
Speaker 1: difficult to fathom the amount of emotional distress this would cause. Right, So,
Speaker 1: before we dive into detail about the specs and stats
Speaker 1: of this bomb, look at what was happening that day, Right,
Speaker 1: How did this crew get up in the air where
Speaker 1: they where were they coming from? Where were they going?
Speaker 1: Earlier that day, the crew was part of a training
Speaker 1: exercise that would require the bomb to be loaded into
Speaker 1: an airplane and flown from Savannah, Georgia, across the Atlantic
Speaker 1: to England. This was a mock mission. Think of it
Speaker 1: like a training exercise.
Speaker 3: The operation snow Flurry is what it was called.
Speaker 1: And so Captain Earl Koehler, who is the pilot, Captain
Speaker 1: Charles Woodruff who was the co pilot, Captain Bruce Kolka,
Speaker 1: the navigator, bombadier and crew chief Sergeant Robert Scriptalk had
Speaker 1: arrived at Hunter Air Force Base just outside of Savannah
Speaker 1: to fly in this operation Scriptalk.
Speaker 3: That is a fascinating sounding name.
Speaker 1: If it was just just Scriptalk instead of Robert Scriptalk,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a character in a sci fi fantasy film.
Speaker 3: You're like Star Trekers.
Speaker 1: Scriptoc, lord of the Igneous rock people.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: In this world. He's an Air Force pilot. So as Noel,
Speaker 1: as you said, what was the name of the operation again,
Speaker 1: Operation snow Flurry, Operation snow Flurry. They carefully load the
Speaker 1: bomb onto the plane, takes an hour. They put it
Speaker 1: into a shackle mechanism. That's designed to keep it in place,
Speaker 1: but they had a difficult time with a steel locking pin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they actually noticed that there was like a light,
Speaker 3: a fault light that started to glow, and that told
Speaker 3: them that the bomb's locking pin had not properly been engaged.
Speaker 3: So Navigator Captain Bruce Kulka went to take a look.
Speaker 1: So while Captain Navigator Captain Bruce Kolka is investigating this
Speaker 1: light and finding the source of the fault, he accidentally
Speaker 1: hit the emergency release pin as he reached around the
Speaker 1: bomb to pull himself up. The device hit the bomb
Speaker 1: bay doors.
Speaker 3: It wasn't really a pin, it was like a like
Speaker 3: a like a lever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he when he did this, when
Speaker 1: he hit this, it forced the doors open. And can
Speaker 1: you imagine, noll, the look on this guy's face as
Speaker 1: he watched it leave the plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the way I've seen it is he
Speaker 3: was kind of crawling on top of the bomb, sort
Speaker 3: of had himself positioned like arms and legs spread, trying
Speaker 3: to get to this pin. And then when he sort
Speaker 3: of lost his footing, he reached out and grabbed this
Speaker 3: release lever, and all hell broke loose, and yeah, he
Speaker 3: Apparently as that bomb fell out from under him.
Speaker 1: He was left.
Speaker 3: He watched it, but he was left suspending himself from
Speaker 3: that handle and whatever else he had a foothold and
Speaker 3: a grasp on there and just watching, looking straight down
Speaker 3: as that bomb hit those bay doors. Eventually the weight
Speaker 3: forced them open and then it was bombs away.
Speaker 1: And we're very lucky that he didn't fall out as well, right,
Speaker 1: because he's as you said, he's standing there picture a
Speaker 1: letter X, just hanging out with nothing between the ground
Speaker 1: and himself except for a very dangerous drop through naked air.
Speaker 3: So back to the idyllic Greg family homestead, the children
Speaker 3: are playing, the boys and the father are at work
Speaker 3: in the shed for nineteen pm, right, and they look
Speaker 3: and they see this bomber flying overhead. But that would
Speaker 3: not have been an unusual sight at the.
Speaker 1: Time, especially not in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Exactly, because these kinds of runs were pretty common. So
Speaker 3: when this chaos went down, mister Greg was quoted as
Speaker 3: saying he thought that the plane had crashed. Can you
Speaker 3: imagine just the chaos that would have ensued, and just
Speaker 3: not being able to fully wrap your head around what
Speaker 3: had happened, and just trying to figure out the possibilities
Speaker 3: in certain the first one the go to would not
Speaker 3: be Oh, the Air Force accidentally dropped an atomic bomb
Speaker 3: on my kid's playhouse.
Speaker 1: Right, And so, as we said, all five members of
Speaker 1: the family were injured, as was the cousin Ella, but
Speaker 1: they had no idea what was happening. Wasn't until later
Speaker 1: that night, where they were crashing at the house of
Speaker 1: their family doctor, that they learned it had been a
Speaker 1: bomb dropped by us, by the US Air Force.
Speaker 3: Now here's the thing. The most serious injury sustained in
Speaker 3: this event was the cousin, who I think got somewhere
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood of thirty one Stitches. And you may ask,
Speaker 3: but Ben Noel, this was a nuclear warhead that was
Speaker 3: dropped on this family's house. Where's the mushroom cloud?
Speaker 1: What about the radiation?
Speaker 3: Where's the nuclear fallout?
Speaker 1: Why does Mars Bluff still exist?
Speaker 3: Where are the ghouls? Why is this not you know,
Speaker 3: like mad Max Overnight.
Speaker 1: Especially considering that this Mark six bomb was actually larger
Speaker 1: than its predace cess or the Mark four or fat
Speaker 1: Man used in World War Two.
Speaker 3: And the look of this thing is is is pretty cartoonish.
Speaker 3: It looks like kind of something that you would see
Speaker 3: in a Looney Tunes cartoon act printed on the side,
Speaker 3: or it makes me think of that scene in Doctor
Speaker 3: Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the bomb cowboy style.
Speaker 1: Which could could have got close to doing exactly.
Speaker 3: Very very interesting and the same time period that's being
Speaker 3: described in that that paranoid cold war fear. But here's
Speaker 3: the thing. We did kind of bury the lead here
Speaker 3: a little bit. It turns out that in order to
Speaker 3: transport these weapons, they would be what's called safet in
Speaker 3: other words, they still had explosives in them, but they
Speaker 3: did not have that nuclear payload, that core of plutonium.
Speaker 1: And thank god, because as we said at the top,
Speaker 1: this was a mock mission. This was timed to see
Speaker 1: how how long the operation would take where it to
Speaker 1: happen in a genuine conflict. So they did safe it.
Speaker 1: But safeing it is not the same thing as just
Speaker 1: making it a dummy bomb. It did possess explosive power,
Speaker 1: it did explode, It did not, thank sweet Pete, contain
Speaker 1: any sort of nuclear payload.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that part was actually transported separately, which you know,
Speaker 3: good on you Air Force, smart smart smart going and
Speaker 3: you know, this thing did lead to updated security measures
Speaker 3: where it was absolutely required that these locking pins be
Speaker 3: in place at all times, even during takeoff and landing.
Speaker 3: I would think especially during David. I mean that's when
Speaker 3: I get dislodged, and you know they'd yell at us
Speaker 3: about our overhead luggage bins that may shift during takeoff
Speaker 3: and landing. Watch out. I would think it'd be pretty
Speaker 3: important to have that locking pin make sure that that
Speaker 3: bomb didn't shift during tankoff and landing.
Speaker 1: And in this mission in snow flurry, they actually jury
Speaker 1: rigged it a bit because they used a hammer to
Speaker 1: bang the pin in place.
Speaker 3: But imagine banging a nuclear warhead with a hammer.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because it may seem ridiculous to us now,
Speaker 1: but we have the benefit of hindsight in.
Speaker 3: A very real way.
Speaker 1: The technology behind nuclear weapon detonation changed as a result
Speaker 1: of this in a very very important fashion. So back
Speaker 1: in the fifties, in this time, one thing that's so
Speaker 1: scary about knocking this thing around with a hammer is
Speaker 1: that nuclear weapons had a trigger that compressed the uranium
Speaker 1: plutonium core to set off the chain reaction of a
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, and things like this. Mark six that got
Speaker 1: dropped on the greg family homestead could be set off
Speaker 1: or triggered by concussion, which means anything from shooting it
Speaker 1: with a bullet, knocking on the ground, dropping it on
Speaker 1: a playhouse, dropping it on a playhouse. And so the
Speaker 1: bomb's trigger did explode when it hit the ground and
Speaker 1: hit the ground of the Gregs. The ground of the Gregs,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling that one if the nuclear components had been there,
Speaker 1: it would have been a massive catastrophe. We're talking hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people would have died.
Speaker 3: Because you know, I hadn't heard of this story until
Speaker 3: we looked into it for the show. I would bet
Speaker 3: that many of you listeners have not heard of this,
Speaker 3: the US accidentally dropping an atomic bomb on an unsuspecting
Speaker 3: family in the South. And that's because at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, nobody died. There was no atomic fallout, right,
Speaker 3: It was not a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Speaker 1: It did, however, become one of the driving forces for
Speaker 1: very important change, which is that today nuclear weapons are
Speaker 1: going to be set off not by concussion, but by
Speaker 1: a specific type of electrical impulse. Within days of this
Speaker 1: accidental bomb drop, the Air Force published new regulations. I
Speaker 1: think you already mentioned right, Oh yeah, where they said,
Speaker 1: hey guys, let's make sure that we don't, you know,
Speaker 1: act we want to drop bombs where we are supposed
Speaker 1: to drop them.
Speaker 3: No more of this willy nilly, you know, pin hammering business.
Speaker 1: But what about the Gregs? What about I feel like
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about the near miss, right that occurred,
Speaker 1: but what about the actual greg families. Poor cousin Ella, Well,
Speaker 1: they never returned to that home out there, and then
Speaker 1: Mars Bluff they received about fifty four thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: damages from the Air Force.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which by today's standards would be in the neighborhood
Speaker 3: of half a million.
Speaker 1: Bucks, which is not too bad. But you also we
Speaker 1: have to think, you know, they own that land. It
Speaker 1: was in their family for one hundred years. There's some
Speaker 1: things that you can't really put a price one.
Speaker 3: And they moved to a nice little cozy bungalow in
Speaker 3: nearby Florence, South Carolina, and this became.
Speaker 1: Of course, we don't know if Walter Gregg was the
Speaker 1: kind of guy to hang out in a bar, but
Speaker 1: we do know he was a church member for all
Speaker 1: of his life. Wherever he was hanging out and spending
Speaker 1: his free time. You know, this was his go to
Speaker 1: story when people are spinning tales. You know, he pointed
Speaker 1: it out, not too many people can say they've had
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb dropped on them. Oh and also he
Speaker 1: was a former paratrooper, so he's familiar with aspects of
Speaker 1: military aviation. And he also spent most of his non
Speaker 1: military life working as a conductor for the railroads.
Speaker 3: And he finishes that quote with and not too many
Speaker 3: people would want to And I would side with Walter
Speaker 3: on that point. To this day, you can actually go
Speaker 3: visit this site. There's a historical marker which is beautiful,
Speaker 3: embarrassing historical marker. It says atomic bomb accident at Mars Bluff,
Speaker 3: March eleventh, nineteen fifty eight. The bomb landed in the
Speaker 3: woods behind the asbestos sided home of the railroad conductor
Speaker 3: Walter Bill Greg born nineteen twenty one. Greg, his wife,
Speaker 3: their three children, and a niece were injured by the concussion,
Speaker 3: which destroyed the house and outbuildings and did slight damage
Speaker 3: to build things within a five mile radius.
Speaker 1: And that's when we say slight damage, think of like
Speaker 1: the windows break exactly exactly, so One of my favorite
Speaker 1: parts of this story is there's something that I picture
Speaker 1: is a very Wes Anderson moment. It's that the Gregs
Speaker 1: and the Air Force crew they got in touch with
Speaker 1: each other, and the crew would hang out with them
Speaker 1: because they felt so bad, you know, and write them letters.
Speaker 1: And to me, I just picture something in a lost
Speaker 1: Wes Anderson film where you know, there's this immaculately decorated
Speaker 1: and choreographed room, right, it's perfectly set, everything's just so,
Speaker 1: and then Captain Kolka Navigator walks in and says, hello,
Speaker 1: this is the anniversary of the time that I accidentally
Speaker 1: drop the bomb on you. And then Walter greg says, yes, Captain,
Speaker 1: I'm aware. It's like I have brought you this gift.
Speaker 3: And then they then they eat a nice Thanksgiving style
Speaker 3: meal together.
Speaker 1: It's like I brought you a gift, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I hope it isn't another bomb.
Speaker 3: And speaking of bombs, there is also you can go
Speaker 3: to where the crater is and it's still there. It
Speaker 3: looks kind of like a crappy pond, you know, because
Speaker 3: it's basically just you know, it's obviously filled in over time,
Speaker 3: but it's still there. It just tends to be full
Speaker 3: of standing water, and there's a plywood silver spray painted.
Speaker 3: It looks like plywood actual size bomb. It's like a
Speaker 3: silhouette yea MK six seventy six hundred pounds. And there's
Speaker 3: like an Instagram photo on the How Stuff Works article
Speaker 3: where the girl standing next to it and saying I've
Speaker 3: been wondering for years where exactly the atomic bombs I
Speaker 3: was and finally found it.
Speaker 1: We do want to say that it is on it.
Speaker 1: You can visit it. However, the site is located on
Speaker 1: private property. The Gregs did sell the land, yeah and
Speaker 1: seventy seven right, Yeah, and it's currently on private property.
Speaker 1: There's no public access road. So we don't want Ridiculous
Speaker 1: History to be known as a show that encourages trespassing.
Speaker 1: So do check with the do check with the locals
Speaker 1: before you go on an expedition.
Speaker 3: And be careful how to get a snake bit or
Speaker 3: get a tick or something. There's probably some tall grass
Speaker 3: around there, but yeah, to get to it, you have
Speaker 3: to go through this abandoned lot that used to have
Speaker 3: a trailer park and walk through a totally overgrown path
Speaker 3: and then you come upon this crappy pond that was
Speaker 3: created by the one and only time that an atomic
Speaker 3: bomb was dropped on American soil by American forces.
Speaker 1: And so this got me thinking. As I was always
Speaker 1: reading this, I was remembering this poem by Elizabeth Bishop
Speaker 1: called one Art, which is the art of losing isn't
Speaker 1: hard to master. That's the first line, and it goes on,
Speaker 1: I don't want to ruin It's it's worth reading.
Speaker 3: No poetry spoilers, ben no poetry spoilers in ridiculous system.
Speaker 1: Right, no trespassing, No poetry spoilers. But it's a poem
Speaker 1: essentially about how easy it is to lose things. And
Speaker 1: it also inspired me to think about the other times
Speaker 1: that nuclear weapons around the world have been lost. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that since nineteen fifty there have been
Speaker 1: thirty two nuclear weapon accidents the accidental launching, firing, detonating
Speaker 1: after loss of weapon. I mean around the world, you know,
Speaker 1: in Canada, in England, and the strangest thing that happens
Speaker 1: is in a few cases the exact location is unknown.
Speaker 1: There was an incident in March tenth of nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: just a couple of years before this incident in the Carolinas,
Speaker 1: where a B forty seven and carrying two nuclear capsules
Speaker 1: on a flight from Tampa, Florida to an overseas base
Speaker 1: was reported missing. It didn't make contact in the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: when it was supposed to for second refueling, and no
Speaker 1: one ever found the plane. It's just out there somewhere
Speaker 1: in the ocean.
Speaker 3: Hikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at least thirty two of these broken Arrow
Speaker 1: events occur, which is why that John Travolta movie is
Speaker 1: called Broken Arrow?
Speaker 3: Who else gon bring you a broken row? Who else?
Speaker 3: Don't bring you a bottle of rey?
Speaker 1: And if you were the Gregs, what would you have
Speaker 1: done when you found out that this occurred? Personally, I
Speaker 1: don't play the lottery, but I would think my probability
Speaker 1: odds are pretty cool right now.
Speaker 3: Or it could be like a final destination kind of
Speaker 3: scenario where it's like, you know, the Reaper was robbed
Speaker 3: and then I'd be looking for like any number of
Speaker 3: things to kill me in my basic surroundings.
Speaker 1: Which those movies got strangered, stranger, more and more like intricate.
Speaker 3: I feel they had to double down with the goldberg
Speaker 3: ness of it all. You know, there we go.
Speaker 1: That's the Craig phrase. So I guess we're done here right?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: Wait, what is that?
Speaker 1: Do you hear it too?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I hear it.
Speaker 1: Now wait, Casey, why are you laughing?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: No, here comes It's time. Gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Yep, I'm back. It's the quist Quister Jonathan Strickland. Yep,
Speaker 1: we thought the show was over.
Speaker 5: No, no, it has only just begun, my friends, For
Speaker 5: it is time to test your ability to tell fact
Speaker 5: from fantasy.
Speaker 3: Okay, then let's get on with this.
Speaker 1: So this is the segment of the show where in
Speaker 1: our nemesis, the evil Quister Jonathan Strickland co in to
Speaker 1: test our ability both to discern fact for fiction, as
Speaker 1: he said, and also to see whether we can work
Speaker 1: together to figure it out, and also to slowly wear.
Speaker 3: Us down over time until we crack.
Speaker 5: And for those who did not hear the previous installment,
Speaker 5: here are the general rules that hold sway from one
Speaker 5: incident to the next, which is, you have three minutes.
Speaker 3: What is this accent you're doing?
Speaker 1: Three, I'm trying something else. Three.
Speaker 5: I'll probably have a different one every time. I'm on
Speaker 5: three minutes. Three minutes, gentlemen, three you say three in
Speaker 5: order for you can talk with one another. You can
Speaker 5: address me with any questions. If I have any more information,
Speaker 5: I will give it to you based upon the way
Speaker 5: you ask the question.
Speaker 1: I may not give you all.
Speaker 5: The information you wish, but you have those three minutes
Speaker 5: to make your determination, at the end of which you
Speaker 5: must then tell me whether or not the scenario I
Speaker 5: present to you was fact or fantasy.
Speaker 1: And I also.
Speaker 5: Create an arbitrary rule every time, and it will change
Speaker 5: every single time. So last time you had to proceed
Speaker 5: every question with a phrase. This time you have to
Speaker 5: end every question to me with the words tick tick tick.
Speaker 1: Boom, three ticks than a boom, three.
Speaker 5: Ticks followed by a boom. And as soon as I
Speaker 5: finished giving you your scenario, you will start the timer
Speaker 5: of three months, the enormous Grandfather Timer. As we have
Speaker 5: previously established, we.
Speaker 1: Spent our whole budget on that thing.
Speaker 5: You know, I know it's I really had this whole
Speaker 5: like like sketch for a costume and a mask, and
Speaker 5: instead I'm just I'm just hearing a plaid shirt.
Speaker 3: It is. It's an audio podcast, though you could be
Speaker 3: wearing anything. Just use your imaginations work, okay, all right,
Speaker 3: So all right, So we do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hanging. I'm hanging on the edge of the
Speaker 1: second hand right, I'm going to do a pull up
Speaker 1: and start the timer when it.
Speaker 5: Excellent, So here is your scenario. In October twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: the Royal Navy was called out to detonate an unexploded
Speaker 5: World War One era bomb which previously had been used
Speaker 5: by a family as a door stop.
Speaker 1: Start the timer, Okay, okay, So it's a World War
Speaker 1: One era bomb which and a door stop.
Speaker 3: So clearly not the size of our giant warhead they
Speaker 3: were talking about today. Sounds more like maybe the size
Speaker 3: of like a like a propane tank or something. Maybe, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: what kind of bombs are they using in world?
Speaker 1: Definitely not nuclear?
Speaker 3: No, no, uh all right.
Speaker 1: The quister, could you repeat the salient points one more time?
Speaker 1: Tick tick tick boom. Yes.
Speaker 5: October twenty seventeen, Royal Navy is called out to a
Speaker 5: fun farm in Devon, England, to detonate an unexploded bomb
Speaker 5: of the World War One era that had previously been
Speaker 5: used as a doorstop.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say true, I think true. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna I think we're gonna call this one early.
Speaker 3: I think maybe we will.
Speaker 1: All right, are we official on it? Yes?
Speaker 3: Lock in the answer, locked in.
Speaker 1: We think it's true.
Speaker 5: Gentlemen, you are two for two.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 5: As it turns out, there was a farm in Devon, England,
Speaker 5: and the while it had been previously used as a doorstop,
Speaker 5: what had actually happened was that they found this bomb
Speaker 5: inside a wall. It had been placed on purpose inside
Speaker 5: the wall when the wall was constructed. The grandparents of
Speaker 5: the owners of the farm said, oh, we used to
Speaker 5: use it as a doorstop. It was a corroded twenty
Speaker 5: five pound unexploded ordinance from the UK. Chances are it
Speaker 5: was actually fired into the farm area by accident from
Speaker 5: a nearby firing range.
Speaker 3: So that's what I was gonna ask. Is this sort
Speaker 3: of like a mortar round? Almost along those lines?
Speaker 1: Okay, twenty five shell?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 5: Yes, very well done, Very well done. So you've gotten
Speaker 5: one fantasy correct, one fact correct? What will next time bring?
Speaker 5: Who's to say it's except me? I have like the
Speaker 5: next three written, so I I.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, you know what the quist does his homework.
Speaker 3: You know, you can say a lot about Jonathan, but
Speaker 3: he definitely does.
Speaker 1: Got to respect the craft, you know, got to respect it,
Speaker 1: got to respect the quiz. Well, Jonathan, you know, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming aboard the show.
Speaker 3: Thank him.
Speaker 1: Okay, Jonathan and I acknowledge that you are here.
Speaker 5: I mean we can't we can't really deny it. I,
Speaker 5: as we've also previously established, I have no way of
Speaker 5: getting out of this room without someone from outside opening
Speaker 5: the door for me.
Speaker 1: Again, we spent a lot of the budget on our
Speaker 1: gigantic Grandfather Timer, and you know that we just didn't
Speaker 1: allocate the right money for locks.
Speaker 5: It's fine, I'll just sit in the corner.
Speaker 3: Now, get the hens, foul demon.
Speaker 5: I'm just back here. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: It's okay, you can stay.
Speaker 5: I'm getting a call, all right.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah it feels great.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, sure, no, I'll you know, I'll have lunch
Speaker 5: with you.
Speaker 3: We're recording so well, Jonathan makes his lunch plans. Would
Speaker 3: we would like to so, while Jonathan's making his lunch plans,
Speaker 3: we would like to thank you listeners for joining us
Speaker 3: for another episode of Ridiculous History, another of Jonathan's diabolical
Speaker 3: quiz segments, which you know I could, I could, I
Speaker 3: could take her leave. I'm having a good time.
Speaker 1: I'm having I'm having a great time with it. I
Speaker 1: mean we're technically we're winners.
Speaker 3: Now, that's true. Let us know if you're having a
Speaker 3: good time, right I said ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3: You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Speaker 3: right where we are Ridiculous History, and.
Speaker 1: You can also, of course find our nemesis, Jonathan on
Speaker 1: his own show, tech Stuff, which is available wherever you
Speaker 1: find your favorite podcast. So be well, have a fantastic week,
Speaker 1: throw us a review if you'd like. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you, and stay tuned for another episode of
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4: Guys, I'm on the phone.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.