January 2, 2024 • 31 mins
During the height of the Cold War, both the US and the USSR constantly ran drills in anticipation of a possible nuclear conflict. While the Gregg family of Mars Bluff, South Carolina knew the Cold War was in full swing, they had no idea that they would become the first American family bombed -- accidentally -- by the US Air Force. Ben and Noel explore one of the most bizarre atomic slip-ups in American history in today's classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Happy new Year.
By the way, we are taking a little bit of
time off here and we wanted to give you some
of our favorite classic episodes. We called this one the
Atomic Whoops, which is still a hilarious title.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And it's hilarious. We've been in the spirit of reflection
in this new year. Can you believe we've been doing
this show for like, what more than five years?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
At this point, I think we're coming up on six years.
I mean no, this was gonna be surprising to you
because I think in April it'll be three years of
me on the show. I don't believe it. It makes
no sense.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
But you haven't only get rid.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Of me yet.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I we would never You're the soul of the show.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
The time lies by. And also it's what's great about this,
what I think we're all thankful for, is that if
you had if you had told us at the very
beginning of this show the way our bosses did, that
we'd only be doing this for six weeks, we would
have said, that's a lot of time. But here we are,
(01:00):
my friends, Max Doll, all our fellow Ridiculous Historians, we
are having such a time we have so many adventures
ahead and we are seeing so much ridiculous history. This
story is about the time South Carolina was bombed not
by enemy forces but by Uncle Sam.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah speaking, I think that don't make sense.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The greg family of mars Bluff, South Carolina, was very
much a where the Cold War was happening. They, however,
did not realize that they were going to be kind
of at the center of it. The ground zero, if
you will, the X marks the spot and the cartoons
where the bombs doth.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Fall by accident. But boy, it was it a doozy
and a real whoopsie for the US Air Force. Come
dive in with us.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Let's find out why we call it This episode the
Atomic Whoops. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Boom
(02:24):
or Not to Boom. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Ben.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Ben. You startled me.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'm sorry, nol. It was not my intention to startle you.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
You startled me so much that I forgot to announce
my name. But you did it for me, so thank
you for that. You know how you did that though
you dropped a bomb on me.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Ben, you dropped the bomb on me, all right, just
go beat be And of course we would be remiss
if we did not shout out our super producer, good
friend Casey Pegram who is who is sipping the coffee
and gave us a cheerful a cheerful nod and toast
a good day, A good day. Yeah. And we're at
(03:01):
the very end of the year as we record this.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Right yeah, yeah, I mean the magic of podcast post
production will be giving you this episode later, but it
is in fact very close to the end of the
year as we sit and record this right now.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yes, absolutely, And here in the podcast world, as we
approach the end of the year, in vacation times and stuff,
things can get a little hectic. So both of us
are a little bit punchy and filled with some nervous
energy as we're finishing everything up this week, right.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Totally, And we can relate to this idea of multitasking
and having to really scramble to get things done. And
such was the case during the Cold War when America
was gripped by paranoia surrounding a potential nuclear war with Russia,
and part of that involved the clandestine transportation of atomic
(03:54):
bombs over American soil. And again with that theme of
multi ti asking and scrambling. Sometimes, you know, I mistakes
are made.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yes, yes, Oh gosh, what an infamous understatement. Yes, sometimes
mistakes were made. Multitasking is tricky. And when you feel
like you are juggling something while you're driving something, while
you're also doing a very difficult math in your head,
maybe you begin to feel a little bit like something
(04:28):
approaching a pilot.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And imagine if one of those things you're juggling was
a seventy six hundred pound or three point four metric
ton nuclear warhead.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Once upon a time, friends and neighbors. In January of
nineteen fifty three, the greg family moved into a home
in a rural part of eastern South Carolina, and it
was on land that their family had owned for a century.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Would you describe it as idyllic?
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yes, yeah, boucolic. Even they had no idea that five
years later they I would earn a very strange, distinctive,
and dangerous honor by becoming the first and only American
family to survive the first and only atomic bomb dropped
on American soil by Americans.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Our pal Laurie L. Dove wrote this great article for
how stuff works. She did not bury the leave. The
title of the article is the US Air Force dropped
an atomic bomb on South Carolina in nineteen fifty eight,
and that, friends, is the subject of today's story.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
And we want to be clear it is an accidental bombing.
It wasn't as if the Air Force said, you know
who's really bugging us? The Greg family.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
So on March eleventh of nineteen fifty eight, two of
the children of Walter Greg Helen, aged six, and Francis,
age nine, were playing with their nine year old cousin,
Ella Davies. They were just paling around. They had a
nice little playhouse in the backyard near a garden patch,
and there Walter, along with their brother, Walter Junior. We're
(06:03):
working on some projects in a nearby tool shed.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes, a lovely day. Yeah, what could go wrong? You
can almost hear the light music in the background right
but elsewhere high in the air. At four nineteen pm,
a member of the crew of the US Air Force
B forty seven E bomber futs things up. A little
(06:28):
mistakes were made, and the crew member accidentally released a
nuclear weapon that landed on the girl's playhouse while they
were about two hundred feet away and the family's nearby garden,
creating a massive crater that was at a circumference of
about fifty feet oh and was more than thirty feet
deep out of nowhere. Just but you know, a more
(06:54):
dramatic sound, Yeah, significantly more dramatic. This created like a
shock wave that's cracked windows, was and shook homes in
the nearby community of Mars Bluff, And it flattened this
playhouse just to nothing, And there were chickens that were
described as having been vaporized.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
And it basically just put a herding on their entire property.
All of the buildings, their outbuildings became uninhabitable. It literally
changed the slope of their land such that the foundation
of the home was no longer secure. And it injured
(07:36):
at least somewhat everyone around, right.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, luckily it was not a fatal injury for everyone.
But it's difficult, although we laugh about it out, it's
difficult to fathom the amount of emotional distress this would cause. Right, So,
before we dive into detail about the specs and stats
of this bomb, look at what was happening that day, Right,
(08:03):
How did this crew get up in the air where
they where were they coming from? Where were they going?
Earlier that day, the crew was part of a training
exercise that would require the bomb to be loaded into
an airplane and flown from Savannah, Georgia, across the Atlantic
to England. This was a mock mission. Think of it
like a training exercise.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
The operation snow Flurry is what it was called.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And so Captain Earl Koehler, who is the pilot, Captain
Charles Woodruff who was the co pilot, Captain Bruce Kolka,
the navigator, bombadier and crew chief Sergeant Robert Scriptalk had
arrived at Hunter Air Force Base just outside of Savannah
to fly in this operation Scriptalk.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
That is a fascinating sounding name.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
If it was just just Scriptalk instead of Robert Scriptalk,
it sounds like a character in a sci fi fantasy film.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
You're like Star Trekers.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Scriptoc, lord of the Igneous rock people.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
In this world. He's an Air Force pilot. So as Noel,
as you said, what was the name of the operation again,
Operation snow Flurry, Operation snow Flurry. They carefully load the
bomb onto the plane, takes an hour. They put it
into a shackle mechanism. That's designed to keep it in place,
but they had a difficult time with a steel locking pin.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, they actually noticed that there was like a light,
a fault light that started to glow, and that told
them that the bomb's locking pin had not properly been engaged.
So Navigator Captain Bruce Kulka went to take a look.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So while Captain Navigator Captain Bruce Kolka is investigating this
light and finding the source of the fault, he accidentally
hit the emergency release pin as he reached around the
bomb to pull himself up. The device hit the bomb
bay doors.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It wasn't really a pin, it was like a like
a like a lever.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he when he did this, when
he hit this, it forced the doors open. And can
you imagine, noll, the look on this guy's face as
he watched it leave the plane.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah, I mean, the way I've seen it is he
was kind of crawling on top of the bomb, sort
of had himself positioned like arms and legs spread, trying
to get to this pin. And then when he sort
of lost his footing, he reached out and grabbed this
release lever, and all hell broke loose, and yeah, he
(10:38):
Apparently as that bomb fell out from under him.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
He was left.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
He watched it, but he was left suspending himself from
that handle and whatever else he had a foothold and
a grasp on there and just watching, looking straight down
as that bomb hit those bay doors. Eventually the weight
forced them open and then it was bombs away.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
And we're very lucky that he didn't fall out as well, right,
because he's as you said, he's standing there picture a
letter X, just hanging out with nothing between the ground
and himself except for a very dangerous drop through naked air.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So back to the idyllic Greg family homestead, the children
are playing, the boys and the father are at work
in the shed for nineteen pm, right, and they look
and they see this bomber flying overhead. But that would
not have been an unusual sight at the.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Time, especially not in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Exactly, because these kinds of runs were pretty common. So
when this chaos went down, mister Greg was quoted as
saying he thought that the plane had crashed. Can you
imagine just the chaos that would have ensued, and just
not being able to fully wrap your head around what
had happened, and just trying to figure out the possibilities
in certain the first one the go to would not
(12:02):
be Oh, the Air Force accidentally dropped an atomic bomb
on my kid's playhouse.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Right, And so, as we said, all five members of
the family were injured, as was the cousin Ella, but
they had no idea what was happening. Wasn't until later
that night, where they were crashing at the house of
their family doctor, that they learned it had been a
bomb dropped by us, by the US Air Force.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Now here's the thing. The most serious injury sustained in
this event was the cousin, who I think got somewhere
in the neighborhood of thirty one Stitches. And you may ask,
but Ben Noel, this was a nuclear warhead that was
dropped on this family's house. Where's the mushroom cloud?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
What about the radiation?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Where's the nuclear fallout?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Why does Mars Bluff still exist?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Where are the ghouls? Why is this not you know,
like mad Max Overnight.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Especially considering that this Mark six bomb was actually larger
than its predace cess or the Mark four or fat
Man used in World War Two.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And the look of this thing is is is pretty cartoonish.
It looks like kind of something that you would see
in a Looney Tunes cartoon act printed on the side,
or it makes me think of that scene in Doctor
Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the bomb cowboy style.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Which could could have got close to doing exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Very very interesting and the same time period that's being
described in that that paranoid cold war fear. But here's
the thing. We did kind of bury the lead here
a little bit. It turns out that in order to
transport these weapons, they would be what's called safet in
(13:44):
other words, they still had explosives in them, but they
did not have that nuclear payload, that core of plutonium.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
And thank god, because as we said at the top,
this was a mock mission. This was timed to see
how how long the operation would take where it to
happen in a genuine conflict. So they did safe it.
But safeing it is not the same thing as just
making it a dummy bomb. It did possess explosive power,
it did explode, It did not, thank sweet Pete, contain
(14:19):
any sort of nuclear payload.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, that part was actually transported separately, which you know,
good on you Air Force, smart smart smart going and
you know, this thing did lead to updated security measures
where it was absolutely required that these locking pins be
in place at all times, even during takeoff and landing.
(14:46):
I would think especially during David. I mean that's when
I get dislodged, and you know they'd yell at us
about our overhead luggage bins that may shift during takeoff
and landing. Watch out. I would think it'd be pretty
important to have that locking pin make sure that that
bomb didn't shift during tankoff and landing.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And in this mission in snow flurry, they actually jury
rigged it a bit because they used a hammer to
bang the pin in place.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
But imagine banging a nuclear warhead with a hammer.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
This is interesting because it may seem ridiculous to us now,
but we have the benefit of hindsight in.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
A very real way.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
The technology behind nuclear weapon detonation changed as a result
of this in a very very important fashion. So back
in the fifties, in this time, one thing that's so
scary about knocking this thing around with a hammer is
that nuclear weapons had a trigger that compressed the uranium
plutonium core to set off the chain reaction of a
(15:40):
nuclear explosion, and things like this. Mark six that got
dropped on the greg family homestead could be set off
or triggered by concussion, which means anything from shooting it
with a bullet, knocking on the ground, dropping it on
a playhouse, dropping it on a playhouse. And so the
bomb's trigger did explode when it hit the ground and
(16:00):
hit the ground of the Gregs. The ground of the Gregs,
I'm feeling that one if the nuclear components had been there,
it would have been a massive catastrophe. We're talking hundreds
of thousands of people would have died.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Because you know, I hadn't heard of this story until
we looked into it for the show. I would bet
that many of you listeners have not heard of this,
the US accidentally dropping an atomic bomb on an unsuspecting
family in the South. And that's because at the end
of the day, nobody died. There was no atomic fallout, right,
(16:35):
It was not a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
It did, however, become one of the driving forces for
very important change, which is that today nuclear weapons are
going to be set off not by concussion, but by
a specific type of electrical impulse. Within days of this
accidental bomb drop, the Air Force published new regulations. I
(16:59):
think you already mentioned right, Oh yeah, where they said,
hey guys, let's make sure that we don't, you know,
act we want to drop bombs where we are supposed
to drop them.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
No more of this willy nilly, you know, pin hammering business.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
But what about the Gregs? What about I feel like
we've we've talked about the near miss, right that occurred,
but what about the actual greg families. Poor cousin Ella, Well,
they never returned to that home out there, and then
Mars Bluff they received about fifty four thousand dollars in
(17:34):
damages from the Air Force.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, which by today's standards would be in the neighborhood
of half a million.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Bucks, which is not too bad. But you also we
have to think, you know, they own that land. It
was in their family for one hundred years. There's some
things that you can't really put a price one.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And they moved to a nice little cozy bungalow in
nearby Florence, South Carolina, and this became.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Of course, we don't know if Walter Gregg was the
kind of guy to hang out in a bar, but
we do know he was a church member for all
of his life. Wherever he was hanging out and spending
his free time. You know, this was his go to
story when people are spinning tales. You know, he pointed
it out, not too many people can say they've had
(18:18):
a nuclear bomb dropped on them. Oh and also he
was a former paratrooper, so he's familiar with aspects of
military aviation. And he also spent most of his non
military life working as a conductor for the railroads.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
And he finishes that quote with and not too many
people would want to And I would side with Walter
on that point. To this day, you can actually go
visit this site. There's a historical marker which is beautiful,
embarrassing historical marker. It says atomic bomb accident at Mars Bluff,
(18:55):
March eleventh, nineteen fifty eight. The bomb landed in the
woods behind the asbestos sided home of the railroad conductor
Walter Bill Greg born nineteen twenty one. Greg, his wife,
their three children, and a niece were injured by the concussion,
which destroyed the house and outbuildings and did slight damage
(19:15):
to build things within a five mile radius.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And that's when we say slight damage, think of like
the windows break exactly exactly, so One of my favorite
parts of this story is there's something that I picture
is a very Wes Anderson moment. It's that the Gregs
and the Air Force crew they got in touch with
each other, and the crew would hang out with them
(19:39):
because they felt so bad, you know, and write them letters.
And to me, I just picture something in a lost
Wes Anderson film where you know, there's this immaculately decorated
and choreographed room, right, it's perfectly set, everything's just so,
and then Captain Kolka Navigator walks in and says, hello,
(20:00):
this is the anniversary of the time that I accidentally
drop the bomb on you. And then Walter greg says, yes, Captain,
I'm aware. It's like I have brought you this gift.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And then they then they eat a nice Thanksgiving style
meal together.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
It's like I brought you a gift, and it's like, well,
I hope it isn't another bomb.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And speaking of bombs, there is also you can go
to where the crater is and it's still there. It
looks kind of like a crappy pond, you know, because
it's basically just you know, it's obviously filled in over time,
but it's still there. It just tends to be full
of standing water, and there's a plywood silver spray painted.
It looks like plywood actual size bomb. It's like a
(20:44):
silhouette yea MK six seventy six hundred pounds. And there's
like an Instagram photo on the How Stuff Works article
where the girl standing next to it and saying I've
been wondering for years where exactly the atomic bombs I
was and finally found it.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
We do want to say that it is on it.
You can visit it. However, the site is located on
private property. The Gregs did sell the land, yeah and
seventy seven right, Yeah, and it's currently on private property.
There's no public access road. So we don't want Ridiculous
History to be known as a show that encourages trespassing.
(21:19):
So do check with the do check with the locals
before you go on an expedition.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And be careful how to get a snake bit or
get a tick or something. There's probably some tall grass
around there, but yeah, to get to it, you have
to go through this abandoned lot that used to have
a trailer park and walk through a totally overgrown path
and then you come upon this crappy pond that was
created by the one and only time that an atomic
bomb was dropped on American soil by American forces.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And so this got me thinking. As I was always
reading this, I was remembering this poem by Elizabeth Bishop
called one Art, which is the art of losing isn't
hard to master. That's the first line, and it goes on,
I don't want to ruin It's it's worth reading.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
No poetry spoilers, ben no poetry spoilers in ridiculous system.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Right, no trespassing, No poetry spoilers. But it's a poem
essentially about how easy it is to lose things. And
it also inspired me to think about the other times
that nuclear weapons around the world have been lost. And
it turns out that since nineteen fifty there have been
thirty two nuclear weapon accidents the accidental launching, firing, detonating
(22:34):
after loss of weapon. I mean around the world, you know,
in Canada, in England, and the strangest thing that happens
is in a few cases the exact location is unknown.
There was an incident in March tenth of nineteen fifty six,
just a couple of years before this incident in the Carolinas,
(22:58):
where a B forty seven and carrying two nuclear capsules
on a flight from Tampa, Florida to an overseas base
was reported missing. It didn't make contact in the Mediterranean
when it was supposed to for second refueling, and no
one ever found the plane. It's just out there somewhere
in the ocean.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Hikes.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, so at least thirty two of these broken Arrow
events occur, which is why that John Travolta movie is
called Broken Arrow?
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Who else gon bring you a broken row? Who else?
Don't bring you a bottle of rey?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And if you were the Gregs, what would you have
done when you found out that this occurred? Personally, I
don't play the lottery, but I would think my probability
odds are pretty cool right now.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Or it could be like a final destination kind of
scenario where it's like, you know, the Reaper was robbed
and then I'd be looking for like any number of
things to kill me in my basic surroundings.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Which those movies got strangered, stranger, more and more like intricate.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I feel they had to double down with the goldberg
ness of it all. You know, there we go.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
That's the Craig phrase. So I guess we're done here right?
Speaker 4 (24:18):
No?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Wait, what is that?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Do you hear it too?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yeah, yeah, I hear it.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Now wait, Casey, why are you laughing?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (24:30):
No, here comes It's time. Gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yep, I'm back. It's the quist Quister Jonathan Strickland. Yep,
we thought the show was over.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
No, no, it has only just begun, my friends, For
it is time to test your ability to tell fact
from fantasy.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Okay, then let's get on with this.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
So this is the segment of the show where in
our nemesis, the evil Quister Jonathan Strickland co in to
test our ability both to discern fact for fiction, as
he said, and also to see whether we can work
together to figure it out, and also to slowly wear.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Us down over time until we crack.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
And for those who did not hear the previous installment,
here are the general rules that hold sway from one
incident to the next, which is, you have three minutes.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
What is this accent you're doing?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Three, I'm trying something else. Three.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
I'll probably have a different one every time. I'm on
three minutes. Three minutes, gentlemen, three you say three in
order for you can talk with one another. You can
address me with any questions. If I have any more information,
I will give it to you based upon the way
you ask the question.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I may not give you all.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
The information you wish, but you have those three minutes
to make your determination, at the end of which you
must then tell me whether or not the scenario I
present to you was fact or fantasy.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And I also.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Create an arbitrary rule every time, and it will change
every single time. So last time you had to proceed
every question with a phrase. This time you have to
end every question to me with the words tick tick tick.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Boom, three ticks than a boom, three.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
Ticks followed by a boom. And as soon as I
finished giving you your scenario, you will start the timer
of three months, the enormous Grandfather Timer. As we have
previously established, we.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Spent our whole budget on that thing.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
You know, I know it's I really had this whole
like like sketch for a costume and a mask, and
instead I'm just I'm just hearing a plaid shirt.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
It is. It's an audio podcast, though you could be
wearing anything. Just use your imaginations work, okay, all right,
So all right, So we do this.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, I'm hanging. I'm hanging on the edge of the
second hand right, I'm going to do a pull up
and start the timer when it.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Excellent, So here is your scenario. In October twenty seventeen,
the Royal Navy was called out to detonate an unexploded
World War One era bomb which previously had been used
by a family as a door stop.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Start the timer, Okay, okay, So it's a World War
One era bomb which and a door stop.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
So clearly not the size of our giant warhead they
were talking about today. Sounds more like maybe the size
of like a like a propane tank or something. Maybe, yeah, yeah,
what kind of bombs are they using in world?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Definitely not nuclear?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
No, no, uh all right.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
The quister, could you repeat the salient points one more time?
Tick tick tick boom. Yes.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
October twenty seventeen, Royal Navy is called out to a
fun farm in Devon, England, to detonate an unexploded bomb
of the World War One era that had previously been
used as a doorstop.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
I'm going to say true, I think true. I think
we're gonna I think we're gonna call this one early.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I think maybe we will.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
All right, are we official on it? Yes?
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Lock in the answer, locked in.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
We think it's true.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Gentlemen, you are two for two.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
As it turns out, there was a farm in Devon, England,
and the while it had been previously used as a doorstop,
what had actually happened was that they found this bomb
inside a wall. It had been placed on purpose inside
the wall when the wall was constructed. The grandparents of
the owners of the farm said, oh, we used to
(28:54):
use it as a doorstop. It was a corroded twenty
five pound unexploded ordinance from the UK. Chances are it
was actually fired into the farm area by accident from
a nearby firing range.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So that's what I was gonna ask. Is this sort
of like a mortar round? Almost along those lines?
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Okay, twenty five shell?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Got it?
Speaker 5 (29:18):
Yes, very well done, Very well done. So you've gotten
one fantasy correct, one fact correct? What will next time bring?
Who's to say it's except me? I have like the
next three written, so I I.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yes, Okay, you know what the quist does his homework.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You know, you can say a lot about Jonathan, but
he definitely does.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Got to respect the craft, you know, got to respect it,
got to respect the quiz. Well, Jonathan, you know, thank
you so much for coming aboard the show.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Thank him.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Okay, Jonathan and I acknowledge that you are here.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
I mean we can't we can't really deny it. I,
as we've also previously established, I have no way of
getting out of this room without someone from outside opening
the door for me.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Again, we spent a lot of the budget on our
gigantic Grandfather Timer, and you know that we just didn't
allocate the right money for locks.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
It's fine, I'll just sit in the corner.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Now, get the hens, foul demon.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
I'm just back here. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
It's okay, you can stay.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
I'm getting a call, all right.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Hey, yeah it feels great.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
Okay, yeah, sure, no, I'll you know, I'll have lunch
with you.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
We're recording so well, Jonathan makes his lunch plans. Would
we would like to so, while Jonathan's making his lunch plans,
we would like to thank you listeners for joining us
for another episode of Ridiculous History, another of Jonathan's diabolical
quiz segments, which you know I could, I could, I
could take her leave. I'm having a good time.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I'm having I'm having a great time with it. I
mean we're technically we're winners.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Now, that's true. Let us know if you're having a
good time, right I said ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
right where we are Ridiculous History, and.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
You can also, of course find our nemesis, Jonathan on
his own show, tech Stuff, which is available wherever you
find your favorite podcast. So be well, have a fantastic week,
throw us a review if you'd like. We'd love to
hear from you, and stay tuned for another episode of
Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Guys, I'm on the phone.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Happy new Year.
By the way, we are taking a little bit of
time off here and we wanted to give you some
of our favorite classic episodes. We called this one the
Atomic Whoops, which is still a hilarious title.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And it's hilarious. We've been in the spirit of reflection
in this new year. Can you believe we've been doing
this show for like, what more than five years?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
At this point, I think we're coming up on six years.
I mean no, this was gonna be surprising to you
because I think in April it'll be three years of
me on the show. I don't believe it. It makes
no sense.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
But you haven't only get rid.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Of me yet.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I we would never You're the soul of the show.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
The time lies by. And also it's what's great about this,
what I think we're all thankful for, is that if
you had if you had told us at the very
beginning of this show the way our bosses did, that
we'd only be doing this for six weeks, we would
have said, that's a lot of time. But here we are,
(01:00):
my friends, Max Doll, all our fellow Ridiculous Historians, we
are having such a time we have so many adventures
ahead and we are seeing so much ridiculous history. This
story is about the time South Carolina was bombed not
by enemy forces but by Uncle Sam.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah speaking, I think that don't make sense.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The greg family of mars Bluff, South Carolina, was very
much a where the Cold War was happening. They, however,
did not realize that they were going to be kind
of at the center of it. The ground zero, if
you will, the X marks the spot and the cartoons
where the bombs doth.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Fall by accident. But boy, it was it a doozy
and a real whoopsie for the US Air Force. Come
dive in with us.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Let's find out why we call it This episode the
Atomic Whoops. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Boom
(02:24):
or Not to Boom. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Ben.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Ben. You startled me.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'm sorry, nol. It was not my intention to startle you.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
You startled me so much that I forgot to announce
my name. But you did it for me, so thank
you for that. You know how you did that though
you dropped a bomb on me.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Ben, you dropped the bomb on me, all right, just
go beat be And of course we would be remiss
if we did not shout out our super producer, good
friend Casey Pegram who is who is sipping the coffee
and gave us a cheerful a cheerful nod and toast
a good day, A good day. Yeah. And we're at
(03:01):
the very end of the year as we record this.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Right yeah, yeah, I mean the magic of podcast post
production will be giving you this episode later, but it
is in fact very close to the end of the
year as we sit and record this right now.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yes, absolutely, And here in the podcast world, as we
approach the end of the year, in vacation times and stuff,
things can get a little hectic. So both of us
are a little bit punchy and filled with some nervous
energy as we're finishing everything up this week, right.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Totally, And we can relate to this idea of multitasking
and having to really scramble to get things done. And
such was the case during the Cold War when America
was gripped by paranoia surrounding a potential nuclear war with Russia,
and part of that involved the clandestine transportation of atomic
(03:54):
bombs over American soil. And again with that theme of
multi ti asking and scrambling. Sometimes, you know, I mistakes
are made.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yes, yes, Oh gosh, what an infamous understatement. Yes, sometimes
mistakes were made. Multitasking is tricky. And when you feel
like you are juggling something while you're driving something, while
you're also doing a very difficult math in your head,
maybe you begin to feel a little bit like something
(04:28):
approaching a pilot.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And imagine if one of those things you're juggling was
a seventy six hundred pound or three point four metric
ton nuclear warhead.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Once upon a time, friends and neighbors. In January of
nineteen fifty three, the greg family moved into a home
in a rural part of eastern South Carolina, and it
was on land that their family had owned for a century.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Would you describe it as idyllic?
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yes, yeah, boucolic. Even they had no idea that five
years later they I would earn a very strange, distinctive,
and dangerous honor by becoming the first and only American
family to survive the first and only atomic bomb dropped
on American soil by Americans.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Our pal Laurie L. Dove wrote this great article for
how stuff works. She did not bury the leave. The
title of the article is the US Air Force dropped
an atomic bomb on South Carolina in nineteen fifty eight,
and that, friends, is the subject of today's story.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
And we want to be clear it is an accidental bombing.
It wasn't as if the Air Force said, you know
who's really bugging us? The Greg family.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
So on March eleventh of nineteen fifty eight, two of
the children of Walter Greg Helen, aged six, and Francis,
age nine, were playing with their nine year old cousin,
Ella Davies. They were just paling around. They had a
nice little playhouse in the backyard near a garden patch,
and there Walter, along with their brother, Walter Junior. We're
(06:03):
working on some projects in a nearby tool shed.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes, a lovely day. Yeah, what could go wrong? You
can almost hear the light music in the background right
but elsewhere high in the air. At four nineteen pm,
a member of the crew of the US Air Force
B forty seven E bomber futs things up. A little
(06:28):
mistakes were made, and the crew member accidentally released a
nuclear weapon that landed on the girl's playhouse while they
were about two hundred feet away and the family's nearby garden,
creating a massive crater that was at a circumference of
about fifty feet oh and was more than thirty feet
deep out of nowhere. Just but you know, a more
(06:54):
dramatic sound, Yeah, significantly more dramatic. This created like a
shock wave that's cracked windows, was and shook homes in
the nearby community of Mars Bluff, And it flattened this
playhouse just to nothing, And there were chickens that were
described as having been vaporized.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
And it basically just put a herding on their entire property.
All of the buildings, their outbuildings became uninhabitable. It literally
changed the slope of their land such that the foundation
of the home was no longer secure. And it injured
(07:36):
at least somewhat everyone around, right.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, luckily it was not a fatal injury for everyone.
But it's difficult, although we laugh about it out, it's
difficult to fathom the amount of emotional distress this would cause. Right, So,
before we dive into detail about the specs and stats
of this bomb, look at what was happening that day, Right,
(08:03):
How did this crew get up in the air where
they where were they coming from? Where were they going?
Earlier that day, the crew was part of a training
exercise that would require the bomb to be loaded into
an airplane and flown from Savannah, Georgia, across the Atlantic
to England. This was a mock mission. Think of it
like a training exercise.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
The operation snow Flurry is what it was called.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And so Captain Earl Koehler, who is the pilot, Captain
Charles Woodruff who was the co pilot, Captain Bruce Kolka,
the navigator, bombadier and crew chief Sergeant Robert Scriptalk had
arrived at Hunter Air Force Base just outside of Savannah
to fly in this operation Scriptalk.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
That is a fascinating sounding name.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
If it was just just Scriptalk instead of Robert Scriptalk,
it sounds like a character in a sci fi fantasy film.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
You're like Star Trekers.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Scriptoc, lord of the Igneous rock people.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
In this world. He's an Air Force pilot. So as Noel,
as you said, what was the name of the operation again,
Operation snow Flurry, Operation snow Flurry. They carefully load the
bomb onto the plane, takes an hour. They put it
into a shackle mechanism. That's designed to keep it in place,
but they had a difficult time with a steel locking pin.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, they actually noticed that there was like a light,
a fault light that started to glow, and that told
them that the bomb's locking pin had not properly been engaged.
So Navigator Captain Bruce Kulka went to take a look.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So while Captain Navigator Captain Bruce Kolka is investigating this
light and finding the source of the fault, he accidentally
hit the emergency release pin as he reached around the
bomb to pull himself up. The device hit the bomb
bay doors.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It wasn't really a pin, it was like a like
a like a lever.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he when he did this, when
he hit this, it forced the doors open. And can
you imagine, noll, the look on this guy's face as
he watched it leave the plane.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah, I mean, the way I've seen it is he
was kind of crawling on top of the bomb, sort
of had himself positioned like arms and legs spread, trying
to get to this pin. And then when he sort
of lost his footing, he reached out and grabbed this
release lever, and all hell broke loose, and yeah, he
(10:38):
Apparently as that bomb fell out from under him.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
He was left.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
He watched it, but he was left suspending himself from
that handle and whatever else he had a foothold and
a grasp on there and just watching, looking straight down
as that bomb hit those bay doors. Eventually the weight
forced them open and then it was bombs away.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
And we're very lucky that he didn't fall out as well, right,
because he's as you said, he's standing there picture a
letter X, just hanging out with nothing between the ground
and himself except for a very dangerous drop through naked air.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So back to the idyllic Greg family homestead, the children
are playing, the boys and the father are at work
in the shed for nineteen pm, right, and they look
and they see this bomber flying overhead. But that would
not have been an unusual sight at the.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Time, especially not in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Exactly, because these kinds of runs were pretty common. So
when this chaos went down, mister Greg was quoted as
saying he thought that the plane had crashed. Can you
imagine just the chaos that would have ensued, and just
not being able to fully wrap your head around what
had happened, and just trying to figure out the possibilities
in certain the first one the go to would not
(12:02):
be Oh, the Air Force accidentally dropped an atomic bomb
on my kid's playhouse.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Right, And so, as we said, all five members of
the family were injured, as was the cousin Ella, but
they had no idea what was happening. Wasn't until later
that night, where they were crashing at the house of
their family doctor, that they learned it had been a
bomb dropped by us, by the US Air Force.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Now here's the thing. The most serious injury sustained in
this event was the cousin, who I think got somewhere
in the neighborhood of thirty one Stitches. And you may ask,
but Ben Noel, this was a nuclear warhead that was
dropped on this family's house. Where's the mushroom cloud?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
What about the radiation?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Where's the nuclear fallout?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Why does Mars Bluff still exist?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Where are the ghouls? Why is this not you know,
like mad Max Overnight.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Especially considering that this Mark six bomb was actually larger
than its predace cess or the Mark four or fat
Man used in World War Two.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And the look of this thing is is is pretty cartoonish.
It looks like kind of something that you would see
in a Looney Tunes cartoon act printed on the side,
or it makes me think of that scene in Doctor
Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the bomb cowboy style.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Which could could have got close to doing exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Very very interesting and the same time period that's being
described in that that paranoid cold war fear. But here's
the thing. We did kind of bury the lead here
a little bit. It turns out that in order to
transport these weapons, they would be what's called safet in
(13:44):
other words, they still had explosives in them, but they
did not have that nuclear payload, that core of plutonium.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
And thank god, because as we said at the top,
this was a mock mission. This was timed to see
how how long the operation would take where it to
happen in a genuine conflict. So they did safe it.
But safeing it is not the same thing as just
making it a dummy bomb. It did possess explosive power,
it did explode, It did not, thank sweet Pete, contain
(14:19):
any sort of nuclear payload.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, that part was actually transported separately, which you know,
good on you Air Force, smart smart smart going and
you know, this thing did lead to updated security measures
where it was absolutely required that these locking pins be
in place at all times, even during takeoff and landing.
(14:46):
I would think especially during David. I mean that's when
I get dislodged, and you know they'd yell at us
about our overhead luggage bins that may shift during takeoff
and landing. Watch out. I would think it'd be pretty
important to have that locking pin make sure that that
bomb didn't shift during tankoff and landing.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And in this mission in snow flurry, they actually jury
rigged it a bit because they used a hammer to
bang the pin in place.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
But imagine banging a nuclear warhead with a hammer.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
This is interesting because it may seem ridiculous to us now,
but we have the benefit of hindsight in.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
A very real way.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
The technology behind nuclear weapon detonation changed as a result
of this in a very very important fashion. So back
in the fifties, in this time, one thing that's so
scary about knocking this thing around with a hammer is
that nuclear weapons had a trigger that compressed the uranium
plutonium core to set off the chain reaction of a
(15:40):
nuclear explosion, and things like this. Mark six that got
dropped on the greg family homestead could be set off
or triggered by concussion, which means anything from shooting it
with a bullet, knocking on the ground, dropping it on
a playhouse, dropping it on a playhouse. And so the
bomb's trigger did explode when it hit the ground and
(16:00):
hit the ground of the Gregs. The ground of the Gregs,
I'm feeling that one if the nuclear components had been there,
it would have been a massive catastrophe. We're talking hundreds
of thousands of people would have died.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Because you know, I hadn't heard of this story until
we looked into it for the show. I would bet
that many of you listeners have not heard of this,
the US accidentally dropping an atomic bomb on an unsuspecting
family in the South. And that's because at the end
of the day, nobody died. There was no atomic fallout, right,
(16:35):
It was not a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
It did, however, become one of the driving forces for
very important change, which is that today nuclear weapons are
going to be set off not by concussion, but by
a specific type of electrical impulse. Within days of this
accidental bomb drop, the Air Force published new regulations. I
(16:59):
think you already mentioned right, Oh yeah, where they said,
hey guys, let's make sure that we don't, you know,
act we want to drop bombs where we are supposed
to drop them.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
No more of this willy nilly, you know, pin hammering business.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
But what about the Gregs? What about I feel like
we've we've talked about the near miss, right that occurred,
but what about the actual greg families. Poor cousin Ella, Well,
they never returned to that home out there, and then
Mars Bluff they received about fifty four thousand dollars in
(17:34):
damages from the Air Force.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, which by today's standards would be in the neighborhood
of half a million.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Bucks, which is not too bad. But you also we
have to think, you know, they own that land. It
was in their family for one hundred years. There's some
things that you can't really put a price one.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And they moved to a nice little cozy bungalow in
nearby Florence, South Carolina, and this became.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Of course, we don't know if Walter Gregg was the
kind of guy to hang out in a bar, but
we do know he was a church member for all
of his life. Wherever he was hanging out and spending
his free time. You know, this was his go to
story when people are spinning tales. You know, he pointed
it out, not too many people can say they've had
(18:18):
a nuclear bomb dropped on them. Oh and also he
was a former paratrooper, so he's familiar with aspects of
military aviation. And he also spent most of his non
military life working as a conductor for the railroads.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
And he finishes that quote with and not too many
people would want to And I would side with Walter
on that point. To this day, you can actually go
visit this site. There's a historical marker which is beautiful,
embarrassing historical marker. It says atomic bomb accident at Mars Bluff,
(18:55):
March eleventh, nineteen fifty eight. The bomb landed in the
woods behind the asbestos sided home of the railroad conductor
Walter Bill Greg born nineteen twenty one. Greg, his wife,
their three children, and a niece were injured by the concussion,
which destroyed the house and outbuildings and did slight damage
(19:15):
to build things within a five mile radius.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And that's when we say slight damage, think of like
the windows break exactly exactly, so One of my favorite
parts of this story is there's something that I picture
is a very Wes Anderson moment. It's that the Gregs
and the Air Force crew they got in touch with
each other, and the crew would hang out with them
(19:39):
because they felt so bad, you know, and write them letters.
And to me, I just picture something in a lost
Wes Anderson film where you know, there's this immaculately decorated
and choreographed room, right, it's perfectly set, everything's just so,
and then Captain Kolka Navigator walks in and says, hello,
(20:00):
this is the anniversary of the time that I accidentally
drop the bomb on you. And then Walter greg says, yes, Captain,
I'm aware. It's like I have brought you this gift.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And then they then they eat a nice Thanksgiving style
meal together.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
It's like I brought you a gift, and it's like, well,
I hope it isn't another bomb.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And speaking of bombs, there is also you can go
to where the crater is and it's still there. It
looks kind of like a crappy pond, you know, because
it's basically just you know, it's obviously filled in over time,
but it's still there. It just tends to be full
of standing water, and there's a plywood silver spray painted.
It looks like plywood actual size bomb. It's like a
(20:44):
silhouette yea MK six seventy six hundred pounds. And there's
like an Instagram photo on the How Stuff Works article
where the girl standing next to it and saying I've
been wondering for years where exactly the atomic bombs I
was and finally found it.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
We do want to say that it is on it.
You can visit it. However, the site is located on
private property. The Gregs did sell the land, yeah and
seventy seven right, Yeah, and it's currently on private property.
There's no public access road. So we don't want Ridiculous
History to be known as a show that encourages trespassing.
(21:19):
So do check with the do check with the locals
before you go on an expedition.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And be careful how to get a snake bit or
get a tick or something. There's probably some tall grass
around there, but yeah, to get to it, you have
to go through this abandoned lot that used to have
a trailer park and walk through a totally overgrown path
and then you come upon this crappy pond that was
created by the one and only time that an atomic
bomb was dropped on American soil by American forces.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And so this got me thinking. As I was always
reading this, I was remembering this poem by Elizabeth Bishop
called one Art, which is the art of losing isn't
hard to master. That's the first line, and it goes on,
I don't want to ruin It's it's worth reading.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
No poetry spoilers, ben no poetry spoilers in ridiculous system.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Right, no trespassing, No poetry spoilers. But it's a poem
essentially about how easy it is to lose things. And
it also inspired me to think about the other times
that nuclear weapons around the world have been lost. And
it turns out that since nineteen fifty there have been
thirty two nuclear weapon accidents the accidental launching, firing, detonating
(22:34):
after loss of weapon. I mean around the world, you know,
in Canada, in England, and the strangest thing that happens
is in a few cases the exact location is unknown.
There was an incident in March tenth of nineteen fifty six,
just a couple of years before this incident in the Carolinas,
(22:58):
where a B forty seven and carrying two nuclear capsules
on a flight from Tampa, Florida to an overseas base
was reported missing. It didn't make contact in the Mediterranean
when it was supposed to for second refueling, and no
one ever found the plane. It's just out there somewhere
in the ocean.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Hikes.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, so at least thirty two of these broken Arrow
events occur, which is why that John Travolta movie is
called Broken Arrow?
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Who else gon bring you a broken row? Who else?
Don't bring you a bottle of rey?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And if you were the Gregs, what would you have
done when you found out that this occurred? Personally, I
don't play the lottery, but I would think my probability
odds are pretty cool right now.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Or it could be like a final destination kind of
scenario where it's like, you know, the Reaper was robbed
and then I'd be looking for like any number of
things to kill me in my basic surroundings.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Which those movies got strangered, stranger, more and more like intricate.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I feel they had to double down with the goldberg
ness of it all. You know, there we go.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
That's the Craig phrase. So I guess we're done here right?
Speaker 4 (24:18):
No?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Wait, what is that?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Do you hear it too?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yeah, yeah, I hear it.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Now wait, Casey, why are you laughing?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (24:30):
No, here comes It's time. Gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yep, I'm back. It's the quist Quister Jonathan Strickland. Yep,
we thought the show was over.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
No, no, it has only just begun, my friends, For
it is time to test your ability to tell fact
from fantasy.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Okay, then let's get on with this.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
So this is the segment of the show where in
our nemesis, the evil Quister Jonathan Strickland co in to
test our ability both to discern fact for fiction, as
he said, and also to see whether we can work
together to figure it out, and also to slowly wear.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Us down over time until we crack.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
And for those who did not hear the previous installment,
here are the general rules that hold sway from one
incident to the next, which is, you have three minutes.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
What is this accent you're doing?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Three, I'm trying something else. Three.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
I'll probably have a different one every time. I'm on
three minutes. Three minutes, gentlemen, three you say three in
order for you can talk with one another. You can
address me with any questions. If I have any more information,
I will give it to you based upon the way
you ask the question.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I may not give you all.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
The information you wish, but you have those three minutes
to make your determination, at the end of which you
must then tell me whether or not the scenario I
present to you was fact or fantasy.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And I also.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Create an arbitrary rule every time, and it will change
every single time. So last time you had to proceed
every question with a phrase. This time you have to
end every question to me with the words tick tick tick.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Boom, three ticks than a boom, three.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
Ticks followed by a boom. And as soon as I
finished giving you your scenario, you will start the timer
of three months, the enormous Grandfather Timer. As we have
previously established, we.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Spent our whole budget on that thing.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
You know, I know it's I really had this whole
like like sketch for a costume and a mask, and
instead I'm just I'm just hearing a plaid shirt.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
It is. It's an audio podcast, though you could be
wearing anything. Just use your imaginations work, okay, all right,
So all right, So we do this.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, I'm hanging. I'm hanging on the edge of the
second hand right, I'm going to do a pull up
and start the timer when it.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Excellent, So here is your scenario. In October twenty seventeen,
the Royal Navy was called out to detonate an unexploded
World War One era bomb which previously had been used
by a family as a door stop.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Start the timer, Okay, okay, So it's a World War
One era bomb which and a door stop.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
So clearly not the size of our giant warhead they
were talking about today. Sounds more like maybe the size
of like a like a propane tank or something. Maybe, yeah, yeah,
what kind of bombs are they using in world?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Definitely not nuclear?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
No, no, uh all right.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
The quister, could you repeat the salient points one more time?
Tick tick tick boom. Yes.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
October twenty seventeen, Royal Navy is called out to a
fun farm in Devon, England, to detonate an unexploded bomb
of the World War One era that had previously been
used as a doorstop.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
I'm going to say true, I think true. I think
we're gonna I think we're gonna call this one early.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I think maybe we will.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
All right, are we official on it? Yes?
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Lock in the answer, locked in.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
We think it's true.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Gentlemen, you are two for two.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
As it turns out, there was a farm in Devon, England,
and the while it had been previously used as a doorstop,
what had actually happened was that they found this bomb
inside a wall. It had been placed on purpose inside
the wall when the wall was constructed. The grandparents of
the owners of the farm said, oh, we used to
(28:54):
use it as a doorstop. It was a corroded twenty
five pound unexploded ordinance from the UK. Chances are it
was actually fired into the farm area by accident from
a nearby firing range.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So that's what I was gonna ask. Is this sort
of like a mortar round? Almost along those lines?
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Okay, twenty five shell?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Got it?
Speaker 5 (29:18):
Yes, very well done, Very well done. So you've gotten
one fantasy correct, one fact correct? What will next time bring?
Who's to say it's except me? I have like the
next three written, so I I.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yes, Okay, you know what the quist does his homework.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You know, you can say a lot about Jonathan, but
he definitely does.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Got to respect the craft, you know, got to respect it,
got to respect the quiz. Well, Jonathan, you know, thank
you so much for coming aboard the show.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Thank him.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Okay, Jonathan and I acknowledge that you are here.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
I mean we can't we can't really deny it. I,
as we've also previously established, I have no way of
getting out of this room without someone from outside opening
the door for me.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Again, we spent a lot of the budget on our
gigantic Grandfather Timer, and you know that we just didn't
allocate the right money for locks.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
It's fine, I'll just sit in the corner.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Now, get the hens, foul demon.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
I'm just back here. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
It's okay, you can stay.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
I'm getting a call, all right.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Hey, yeah it feels great.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
Okay, yeah, sure, no, I'll you know, I'll have lunch
with you.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
We're recording so well, Jonathan makes his lunch plans. Would
we would like to so, while Jonathan's making his lunch plans,
we would like to thank you listeners for joining us
for another episode of Ridiculous History, another of Jonathan's diabolical
quiz segments, which you know I could, I could, I
could take her leave. I'm having a good time.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I'm having I'm having a great time with it. I
mean we're technically we're winners.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Now, that's true. Let us know if you're having a
good time, right I said ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
right where we are Ridiculous History, and.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
You can also, of course find our nemesis, Jonathan on
his own show, tech Stuff, which is available wherever you
find your favorite podcast. So be well, have a fantastic week,
throw us a review if you'd like. We'd love to
hear from you, and stay tuned for another episode of
Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Guys, I'm on the phone.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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