Fan Favorite: 9 Hilarious Monuments (probably) not worth the Road Trip

We know these statues are supposed to be art, but they also kind of feel like mistakes. Will, Gabe and Mango discuss some colorful and confusing tributes... and the ridiculous stories behind them!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango? What's that? Well, so, I know I
asked you if we could cover today's topic, but I
didn't tell you exactly why, And that's because I wanted
to save this story for you. So, uh, this actually
happened in a town a Silicaga, Alabama, my home state
of Alabama. And so this happen in nine A woman
named An Hodges was taking a nap on her couch
when a softball sized chunk of meteorite crashed through her roof,

(00:24):
came through the ceiling, bounced off a radio, and smacked
her right in the thigh. Sad? Is that but funny?
To say? Why is this so much funnier that hit
her in the thigh? It is, isn't it? Yeah, I
can't handle it anyway. There are photos online of this
giant bruise if you if you want to check this out.
But so, there was an astronomer from Florida State. His
name is Michael Reynolds, and he was talking about how

(00:46):
rare this occasion would be. Says, you have a better
chance of getting hit by a tornado, a bolt of lightning,
and a hurricane all at the same time than getting
hit by a media right that's amazing. And apparently there
was a ton of contra versy after the fact about
who got to keep this rock. So so the public
demanded that the government give the rock back to Anne,

(01:06):
and they finally complied, but then they were sued by
the landlady, who claimed it was her since it fell
on her property. What kind of person doesn't this woman's
been hit by a meteorite, I am right, And so
Anne's argument was, though, that God intended for it to
hit me. After all, it hit me, That's what she said.
And so they settled out of court, and the meteorite

(01:28):
was eventually donated to the Alabama Museum of Natural History
and it's still on display there. So I'll admit I
had heard this story before, but what I didn't know
is that there's actually a monument to it. It commemorates
the whole bizarre happening, and it's in front of the
town hall in Silicago. And so that's why we decided
to do today's episode on nine weird statues and monuments

(01:48):
around the world. Let's get started a their podcast. Listeners,

(02:09):
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as
always I'm joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer
and the man on the other side of the soundproof
glass who's been standing perfectly still for what like the
last forty five minutes. I think I even I saw
him blink once, But that's about it. That's our friend
and producer Tristan McNeil. And also joining us by phone
today is our researcher Gabe Bluesier. Gabe, how's it going

(02:31):
going well? Thanks for having me back. Guys. All right,
Gabe has been trying to claim that the weather in
l A today is is Chris. I'm not buying it. Yeah,
I don't think they've ever experienced Chris. But alright, Gabe,
So you've done your research on some some monuments and
statues around the world. Do you want to take the
first one? Yeah? Sure, Actually I have another statue from

(02:53):
Alabama to go along with yours. You guys bizarre statues
out there, I guess, um. And this is actually it's
a bullweevil monument in Enterprise, Alabama. And so this is
a marble statue of a Greek woman holding a bowl
above her head, and in the bowl there's this fifty
pound bronze bull weevil, and the bull weevil was actually

(03:15):
added about thirty years ago after the statue was originally dedicated,
and it was erected because bullweevils have this history of,
you know, destroying cotton crops in the South, which back
in the day, it forced local farmers to kind of
branch out and try a new crop instead, and that
was peanuts. So Coffee County in Alabama became the largest

(03:36):
producer of peanuts in the US. And it also ended
up planting and prospering from potatoes, sugarcane, sorghum, and tobacco.
And that's thanks in part to the bull weevil kind
of you know, disrupting the cotton trade. So the dedication
on the monument actually reads in profound appreciation of the
bull weevil. And as far as anyone knows, it's the

(03:57):
first and probably only monument to honor and agricultural pest.
And this is one I have actually seen. I can
verify this one. So if you, if you ever happen
to be passing through Enterprise, Alabama, make sure to check
out the bowl weevil statue. Alright, so two facts about
weird statues or monuments from Alabama. Mango, do you have
one from Alabama? No, Russia. Okay, close, alright, what you got?

(04:20):
So obviously there are a lot of monuments out there
that celebrate you know, great men, tyrants, ballplayers, whatever. But
I don't know if that many monuments that are there
to bring warmth and comfort. But that's exactly what local
artists intended when they created this monument to the radiator
in Samara, Russia. Apparently it's in Russia because Russians claimed
the quote hot box, as the radiator was originally called,

(04:43):
was invented in St. Petersburg by this guy in Eft
before he took it to Germany and then the US.
But the best part of the whole thing is that
the sculpture isn't just some radiator on a pedestal. It
also has a cat sprawled out on a giant window
sill over. Russians also invented cats, So I did. I
didn't know that fact. That's really good. That's also not true,

(05:03):
all right, I've got one coming from Paris. So this
is a huge three D molding of the sculptor Caesar
baldachinie Thumb, and this was put up in nineteen sixty five.
It's over forty ft tall and weighs eighteen tons, and
it's so out of place because it's actually right and
kind of the business district there in Paris. And then
you just turn the corner and there's this giant thumb. Well,

(05:26):
it turns out it's not the only one of baldachinie
thumbs out there in the world. Turns out you can
find one at Olympic Park and Soul. There's another one
in Germany, and a couple others, you know, of different
sizes and uh and colors all around the world. Baldachinie
thumbs just waiting to get hitchhiked, like exactly, alright, gay,
what you got next? Alright, So for this one, we

(05:47):
got to head over to Riverside, Iowa, which is a
real town that has a monument commemorating the future birth
of the fictional character Captain James T. Kirk from Star Trek.
So I mean, according to the official Star Trek website,
Kirk will be born in Riverside, Iowa on March two,
in the year two thirty three. But that's kind of

(06:09):
invented by the town itself, because the creator of Star Trek,
Gene Roddenberry, he only ever specified that Kirk was born
in a small town in Iowa. Riverside took advantage of
that vague reference to you know, claim him as their own.
And so if you go into the town, there are
plaques denoting where Captain Kirk will eventually, you know, grow
up and do this or that, and even where he

(06:32):
will be conceived. Apparently this is this is a joke
from a local bar owner. Wow, all right, that's pretty good.
All right, mango, what's your next one? So? I wanted
to talk about this Abe Lincoln statue. And obviously they're
Abe Lincoln statues all over, but this one special because
it's called Abe Lincoln talks to Perry Como. That's the
name is as well. Actually it's not the statue's real name.

(06:52):
The real name is the Return Visit and the statue
is lookate outside the place where Lincoln spent the night
putting his finishing touches on the getty's right address. But
the whole idea behind the statue is to show a
cool Lincoln chatting with modern day tourists. So the dude
he's talking to is wearing a white cable knit sweater
and a collared shirt and khaki cordroys. You know, the
common man and Lincoln's just talking his ear off. But

(07:15):
the dude looks like a young version of that singer
Perry Como. So that's how the statue got nicknamed. But ice,
that does sound so cool. Actually, I have a Lincoln
statue fact as well. This is weird alright. So this
one is the Lincoln Watermelon Monument in Lincoln, Illinois. And
actually in nineteen fifty three, former Congressman Abraham Lincoln, he
had not been president yet, he visited a town in

(07:36):
Illinois to help christen the town name, which was to
be Lincoln of course, and it was actually the only
town to be named after Lincoln while he was still
alive again, and this happened before he was even president.
But while he was visiting there, he poured watermelon juice
on the ground to baptize it. I don't really know why.
There are other reports that he spit watermelon seeds on

(07:56):
the ground to christen it. I've never heard of using
waters homies exactly to do this, but anyway, in nineteen
sixty four, the local kawanas and Lions and rotary clubs
all united in order to commission this steel sculpture of
a watermelon in order to mark this historic event. It's
such a strange thing, but I want to check this out. Soide,
that's pretty great, alright, Gabe, your last fact of the day.

(08:18):
What do you have? Al Right? So this this was
a really weird one. And uh it's a monument to
rats and mice that have been used in DNA research.
And uh, it's it's found over in Russia, and it
was made by an artist named Andrei Karkovich. And the
statue it depicts an anthropomorphic mouse wearing glasses and a

(08:39):
little lab coat and he's he's knitting with strands of
DNA and uh it sits near Russia's Institute of Psychology
and Genetics, and the institute actually collected fifty thousand dollars
and donations to fund this statue. And according to them,
it commemorates lab animals who have been killed as a
part of our ongoing attempts to understand and the nature

(09:00):
and workings of d N. A. Wow, that's very sweet
to remember them in that way. And you said this
is in where where did you say this in Russia? Yeah?
I didn't say on purpose, but no votes Cerberus. Okay,

(09:25):
Well that was a good final fact from you, Gabe. Okay, Mango,
you got one more? Yeah, definitely. So I guess we're
all on some sort of Russia kick because they have
the best statues. But have you guys ever heard of
the Enema statue? And Zilla's no votes? I have not.
But the Monument to Animals features a giant animal bulb.
It's five ft and eight hundred pounds of bronze. Uh,

(09:49):
and it's held up by three tiny angels. And so
the angels are based off this bott of Chelly painting.
And while the sculpture claims the work was designed with humor,
the spot director who commissioned it disagree. Then if arts
in the eye of the beholder, there's no irony hiding
and all that bronze. Wow, so we we We've covered
one that was dedicated to the radiator, and then the
one Gay did with about the the lab mice and rats,

(10:11):
and and now the Enema. Wow. What a collection of statues.
That's that's pretty great. All right? Well, my last one
happens to be about one statue that is in the
world's largest sculpture park, or at least the world's largest
sculpture park made by a single artist. There are two
hundred and twelve bronze and granite sculptures there in the

(10:32):
Vigilance Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway. Now there is one
specific one that's worth looking up, and it's called man
attacked by Genie. And I actually didn't know the plural
of genie. Just has two eyes at the end, you
know this, I didn't even know how to pronounce it
at first when I was looking at it. But this
is why you need to look it up, because it's
apparently this guy that's being attacked by these genie. But

(10:54):
at the same time, what it really looks like is
just this naked man heroically fighting off four toddlers. So
you're gonna have to check this out. So anyway, well
those are our facts of the day. But before we go,
we need to decide decide who's one today. What do
you guys think that meteor in the thigh? Thank god,
just the word thigh, I think. Okay, I'm gonna give

(11:16):
it to myself on that. Yeah, you can take the
crown home. That's right, all right, Well, thank you guys
for listening. We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow.