November 21, 2024 • 52 mins
In most of the modern world, the average person has an astonishing resource for any disastrous situation: you find a phone, then dial 3 numbers to be immediately connected with someone who can call police, EMTs, fire fighters or other first responders. It's a fantastic concept, and though it remains a work in progress, these resources inarguably save lives. But how did we get here? Join Ben, Noel and Max as they delve into the suprising evolution of emergency call lines -- along with some hilarious examples of calls gone wrong, especially when callers have their own definitions of "emergency."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for tuning in.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No, ye.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Mean it means it's time to introduce our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Is he the one calling from inside the house? You creep, Max,
Get out of my house.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
No, No, I am the emergency call.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Of the heart.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Now you sure are?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
That's that's what it means.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I don't know if it's that or good, but that's
just what I'm going with your regular emotional nine to eleven.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
That's all.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
I should find a different way to say that.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Sorry, that's our that's our man, the myth legend, mister
Noel Brown. They called me Ben Bullen in this neck
of the Global woods. And today we are looking at
one of the few telephone numbers that everyone knows and
that no one wants to call.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Is it eight six, seven, five, three nine, nine?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh Jenny, we got your number.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
It's on the wall. That's kind of you know.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I never really thought about what the implications of that
until later in life. Does that mean it was written
on a bathroom stall? Does it go into detail anyway,
it doesn't matter you're here. It may be a figurative wall.
It may be the wall of true love. That is
not the number we're talking about today.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
We're also not talking about one eight blah blah blah
cars for kids, although I do have another side project
I'm working on with that and cars for kids. Just
so you guys know, is a conspiracy. No, yes, is
it as bad as kids for cars? It is worse
because it's real.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, exactly, so letting me down. No, I mean, I said,
Max is an emotional nine to eleven of the Heart
of the Mind, the movie The Ride. You know, some
people call it nine to eleven, I guess, but we
know it may be more. In the state says nine
one one.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yes, yeah, we all are familiar with the idea of
nine to one one. If you are a ridiculous historian
who has been who has spent any time in the
United States, in Canada, and as we'll see, in several
other countries, nine one one is one of the easiest
(02:37):
numbers to call in not just the United States, but
in Canada, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Jordan, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, Palau, Panama,
the Philippines. The list goes on Otama, Macau. Macau actually
has a different number that does the same thing.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
As does the UK, which, if I'm not mistaken from
my brickcom experience, it's nine to nine to nine.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yes, And originally Parliament broke out in raucous laughter about
it because it sounds like a German saying no three
times in a row.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You know what, I'll always remember you guys, remember the
Little Rascals movie from the nineties. I think there's I'm
pretty sure it's from that movie. There's a character of
maybe Spanky or one of those other little rascals.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
He says, what's the number for nine?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
One one? Be careful with that joke.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
It's adorable.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Careful with that joke. It's an antique. As they say,
I love it. It's barely a joke. It's an observation. There
are also other countries that may use like we said, nine,
nine nine or one one two one one two and
(03:48):
nine one one are the globally dominant emergency numbers now,
but the concept, as we're saying, is always the same,
A very short, simple series of digits that allow a
to in theory immediately connect with emergency services. You'll get
help on everything from forest fires to arson to car
(04:12):
accidents to injuries to more. We do want to start
off by saying in this episode at the very top,
sometimes people have different definitions of what constitutes an emergency.
Don't call nine to one one for shizzles and giggles.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Man, it's funny you say that.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I was literally just googling is it really illegal to
call nine to one one? And there's varying degrees of
you know, what would actually be actionable.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think you know you did it by accident. You
hung up?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Whatever, I do remember calling back, they will call you
about to say, But what's been in the news a
lot lately is this concept of swatting, where people make
these elaborate prank nine to one one calls reporting Syria
crimes that result in swat teams being deployed, and it
is sometimes used to like terrorize people to have their
(05:06):
houses like rated, you know, as some sort of doxing
esque Internet I guess I don't know manipulation.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Exactly. It's psyop, is what it is.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, it's the other Other genres of that kind of
aggression would be things like calling in a bunch of
pizza orders to an address after you doct someone or
another one that's happened on the social media forum Reddit
quite often. Reddit has the option to report someone for
(05:41):
suicidal ideation, and so when people disagree with each other
on a Reddit, for them, they will sometimes frank. I
guess prank is too light a word, but you know
what I mean. They'll they'll report someone to get their
account in trouble.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, speaking of the Brits, so one of my favorite
British comedies of all time, I'm as peep Show, which
I think you guys are fond of too, and there's
an episode called sectioning where the characters take various times
report each other for mental illness, which is what is
referred to as having someone sections, whereas in these states
we'd call it having someone committed I guess. But the
(06:18):
episode's all about them basically prank sectioning each other.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, because Peep Show is all about two really stand
up guys who happen to be wholesome and supportive roommates.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Yeah that's not right, but I just see what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's a great show and one of my favorite characters
of all time, super Hot yes.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I'm still I forgive you writers a peep Show for
confusing me I've for years, which would also be raped
the Coolena.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I love that too, because he's you know, sorry to
get to in about peep Show, but he and Jazz,
one of the other main characters, are in this kind
of like failed fake techno band, like like kind of
trying to copy the Prodigy and Superhands as a techno
persona name totally works.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great show. I'll tell you,
folks honestly ridiculous historians. Due to my past, I have
a pretty strong stomach, but that's one of my weak spots.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I cringe.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, I can. I can witness tremendous acts of violence,
like the kind of stuff you'd have to call nine
one one for. But show me social awkwardness and I
am leaving the room. I don't know why it's such
a trigger.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
It's so funny. I just saw.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I've been I don't know, I'm really fascinated by these
Terrifier movies, but I don't really want to watch them.
So I've been listening and watching a lot of YouTube
kind of recaps of them, and one person was like,
you know, The most egregious thing in this new Terrifier
movie is not the dismemberments. It is not the blood bats.
It is the one particular moment of cringe because I
can't handle that.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Okay, I hope I wasn't the one posting that. But
that's awesome because it also reminds me of the key
and Peal sketch that is descended from the Terrifier, which
is all about having a good attitude. I'll send it
to you guys after we record but one.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Actually, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
We just talked about nine nine nine and the Brits
a whole bunch. They figure heavily into the story of
the creation of nine to one one. But before we
get to them, let us venture back in time to
the United States of the nineteen sixties, when there was
not a universal phone number for Americans to call if
they needed emergency services. If I'm not mistaken, Ben, it
(08:34):
was a matter of calling the operator, like I think
you could still in those days, just dial zero.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
And I was actually gonna ask you, Ben, does that
still work? If you hit zero? Does it do anything?
Because I don't even have a landline.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It depends on it depends on where you live and
what kind of telephonic device you're engaging with. So there
are Weirdly enough, there are still rotary phones that are
in use in the United States.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
They're typically more evolved than they were in the earlier days.
Like you were saying, Noel. In the earlier days, you
would pick up the phone. You might not even have
to dial zero. You would pick up the phone.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
That's right, the.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Marriage board right there immediately upon picking up, and then
you would just sort of name a thing or an extension.
There were also, as we knew it did in our
previous episode on using barbed wires, phone lines. They were
cool storylines.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
A personal It was like a party line for a
community of farms and absolutely worth checking out because it's
a good example of just good old fashioned American ingenuity.
But in large cities this was tough, oh, because they'd
get these switchboards would get overloaded, and I mean the
switchboards systems, I can I always my mind boggles at
(09:49):
the logistics of these poor switchboard operators.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, think about even in the nineteen sixties, really any
city post World War two economic boom in the United
States States, there's more than one fire department there's more
than one police department. They cover different areas, they have
different turfs and different jurisdictions. So if you call in
an emergency the wrong fire department, you're going to have
(10:15):
to wait for them to contact the right fire department.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
A place like Los Angeles, for all intents and purposes,
is like its own country in so Shure, there's all
these different municipalities with different governments and different emergency services.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
There is no one stop shop for any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And in this fashion, up until the actually the late
nineteen sixties, the United States was pretty behind the global times.
The world's oldest emergency call service is not American at all.
It is British. It was launched in London on June thirtieth,
nineteen thirty seven, two years after a tremendous tragedy London Town.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
In a home on Wimpole Streets.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
There was a horrible fire that led to the deaths
of five women. This was in November of nineteen thirty five.
Norman McDonald's not the community used with our buddy Norm
Rip was a dentist who lived in the house on
the other side of the street. He tried to call
the or as they might stay in the UK ring
the fire brigade, and he was put on hold and
(11:24):
put in a telephone queue, and he essentially had to
wait so long that these lives were essentially lost. And
I do want to say that I only just recently,
for the first time and probably probably ever, had to
make a legitimate nine one one call. Here in Decatur, Georgia,
(11:45):
there was a guy who bailed out really horribly on
a dirt bike right outside my house and cracked a
skull on the street.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
It was one of the craziest things I've seen. But
I was on hold with nine to one one for
quite a while.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
So let's not kid ourselves that things are like magically
better in the big cities now just because of nine
to one one.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Just want to get that out in the open right upfront.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's also a known problem with the system that depending
upon where you live, nine one one may be more
or less responsive. It's a common issue. Unfortunately, it's one
that people are still struggling to address in.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
The areas certain demographics.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Let's just say, they'll perhaps say reticence to be quicker,
you know what, that does imply intent on the part
of law enforcement, and maybe we should give them the
benefit of the doubt. It's a resource thing. It's a resource.
I think it is that more than trying not to
help certain people. But it is a thing that you
do see on these maps where it's like, you know,
people in underserved areas, minorities, maybe poorer areas, it sometimes
(12:49):
is harder for them to get to that support. Right,
you will be on hold.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
So our guy, Norman McDonald is livid. He is furious,
he has righteous indignation, and so he's calling about an emergency.
People's lives are on the line, and then he gets
held in what the British would call a Q He's
on hold and as he's on hold, as a result
of this, five people die. So he writes a letter.
(13:16):
He takes it upon himself to write to the paper
of note, which is still a very big deal paper
in the UK, The Times. The Times, Yeah, not the
New York Times, that's JV stuff O. The Times, yeah,
and they this launches a full government inquiry. Public outcry
(13:38):
ensues because McDonald's letter is published in the Times, and
everybody who reads the paper, which is pretty much everybody
at this point in history, they are joined with him.
They agree and so the UK government sets up a
committee and says, let's make let's make it so people
(14:00):
don't have to wait at the switchboard or wait and
Q when there's an emergency. We're going to have a
number anyone can dial free of charge that will get us,
get us the opportunity to save lives.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Mm hmm. The afore I mentioned nine nine nine, which
was their second choice after six six six. They thought
that was a little too on the nose for the
conspiracy theorists of the world. I'm sorry I had to
put on my stuff. They don't want you to know
how we talk a lot about like British conspiracies involving
the you know, the Crown still being in control of
the United States, and they're kind of one of the
(14:38):
originators of a lot of these Luciferian Illuminati type conspiracies.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
So I do love the idea that when you.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
See nine nine nine on paper, it straight up is
six six six inverted. Yeah yeah, yeah, same, just same.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And this was a good number because at the time
when they when they cooked up this idea, there were
only three million home telephones in the country, so the
majority of people are going to be calling from these
coin operated the iconic red telephone booths. Does it light
up at the time? It did not, But the.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Bat phone type situation, the situation room type situation.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
I see where you're going. Yeah, But the thing is
the rotary dials at home and in these public telephone booths.
So it was easy to customize the free use of
this number, nine being one of the longer numbers to dial.
But if you just did nine three times right, then
(15:37):
it would the system would know that there was something
a miss occurring.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Well, it's funny too when you think and I realize
what you're talking about now, but you're talking about those
classic red British you know, telephone boxes, of course, yeah,
but I mean the physical thing they're like so iconic.
That's what I was about to say. Man, that we
think about it now, how easy it is, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Be boop poop. But back then you had to really
be committed to get all the way phone number.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Did you ever use a rotary phone?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
I have had.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
My granddad had one, same and yeah, their while and
you really kind of it's easy to lose track.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It's almost like communicating in Morris code or something.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, it's also kind of you know this ages us
a bit, but one of the uh, one of the
weirdest analogs to entering a phone number on a rotary
phone that I can think about today.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
In America texting any any.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Gamer or anybody who has to log into an app
all and say like a PlayStation or something. You have
to pull up the keyboard on the screen. You have
to do do do balk.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
But that's how texting used to be balk initially too.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
You had to use the numbers on your phone, and
for like A, that would be two, and B would
be two to two and each letter number represented three
possible letters, and depending on how many times you punch
the button, you'd get that letter.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
So that's what I think of as well. Then that's
super interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Remember when remember when we first got the phone number
for stuff they don't want, you know? And I made
it this dumb sing along jingle. I totally misstep, dude,
because we still only say the abbreviation of the show
std WYTK, and we never told people the number.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, there's a two. It's branding, bro, it's branding there.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I couldn't even tell you what the numbers are, but
there have to be seven of them, right, yeah, yeah,
so we've.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Got we'll fast forward to June thirtieth, nineteen thirty seven.
Sir Walter Walmersley, in addition to having an hilariously British name,
is the assistant Postmaster General. He says, look, we're going
to He goes to the House of Commons, which is
the people who earned their parliamentary position. And I walked
(17:54):
down the street for that one.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
No, no, no, let's go with it.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
So he says, look, we're going to make this new
emergency service. We are going to try it out kind
of a pilot or test run in London. And when
he told them, or when it was announced that the
number would be nine nine nine, uh, the room burst
into raucous laughter.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Is this your theory, Ben the German thing?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Or do you read that somewhere this historical speculation?
Speaker 4 (18:25):
This is so interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I didn't think the idea that maybe because of the
embroilments and world affairs and all of that, at this point,
the Germans been front page news and saying it's very
uh yeah, I could picture that in a Hitler.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
In fact, it's happened definitely.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Oh that makes me remember the Hitler meme. Oh gosh,
I can't remember the name of the film NOL, but
you recall it's Downfall.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's the one with Bruno Gans playing Hitler and it
is fabulous.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
He was also in a Wings of Desire. He's a
fabulous actor.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
There's this great clip that for years the Internet has
taken and dubbed over.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
To the situation room, Yeah, to being a document getting
told bad news and.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
He's plaiting and everybody just changes what the bad news is.
It's so niche.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
He gradually gets more and more enraged and it's one
of those perfect things where you can escalate it. And
it's almost like the meme of the people sitting at
like a table and saying, ask me about whatever, tell
me I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Wrong, Yeah, yeah, yes, change my mind.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Very malleable. I love memes.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
This, however, does not become a countrywide system just yet.
The initial nine to nine to nine operation or trial.
It covers about a twelve mile radius originating from Oxford Circus,
which is just to get in front of it for
any Americans who haven't visited Oxford Circus. Not a circus,
(20:06):
it's a traffic juncture.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Neither is Piccadilly Circus, right, a more famous one. And
I for years truly believed that there are elephants and
clowns and and peanuts and crackerjacks and stuff. I was
hoping not the case. It's just like a big busy area,
if I'm not mistaken. It's kind of considered like a
like a hub. But British listeners, right, is to let
us know if we're getting with what the idea of
(20:27):
a British circus is. And do you call the circus
the circus in Britain or do they call it a
funfair or something like them?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
That's a slow horses question. The circus is also a
term for intelligence operations.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So the Joe's I love the Joe's Man, This show
is good.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Watch Joe's cover that.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
He's my Joe. He's my Joe, all right, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Shout out Gary Oldman, what a great one.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
He doesn't need it, but we love you.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I'm actually I ordered the books. I'm going to read
the books.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
To there's more books that have yet to be produced,
I believe too. There's you know, I'm sorry we're a
fanboing too much about slow horses, but please do do
yourself a favorite, because I swear I don't understand why
it still seems so under the radar. Those Apple shows
they don't give it any promo, and I don't get why,
because there it's some fabulous stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
On amazing stuff. Yeah, shout out severance as well. So
the public has to be taught how to use this thing,
how to understand what nine nine is. It's not just
a German in denial. It's three. It's the three. Uh,
it's the three digits you dial when this something goes wrong.
(21:38):
And they spend a great deal of time.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Bad campaign of some sort, right right.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Trying to teach the public what constitutes a serious emergency,
and the way they explained it back in the Times.
This is reported by our friends at the BBC. They said, if,
for instance, the man in the flat next to yours
is murdering his wife, well you have seen it heavily
masked cats of the peeriod round the stock Pot Bank building.
(22:05):
So they say, they say, you can, you can report suspicious,
but you can't. You shouldn't call just because you know
you misplaced.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Your keys, but also if you're doing a Jimmy store
rare window kind of situation.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Uh, it is.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It is definitely on the table. They might just think
you're a kookie, shut in crank and have not witnessed
a murder at all, and you should just stop letting
your imagination run wild.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
And sorry, I recently watched her window.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's a real Uh the eccentric who called wolf, situation
or cried wolf. Every country today now, every country with
an emergency call system has encountered their own share of
a name super out there wackadoo calls, sometimes pranks, sometimes
just really misled people.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
A favorite genre of this, we'll get to some of
this at the end, has been at least in my mind,
you guys, it's when people call to report that someone
has stolen their illegal drugs.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Oh, it's comical, yeah, I mean it just the level
of boneheadedness, Like, what do you think is going to happen? Man,
It's like, you can't call. If you're calling to report
illegal activity that you yourself are a part of, you're
basically telling on yourself.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Like, oh man, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But we know that, all right, We know that the
Kingdom led the charge on this. Other countries in the
world started listening. In the first city in North America
to use a central emergency number. Wasn't from the United States.
They're still behind in the game.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
No, it was actually in Canada, when we're talking about
the continent of North America, Winnipeg, Manitoba in nineteen fifty nine.
This again came from some pretty serious urging from a
political fear whether or not he was getting an earfull.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
From his constituents or whatever.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Mayor Steven Juba, which also for some reason appears to
be a very quintessentially Winnipegian name.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
I'm just gonna believe that.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But like the UK, Winnipeg originally used nine nine nine
as well for their emergency number, but then they decided
to walk in step.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
With the US when they switched to nine one one.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah. And in the United States, we'll see a series
of somewhat tragic events that, just like in the case
of the United Kingdom, that lead to the creation of
emergency phone numbers. In the US, there was this push
that came about post World War two nineteen fifty seven
from the National Association of Fire Chiefs, and they were
(24:50):
saying or echoing the same problem that we knew about,
which is, you know, how can you expect people in
an emergency to have the number of their local fire
department memorized. So they said, let's save some lives, let's
stop some fires, let's have a single number at least
for calling fire departments. And that people said, okay, that's
(25:14):
a good idea. Nice one, buddy, but they didn't really
act on it until again, just as in London, it
took a tragedy to push the idea forward.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yeah, a little, but I know, a little trigger warning here.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
We are going to talk about some sexual assaults, some
sexual violence, not in detail, but if that's triggering it,
I'll to you maybe just skip ahead about thirty seconds
or so. Nineteen sixty four is when the sexual assault
and murder of Kitty Genoviz took the public by storm
in New York City. It was at an absolute scandal
sensation like oj Simpson level galvanization of the public, and
(25:52):
subsequently the government to create a central emergency number.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, and a lot of this came about because the
New York Times misreported part of the story. They said
everybody could hear Genevieve's crying for help during the commission
of these awful crimes, and that the people who heard
her in New York City looked out their windows and watched,
(26:20):
or closed their windows and ignored it. Yeah, apparently, well,
the Times, The New York Times said that there were
thirty eight bystanders who turned their back on this innocent
woman dying in such a horrific way. This would later
lead to the concept of what we call the bystander effect,
(26:41):
the bystander effect just for side note, folks, the bystander
effect is the inaction of people in groups when they
feel that they are observers. That's why you could see
it today when you look at public altercations or crimes
and you're wondering, why is it anyone helping? Why is
(27:01):
everybody on their phone right just filming?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
It's that bubble effect. It's that sensation of being disconnected.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, and it's not that these people are necessarily malicious.
It's a version of the fight eyereezer fawn also true. Yeah,
so the best way to get around that. By the way, folks,
we hope you never have to be in this situation.
But if you are resuscitating someone, or if you're trying
to staunch a wound, you are in a public space.
(27:30):
When you say called nine one one to someone never
say somebody called nine one one. You don't know if
anybody will. You point to someone, you make eye contact
and you say.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
You do this or just do it, and you know.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Maybe there's also a sense with the bystander effective people
not wanting to get involved for personal reasons. Perhaps they're
concerned that it might get them in trouble or whatever.
This led to the creation of these things called good
Samaritan laws that are a sense actually a micro version
of immunity if you are participating in the reporting of
(28:06):
a crime or someone being in danger.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, good, I love that you're bringing that up. A
good Samaritan law is something that offers legal protection to
someone who helps another person in distress. It means that
if you are if you are voluntarily helping someone who
is a victim of something, you cannot be later sued
(28:32):
for doing the wrong thing. Also, speaking of our pals
Mitchell and Webb, I want to shout out their excellent
sketch and Mitchell Webb look about good Samaritans.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Do you remember that that one is not ringing a
bell right off the rim.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
It's funny, you could tell David.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
It always great. Oh, I love those guys.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, and if anyone isn't familiar, they are also the
stars of Peep Show, and they have a sketch comedy
show called that Mitchell and Webb look that is also
worth your time.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yes, yeah, And speaking of the time, we know that
New York Times, for one reason or another got this
story wrong or embellished it. And later historians would have
a theory about this. They would say, maybe people weren't
calling police because it was so complex to do so.
(29:21):
Any calls that you made to the police, if you
knew the number, because there's not a nine to one
one number yet, they would go to a local precinct.
And any response that precincts could do would depend on
whether there was an individual sergeant or other ranking personnel
that might handle the call. Otherwise it might say, oh,
(29:42):
we've gone home for the day.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well there's not You know, at anytime there's a sense
of futility, you know, for an act like that, people
are going to tend to not do the thing, not
to mention if it's come complicated or involves like too
much minutia or whatever.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
It's important for the bear of entry.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
For something as critical as reporting a crime or someone
in danger to be as low as possible.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, and this, this conundrum is part of the reason
why there are different versions of good Samaritan laws around
the world. In some places they have a thing called
the duty to rescue law, which says that you are
legally required to try to help someone. It's tough to enforce.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Do we have that here?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Is that a thing? I've always wondered about that because
it does seem like it would require a lot of
legwork to prove that.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, we have, we have good Samaritan here. Mexico has
duty to rescue, as does a lot of Western Europe.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
But it's a lot of pressure, is what that is.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't act, but I
almost wonder if that would be like paralyzing to some people.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Oh sure, yeah, especially if you are you know, you're
not trained up in things like CPR or the I
almost called the Heimlich maneuver. I almost called it the
van Helsing maneuver. That's a very different approach to.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
The Jean Claud van dam maneuver. Right, right, this, so this.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Idea makes sense before, Like you were saying, no before
nineteen sixty eight, the only way to reach the police
was by dialing zero, hitting the operator in the switchboard
and hoping they were not too busy to transfer your call.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
There was a lot of opportunity for communication breakdown. But
in nineteen sixty seven, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement
and Administrative Justice recommended creating one single number that could
be used across the entire nation for reporting these kinds
of emergencies.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, and this was all based on the public outcry
on the Genovies case. So the FCC won't let me
be or let me be met.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Kidding, The f went to something something something on MTV.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
They went to AT and T, private company obviously super
in bed with the government, And in November of nineteen
sixty seven, the FCC and AT and T say, all right,
we've got to figure out a number that people can
call whenever there's a crisis. AT and T, not the
US government, not Uncle Sam. AT and T chose the
(32:21):
actual number, and they went with nine one one because
it was easy to memorize and they were still working
with rotary phones.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So I'm wondering, do they like focus group this? Do
you think like, I mean, I understand what you're saying
I'm just wondering, like, why not why not one? One?
Why not twelve? Why not something that would require few?
But maybe it's what we were saying too earlier. This
is enough numbers where you couldn't do it by accidents.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, they needed three.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It makes sense because otherwise, if it was just one
misdial and then all of a sudden you got you're
getting flooded with with one two calls, you.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Know, I mean yeah, dialing nine nine nine on a
rotary phone physically takes longer, and putting one as the
second digit in this pattern works pretty well with spatially, Yeah,
with the telephonic systems at the time, so they can
they can use that pattern that one is the second
digit to help prioritize things. But look, still Bell systems
(33:24):
while a monopoly in AT and T, while definitely still
a monopoly, they don't run everything. So independent phone companies
are not in the emergency telephone plan.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
What's an independent phone company?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Is not really a thing anymore, exactly.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
I mean, I'm half joking, but it really is something.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Even in our lifetime, I don't know that we had
you know, mom and pop phone companies anymore, just mo Bell, Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So some people chose to get ahead of the game.
We've got to give the flowers to Alabama. The ATC
Alabama Telephone Company said, all right, we're gonna do this,
but we're gonna We're not gonna wait for the big dogs.
We're going to go to Haleyville, Alabama. That's gonna be
our location for our nine to one one service. So
(34:13):
the first US emergency call service is made in Alabama.
It's a nine to one one service, and the first
call is made in nineteen sixty eight by the then
Speaker of the House rank and fit by the names,
and then it's a test call. It's an ahoy HOI.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
I was gonna say today, say AHIHI.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
To US Rep. Tom Bevel. And then later same year
it's March first, nineteen sixty eight. AT and T gets
their system rolled out partially in Huntington, Alabama.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
In nineteen seventy three, the White House's Office of Telecommunication
issued a national statement that supported the use of nine
one one and pushed to take any and further by
establishing a Federal Information Center to kind of help with
the logistics of all of it, to assist government agencies
and rolling the system out nationally.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, yeah, and again we see some statements, but are
those statements going to lead to action or is it
sound and fury signify nothing. A full national rollout of
nine to one one would take years and years, and
it's still to our earlier point, unevenly distributed for much
(35:31):
of this time. The city of Chicago had nine to
one one service as early as nineteen seventy six, but
the Illinois Commerce Commission didn't let this get to the
suburbs of Chicago until nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
We're holding back in the offering nine to one one
to her customers. That's crazy, That is a little bit nutting.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
By nineteen seventy nine, we had a pretty big boom time,
with twenty six percent of the US population having access
to nine one one. This continued exponentially over the course
of the next decade or so, as it increased to
fifty percent by nineteen eighty seven, and then ninety three
percent by the year two thousand. What's that extra eight
(36:24):
percent there or seven ten percent there in two thousand.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
That didn't have nine one one in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Right, right? And then people are still working to improve
the system. It is very rural thing.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
It has to be just rural, right, I mean, that's
definitely often.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And so as of March of twenty twenty two, we're
happy to report ninety eight point nine percent of the
US population had access.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
But where's that one point one percent?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
I got to know who these one point one percent
of the population are that don't have access to nine
one one?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
And are they Okay, we will never know, guess not.
That's a terrible thing.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
They're truly the forgotten one point.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Someone in the hinterlands of Alaska. Maybe yeah, they make
a very remote area.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
That has to be it.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And there are still vast swaths of the interior of
the United States that don't have, you know, cell coverage,
so that could explain part of it. Look, the modern
system is a marvel of engineering and coordination. There is
no question it saved millions of lives. The technology is
continuing to evolve. We see all sorts of new innovations,
(37:33):
like the ability to just text nine to one one
from your cell phone, Like have you ever done that?
Have you ever? If you have an iPhone? You may
have accidentally but the wrong urgency and it's like, do
you want to make an emergency co ops.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I actually once said by but did that? And then
I butt said yes, And then I got a call
from from emergency services, and I think I answered the
phone and just apologize. But I did look up, like
where in the US do people not have access to
nine one one? And of course what comes up right
away is parts of Alaska or again Washington State, Idaho, Wyoming,
North and South Dakota or Montana. But despite that, you
(38:13):
did mention that some of these places are also places
that are gonna have spotty cell signal. It's a little
bit of a different game because of what you're talking about,
the access through cell carriers to reach to reach emergency
services despite where you are physically.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, so the system continues to be improved upon. We
hope you never have to call the numbers. We hope
you do remember the numbers in your neck of the
Global Woods.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
What's the order for nine to one one?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
I think it starts with a two. We want to
take a moment to thank all the first responders and
nine to one one operators. Your service is often unsung.
We know that, like we have a loose abstract idea
of how incredible least stressful this could be uh. And
(39:02):
if you have ever worked in you know, even even
a call center, right, a non emergency call center, you
know that it can be a tremendously stressful job.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And and on nine one one, much like on these
call centers, they're operating from a set of protocols as well,
and so they might sometimes not react the way you
would like them to when you're under duress, because it
is it is part of their mandate to go through
this checklist of questions that might.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
Seem irrelevant, and maybe they are whatever, like whatever.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
That's right, But it's just they are just they are
trained to do that, and they are being recorded and monitored,
as we know when we have a big public crime
and we hear those nine to one one tapes.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
So these people are under a lot of scrutiny.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
I'm not saying there aren't operators nine one one operators
out there that don't do a great job. That's certainly
we've seen plenty of cases of that with stuff they
don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
But by and large, you're right, Ben, these people are
doing God's work. Yeah, I agree with you there. We
also want to end this episode. We're keeping it at
one part with a couple of things. First off, thank
you again to Norman McDonald who, almost a century ago
out there in London decided something needed to be done
(40:16):
about this problem. Writing and making your voice heard does
make a difference. This guy made a huge difference. Something
like this probably would have happened, but it happened the
time it did because of this guy's strength of character.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
It's a good note for all of us to remember
too that despite how things may feel sometimes, you know,
government wise, you know overwhelming, like how can I possibly
change anything? If you start small and like make a
suggestion at your local level, you know, go to like
a community you know, town hall or whatever it is,
(40:52):
you know, organize around a local commissioner or whatever to
get something done. There are plenty of success stories of
things like that that oftentimes can spread outward to the bigger,
greater picture, you know, of the country that you live in.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
So don't don't be despaired, y'all.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
The way I always enjoy it is this think global,
act local, just because it rives.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
But you know, people also say, like think globally, shop
locally or even I've seen people say meme locally. You know,
how I follow who does Athens, Georgia based memes, and
his tagline on his account is think globally, meme locally,
which I think is delightful.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
So yeah, pee locally, poop globally whatever.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Well that's or vice versa depending on the day.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
But Ben you you you found a handful of really fun,
pretty lighthearted examples of nine to one one calls gone awry.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, yeah, this is the thing we want to add
on here, just so we have a bit of levity.
After thinking all the first responders and emergency call operators,
we want to share with you just a few examples
of how cartoonishly people can have a different definition of emergency.
(42:09):
This your butt dial story stands out because there was
a situation in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Right yeah, burglar in Shelby County, Ohio was caught by
police when he accidentally butt dialed nine to one one
while breaking into a home with the intent of robbing it.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
Making matters worse when.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
The cops showed up, he hid in a closet and
then you know, charge your phone, bro it went ding
ding or put that on silent man, what a sloppy
crook low battery alarm went off, which you know, I mean,
come on.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
Man, it's twenty twenty four. Let's let's put our phones on.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Silent, always have your photo on silence.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
It's just the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Do not disturb as default, you know what I mean,
text in advance. If someone calls me today, I assume
it's an emergent.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
One has died.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, So we're getting some of this from readers digest.
You can find some excellent threads across the internet from
first responders and nine to one one operators themselves. But
we're again, we're just sharing some of the lighthearted ones
to the earlier drug example. All right, there's this guy
in Lincoln, Nebraska who comes back to his house one
(43:18):
day and he finds someone has robbed his house and
they have insults upon injury, stolen his favorite hookah pipes.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, and whilst you go ahead and laugh out there
in ridiculous historian land. But people that are really into
that stuff, No, those things can be very very valuable,
very expensive, like a really expensive glassware or whatever. It's
a whole niche kind of you know, market unto itself,
and they may very well have been out one thousand
dollars for the right kind of bomb.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, and he clearly had an emotional attachment. So he
calls nine to one one and the law the first responders,
law enforcement shows up because it's a report of a burglary, right,
it's their job to show up. And then when they
get there, Nol, they find that he grows all smell. Yeah,
he grows a lot of cannabis.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
A lot of pot plants not legal in Lincoln, Nebraska. Also,
this was in the era where it wasn't really legal
most anywhere. But yeah, he did end up kind of
telling on himself. He must have been stoned when he
made the call in the first place. Bong Ye, stoned
and heartbroken. I bet he had a cute name for
(44:30):
the hooka pipes.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Too, probably bomb Bongie.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah we've got one. We've got another win from our
own home state of Georgia.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Yeah we do. And it's not pronounced Dacula as much
as we'd like it to be.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
It's if you've ever driven around on I twenty in
the Atlanta area, like going towards I believe it's on east,
but you'll pass a place called Dacula. Counts Dacula, but
it's Tekula, Georgia or Tequila perhaps it felt like Dracula.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
It sure is.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
Yeah, it's it's a spooky, spooky.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Town, as evidenced by this tale of a woman contacting
police when her Chevy van went missing.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
What could be spookier than that? At least it wasn't
an odyssey, right Ben?
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Thank you?
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Later that day, the woman called back to report that
the vehicle had been found.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Where was it found?
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Then?
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Where was the vehicle?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
It was in her yard. She just had a really
atrucious yard. So apparently she or someone parked it in
their yard behind tall weeds.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Or maybe she just hadn't driven it in a while
and the weeds literally grew up around it over the skin,
you know, I mean sure, So she was probably stone too,
and she made the call.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
It feels like there's a lot of story between the
lines on that one. We'll hand on this. There's a
guy who Okay, there is a known issue with some people,
perhaps driven by loneliness, perhaps a mental situation, perhaps paranoia.
There are people who are regulars calling nine to one
one when there's not what nine to one one would
(46:01):
consider an emergency, like not domestic abuse, it's just you know,
someone's a lukie loo and they're consistently reporting things.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
That they think are suspicious, and there may be mental
health issues at play here. So I would think that,
you know, what I did look up in terms of,
you know, when is it crossing the line to abuse
or to misuse nine one one, And it is on
a case by case basis, so I would imagine they
would be able to be like, oh, poor old mister
Wilson and he's calling again asking for a pack of smokes.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
He doesn't mean any harm.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
And after a certain point, if it really is clogging
up the resource, then something probably has to be done.
But the thing is, though, you also can't like block
them from calling nine to one one because they could
eventually have a genuine emergency. You know, you can't take
away people's nine to one one privileges.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
And sometimes we see this happen in medical facilities as well.
Somebody may just continually go to you are with no
you know, discernible emergency medical situation. Right, Yeah, So this
takes us to one example of this. A guy in Canada,
in a town called Lundar made a bunch of calls
(47:15):
to nine to one one and eventually, since we said
it's a case by case basis, the operators say, okay, okay, Bud, listen,
then you gotta stop calling. There are real emergencies, and
every time that we are dealing with your frivolous stuff,
we are risking the lives of other people. So if
(47:37):
you call again, this is your last warning. If you
call one more time, you are going to go to
jail for exploiting this system. And then he said, well,
if you're coming to get me, can you bring along
some cigarettes? Well that's my real reason for calling. He
(47:58):
called nine to one one the way people would call
like a friend coming over, or like the way a
drunk person would ask the Uber eats guy to bring
some stuff back.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Yeah that's.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Oh man, poor guy, he's probably just lonely, didn't have
anybody that would bring him a pack of smokes. I mean,
I can you only imagine too that there are examples
of people calling nine.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
One one as well, just to have their company, you.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Know what I mean. Like the world can be a
lonely place, Yes it can.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
Sorry, So we said we were going to end on
an upnote, but here we are.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's true though, you know, hey, check on your folks,
check check on your elderly.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
And here's our up. Here's our up note for this.
We are a community and we're so glad you have
joined us. You know, one thing I can say about podcasting,
as imperfect and new a genre of media as it is,
is that I think it does unite people, hopefully in
a largely wholesome way.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Would I would like to think largely wholesome. We keep it,
keep it largely wholesome. Here on Ridiculous, Sister, they were
at least medium wholesome.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Pep Max, you had something on your mind.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
Yeah, I wanted to.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Just leave with a funny story to uh end this episode.
So one of my best friends of all time, her
name's Chelsea. She was a emergency call dispatcher for a
number of years, very stressful dub. She she eventually left
it because she's just like, I can't do this weird
hour and stuff like that. But throughout the time she
would tell me some of the weirdest ones she got.
(49:30):
And one one night, it was a call from a
couple they had, you know, been doing some things in
the bedroom and we're just trying to be very vague
about what the problem was. My friend Chelsea's like, hey, ma'am,
I really need to know what's wrong with your partner
to figure out what it is, and say, well, we
were trying some you know, I'm gonna try to get
this a little cleaner.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
But let's just say something was stuck in his bill.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
But I think we got your drifts there. Yeah, cheeky,
but I get it very chea.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
And then the next part of that story is the
attending physician at the er, you know, looking at a
X ray with like a lego.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Oh god, why how has that become a tropech.
Speaker 4 (50:11):
Yes it is.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Chelsea told me that they had to inject a good
bit of muscle relaxers into.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Him, could have given him some poppers. Namy, gosh, we
said we were going to keep it PG.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Well, as that's fine as long as we don't explain
the poppers thing, So look it up on your own.
Thank you so much for tuning in. Everybody, stay safe
out there. And again, the biggest thing for us to
end on with is we've got a lot of ridiculous
historians in the audience today who are first responders or
who do work with the nine to one one system
(50:42):
or another emergency call system, maybe a mental health system,
things like that. Thank you, so much for your service.
And while we're thanking people, let's roll some credits. Thanks
to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Indeed, thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme, Chris
for Hasiotis and Eve's Jeffcoat here and Spirit.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Big big thanks to Gabe Lucier first of his name.
I don't know if it's true, but I feel like
saying this entirely likely. Yeah, let's see. Thanks to of course,
our rude dudes over at Ridiculous Crime, Elizabeth Zarin and Dave.
You can check out a couple of collaboration episodes we
have with them. Oh thanks to our pals at Daily
(51:25):
Zeitgeist who started doing video episode.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Ah.
Speaker 4 (51:28):
Good for them. Maybe maybe we'll get there one day,
maybe we'll join the big leagues.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Huge thanks to the quiz Stara Jonathan Stricklan. He will
be on before the end of the year, maybe definitely
early on record.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
Yeah, I think we could say, but.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
I think we do a holiday Let's do a holiday
episode with that old quizter.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
Also thanks to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs the Puzzler and.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance. Thanks again to you, Noel.
This was this was good? I think we kept it wholesome.
We'd love to hear everybody's favorite whimsical nine to one
one calls over on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
That's right, and we'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for tuning in.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No, ye.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Mean it means it's time to introduce our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Is he the one calling from inside the house? You creep, Max,
Get out of my house.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
No, No, I am the emergency call.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Of the heart.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Now you sure are?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
That's that's what it means.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I don't know if it's that or good, but that's
just what I'm going with your regular emotional nine to eleven.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
That's all.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
I should find a different way to say that.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Sorry, that's our that's our man, the myth legend, mister
Noel Brown. They called me Ben Bullen in this neck
of the Global woods. And today we are looking at
one of the few telephone numbers that everyone knows and
that no one wants to call.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Is it eight six, seven, five, three nine, nine?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh Jenny, we got your number.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
It's on the wall. That's kind of you know.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I never really thought about what the implications of that
until later in life. Does that mean it was written
on a bathroom stall? Does it go into detail anyway,
it doesn't matter you're here. It may be a figurative wall.
It may be the wall of true love. That is
not the number we're talking about today.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
We're also not talking about one eight blah blah blah
cars for kids, although I do have another side project
I'm working on with that and cars for kids. Just
so you guys know, is a conspiracy. No, yes, is
it as bad as kids for cars? It is worse
because it's real.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, exactly, so letting me down. No, I mean, I said,
Max is an emotional nine to eleven of the Heart
of the Mind, the movie The Ride. You know, some
people call it nine to eleven, I guess, but we
know it may be more. In the state says nine
one one.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yes, yeah, we all are familiar with the idea of
nine to one one. If you are a ridiculous historian
who has been who has spent any time in the
United States, in Canada, and as we'll see, in several
other countries, nine one one is one of the easiest
(02:37):
numbers to call in not just the United States, but
in Canada, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Jordan, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, Palau, Panama,
the Philippines. The list goes on Otama, Macau. Macau actually
has a different number that does the same thing.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
As does the UK, which, if I'm not mistaken from
my brickcom experience, it's nine to nine to nine.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yes, And originally Parliament broke out in raucous laughter about
it because it sounds like a German saying no three
times in a row.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You know what, I'll always remember you guys, remember the
Little Rascals movie from the nineties. I think there's I'm
pretty sure it's from that movie. There's a character of
maybe Spanky or one of those other little rascals.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
He says, what's the number for nine?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
One one? Be careful with that joke.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
It's adorable.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Careful with that joke. It's an antique. As they say,
I love it. It's barely a joke. It's an observation. There
are also other countries that may use like we said, nine,
nine nine or one one two one one two and
(03:48):
nine one one are the globally dominant emergency numbers now,
but the concept, as we're saying, is always the same,
A very short, simple series of digits that allow a
to in theory immediately connect with emergency services. You'll get
help on everything from forest fires to arson to car
(04:12):
accidents to injuries to more. We do want to start
off by saying in this episode at the very top,
sometimes people have different definitions of what constitutes an emergency.
Don't call nine to one one for shizzles and giggles.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Man, it's funny you say that.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I was literally just googling is it really illegal to
call nine to one one? And there's varying degrees of
you know, what would actually be actionable.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think you know you did it by accident. You
hung up?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Whatever, I do remember calling back, they will call you
about to say, But what's been in the news a
lot lately is this concept of swatting, where people make
these elaborate prank nine to one one calls reporting Syria
crimes that result in swat teams being deployed, and it
is sometimes used to like terrorize people to have their
(05:06):
houses like rated, you know, as some sort of doxing
esque Internet I guess I don't know manipulation.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Exactly. It's psyop, is what it is.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, it's the other Other genres of that kind of
aggression would be things like calling in a bunch of
pizza orders to an address after you doct someone or
another one that's happened on the social media forum Reddit
quite often. Reddit has the option to report someone for
(05:41):
suicidal ideation, and so when people disagree with each other
on a Reddit, for them, they will sometimes frank. I
guess prank is too light a word, but you know
what I mean. They'll they'll report someone to get their
account in trouble.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, speaking of the Brits, so one of my favorite
British comedies of all time, I'm as peep Show, which
I think you guys are fond of too, and there's
an episode called sectioning where the characters take various times
report each other for mental illness, which is what is
referred to as having someone sections, whereas in these states
we'd call it having someone committed I guess. But the
(06:18):
episode's all about them basically prank sectioning each other.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, because Peep Show is all about two really stand
up guys who happen to be wholesome and supportive roommates.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Yeah that's not right, but I just see what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's a great show and one of my favorite characters
of all time, super Hot yes.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I'm still I forgive you writers a peep Show for
confusing me I've for years, which would also be raped
the Coolena.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I love that too, because he's you know, sorry to
get to in about peep Show, but he and Jazz,
one of the other main characters, are in this kind
of like failed fake techno band, like like kind of
trying to copy the Prodigy and Superhands as a techno
persona name totally works.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great show. I'll tell you,
folks honestly ridiculous historians. Due to my past, I have
a pretty strong stomach, but that's one of my weak spots.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I cringe.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, I can. I can witness tremendous acts of violence,
like the kind of stuff you'd have to call nine
one one for. But show me social awkwardness and I
am leaving the room. I don't know why it's such
a trigger.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
It's so funny. I just saw.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I've been I don't know, I'm really fascinated by these
Terrifier movies, but I don't really want to watch them.
So I've been listening and watching a lot of YouTube
kind of recaps of them, and one person was like,
you know, The most egregious thing in this new Terrifier
movie is not the dismemberments. It is not the blood bats.
It is the one particular moment of cringe because I
can't handle that.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Okay, I hope I wasn't the one posting that. But
that's awesome because it also reminds me of the key
and Peal sketch that is descended from the Terrifier, which
is all about having a good attitude. I'll send it
to you guys after we record but one.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Actually, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
We just talked about nine nine nine and the Brits
a whole bunch. They figure heavily into the story of
the creation of nine to one one. But before we
get to them, let us venture back in time to
the United States of the nineteen sixties, when there was
not a universal phone number for Americans to call if
they needed emergency services. If I'm not mistaken, Ben, it
(08:34):
was a matter of calling the operator, like I think
you could still in those days, just dial zero.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
And I was actually gonna ask you, Ben, does that
still work? If you hit zero? Does it do anything?
Because I don't even have a landline.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It depends on it depends on where you live and
what kind of telephonic device you're engaging with. So there
are Weirdly enough, there are still rotary phones that are
in use in the United States.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
They're typically more evolved than they were in the earlier days.
Like you were saying, Noel. In the earlier days, you
would pick up the phone. You might not even have
to dial zero. You would pick up the phone.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
That's right, the.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Marriage board right there immediately upon picking up, and then
you would just sort of name a thing or an extension.
There were also, as we knew it did in our
previous episode on using barbed wires, phone lines. They were
cool storylines.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
A personal It was like a party line for a
community of farms and absolutely worth checking out because it's
a good example of just good old fashioned American ingenuity.
But in large cities this was tough, oh, because they'd
get these switchboards would get overloaded, and I mean the
switchboards systems, I can I always my mind boggles at
(09:49):
the logistics of these poor switchboard operators.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, think about even in the nineteen sixties, really any
city post World War two economic boom in the United
States States, there's more than one fire department there's more
than one police department. They cover different areas, they have
different turfs and different jurisdictions. So if you call in
an emergency the wrong fire department, you're going to have
(10:15):
to wait for them to contact the right fire department.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
A place like Los Angeles, for all intents and purposes,
is like its own country in so Shure, there's all
these different municipalities with different governments and different emergency services.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
There is no one stop shop for any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And in this fashion, up until the actually the late
nineteen sixties, the United States was pretty behind the global times.
The world's oldest emergency call service is not American at all.
It is British. It was launched in London on June thirtieth,
nineteen thirty seven, two years after a tremendous tragedy London Town.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
In a home on Wimpole Streets.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
There was a horrible fire that led to the deaths
of five women. This was in November of nineteen thirty five.
Norman McDonald's not the community used with our buddy Norm
Rip was a dentist who lived in the house on
the other side of the street. He tried to call
the or as they might stay in the UK ring
the fire brigade, and he was put on hold and
(11:24):
put in a telephone queue, and he essentially had to
wait so long that these lives were essentially lost. And
I do want to say that I only just recently,
for the first time and probably probably ever, had to
make a legitimate nine one one call. Here in Decatur, Georgia,
(11:45):
there was a guy who bailed out really horribly on
a dirt bike right outside my house and cracked a
skull on the street.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
It was one of the craziest things I've seen. But
I was on hold with nine to one one for
quite a while.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
So let's not kid ourselves that things are like magically
better in the big cities now just because of nine
to one one.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Just want to get that out in the open right upfront.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's also a known problem with the system that depending
upon where you live, nine one one may be more
or less responsive. It's a common issue. Unfortunately, it's one
that people are still struggling to address in.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
The areas certain demographics.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Let's just say, they'll perhaps say reticence to be quicker,
you know what, that does imply intent on the part
of law enforcement, and maybe we should give them the
benefit of the doubt. It's a resource thing. It's a resource.
I think it is that more than trying not to
help certain people. But it is a thing that you
do see on these maps where it's like, you know,
people in underserved areas, minorities, maybe poorer areas, it sometimes
(12:49):
is harder for them to get to that support. Right,
you will be on hold.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
So our guy, Norman McDonald is livid. He is furious,
he has righteous indignation, and so he's calling about an emergency.
People's lives are on the line, and then he gets
held in what the British would call a Q He's
on hold and as he's on hold, as a result
of this, five people die. So he writes a letter.
(13:16):
He takes it upon himself to write to the paper
of note, which is still a very big deal paper
in the UK, The Times. The Times, Yeah, not the
New York Times, that's JV stuff O. The Times, yeah,
and they this launches a full government inquiry. Public outcry
(13:38):
ensues because McDonald's letter is published in the Times, and
everybody who reads the paper, which is pretty much everybody
at this point in history, they are joined with him.
They agree and so the UK government sets up a
committee and says, let's make let's make it so people
(14:00):
don't have to wait at the switchboard or wait and
Q when there's an emergency. We're going to have a
number anyone can dial free of charge that will get us,
get us the opportunity to save lives.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Mm hmm. The afore I mentioned nine nine nine, which
was their second choice after six six six. They thought
that was a little too on the nose for the
conspiracy theorists of the world. I'm sorry I had to
put on my stuff. They don't want you to know
how we talk a lot about like British conspiracies involving
the you know, the Crown still being in control of
the United States, and they're kind of one of the
(14:38):
originators of a lot of these Luciferian Illuminati type conspiracies.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
So I do love the idea that when you.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
See nine nine nine on paper, it straight up is
six six six inverted. Yeah yeah, yeah, same, just same.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And this was a good number because at the time
when they when they cooked up this idea, there were
only three million home telephones in the country, so the
majority of people are going to be calling from these
coin operated the iconic red telephone booths. Does it light
up at the time? It did not, But the.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Bat phone type situation, the situation room type situation.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
I see where you're going. Yeah, But the thing is
the rotary dials at home and in these public telephone booths.
So it was easy to customize the free use of
this number, nine being one of the longer numbers to dial.
But if you just did nine three times right, then
(15:37):
it would the system would know that there was something
a miss occurring.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Well, it's funny too when you think and I realize
what you're talking about now, but you're talking about those
classic red British you know, telephone boxes, of course, yeah,
but I mean the physical thing they're like so iconic.
That's what I was about to say. Man, that we
think about it now, how easy it is, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Be boop poop. But back then you had to really
be committed to get all the way phone number.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Did you ever use a rotary phone?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
I have had.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
My granddad had one, same and yeah, their while and
you really kind of it's easy to lose track.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It's almost like communicating in Morris code or something.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, it's also kind of you know this ages us
a bit, but one of the uh, one of the
weirdest analogs to entering a phone number on a rotary
phone that I can think about today.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
In America texting any any.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Gamer or anybody who has to log into an app
all and say like a PlayStation or something. You have
to pull up the keyboard on the screen. You have
to do do do balk.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
But that's how texting used to be balk initially too.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
You had to use the numbers on your phone, and
for like A, that would be two, and B would
be two to two and each letter number represented three
possible letters, and depending on how many times you punch
the button, you'd get that letter.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
So that's what I think of as well. Then that's
super interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Remember when remember when we first got the phone number
for stuff they don't want, you know? And I made
it this dumb sing along jingle. I totally misstep, dude,
because we still only say the abbreviation of the show
std WYTK, and we never told people the number.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, there's a two. It's branding, bro, it's branding there.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I couldn't even tell you what the numbers are, but
there have to be seven of them, right, yeah, yeah,
so we've.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Got we'll fast forward to June thirtieth, nineteen thirty seven.
Sir Walter Walmersley, in addition to having an hilariously British name,
is the assistant Postmaster General. He says, look, we're going
to He goes to the House of Commons, which is
the people who earned their parliamentary position. And I walked
(17:54):
down the street for that one.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
No, no, no, let's go with it.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
So he says, look, we're going to make this new
emergency service. We are going to try it out kind
of a pilot or test run in London. And when
he told them, or when it was announced that the
number would be nine nine nine, uh, the room burst
into raucous laughter.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Is this your theory, Ben the German thing?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Or do you read that somewhere this historical speculation?
Speaker 4 (18:25):
This is so interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I didn't think the idea that maybe because of the
embroilments and world affairs and all of that, at this point,
the Germans been front page news and saying it's very
uh yeah, I could picture that in a Hitler.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
In fact, it's happened definitely.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Oh that makes me remember the Hitler meme. Oh gosh,
I can't remember the name of the film NOL, but
you recall it's Downfall.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's the one with Bruno Gans playing Hitler and it
is fabulous.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
He was also in a Wings of Desire. He's a
fabulous actor.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
There's this great clip that for years the Internet has
taken and dubbed over.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
To the situation room, Yeah, to being a document getting
told bad news and.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
He's plaiting and everybody just changes what the bad news is.
It's so niche.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
He gradually gets more and more enraged and it's one
of those perfect things where you can escalate it. And
it's almost like the meme of the people sitting at
like a table and saying, ask me about whatever, tell
me I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Wrong, Yeah, yeah, yes, change my mind.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Very malleable. I love memes.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
This, however, does not become a countrywide system just yet.
The initial nine to nine to nine operation or trial.
It covers about a twelve mile radius originating from Oxford Circus,
which is just to get in front of it for
any Americans who haven't visited Oxford Circus. Not a circus,
(20:06):
it's a traffic juncture.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Neither is Piccadilly Circus, right, a more famous one. And
I for years truly believed that there are elephants and
clowns and and peanuts and crackerjacks and stuff. I was
hoping not the case. It's just like a big busy area,
if I'm not mistaken. It's kind of considered like a
like a hub. But British listeners, right, is to let
us know if we're getting with what the idea of
(20:27):
a British circus is. And do you call the circus
the circus in Britain or do they call it a
funfair or something like them?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
That's a slow horses question. The circus is also a
term for intelligence operations.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So the Joe's I love the Joe's Man, This show
is good.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Watch Joe's cover that.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
He's my Joe. He's my Joe, all right, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Shout out Gary Oldman, what a great one.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
He doesn't need it, but we love you.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I'm actually I ordered the books. I'm going to read
the books.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
To there's more books that have yet to be produced,
I believe too. There's you know, I'm sorry we're a
fanboing too much about slow horses, but please do do
yourself a favorite, because I swear I don't understand why
it still seems so under the radar. Those Apple shows
they don't give it any promo, and I don't get why,
because there it's some fabulous stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
On amazing stuff. Yeah, shout out severance as well. So
the public has to be taught how to use this thing,
how to understand what nine nine is. It's not just
a German in denial. It's three. It's the three. Uh,
it's the three digits you dial when this something goes wrong.
(21:38):
And they spend a great deal of time.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Bad campaign of some sort, right right.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Trying to teach the public what constitutes a serious emergency,
and the way they explained it back in the Times.
This is reported by our friends at the BBC. They said, if,
for instance, the man in the flat next to yours
is murdering his wife, well you have seen it heavily
masked cats of the peeriod round the stock Pot Bank building.
(22:05):
So they say, they say, you can, you can report suspicious,
but you can't. You shouldn't call just because you know
you misplaced.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Your keys, but also if you're doing a Jimmy store
rare window kind of situation.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Uh, it is.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It is definitely on the table. They might just think
you're a kookie, shut in crank and have not witnessed
a murder at all, and you should just stop letting
your imagination run wild.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
And sorry, I recently watched her window.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's a real Uh the eccentric who called wolf, situation
or cried wolf. Every country today now, every country with
an emergency call system has encountered their own share of
a name super out there wackadoo calls, sometimes pranks, sometimes
just really misled people.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
A favorite genre of this, we'll get to some of
this at the end, has been at least in my mind,
you guys, it's when people call to report that someone
has stolen their illegal drugs.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Oh, it's comical, yeah, I mean it just the level
of boneheadedness, Like, what do you think is going to happen? Man,
It's like, you can't call. If you're calling to report
illegal activity that you yourself are a part of, you're
basically telling on yourself.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Like, oh man, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But we know that, all right, We know that the
Kingdom led the charge on this. Other countries in the
world started listening. In the first city in North America
to use a central emergency number. Wasn't from the United States.
They're still behind in the game.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
No, it was actually in Canada, when we're talking about
the continent of North America, Winnipeg, Manitoba in nineteen fifty nine.
This again came from some pretty serious urging from a
political fear whether or not he was getting an earfull.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
From his constituents or whatever.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Mayor Steven Juba, which also for some reason appears to
be a very quintessentially Winnipegian name.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
I'm just gonna believe that.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But like the UK, Winnipeg originally used nine nine nine
as well for their emergency number, but then they decided
to walk in step.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
With the US when they switched to nine one one.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah. And in the United States, we'll see a series
of somewhat tragic events that, just like in the case
of the United Kingdom, that lead to the creation of
emergency phone numbers. In the US, there was this push
that came about post World War two nineteen fifty seven
from the National Association of Fire Chiefs, and they were
(24:50):
saying or echoing the same problem that we knew about,
which is, you know, how can you expect people in
an emergency to have the number of their local fire
department memorized. So they said, let's save some lives, let's
stop some fires, let's have a single number at least
for calling fire departments. And that people said, okay, that's
(25:14):
a good idea. Nice one, buddy, but they didn't really
act on it until again, just as in London, it
took a tragedy to push the idea forward.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yeah, a little, but I know, a little trigger warning here.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
We are going to talk about some sexual assaults, some
sexual violence, not in detail, but if that's triggering it,
I'll to you maybe just skip ahead about thirty seconds
or so. Nineteen sixty four is when the sexual assault
and murder of Kitty Genoviz took the public by storm
in New York City. It was at an absolute scandal
sensation like oj Simpson level galvanization of the public, and
(25:52):
subsequently the government to create a central emergency number.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, and a lot of this came about because the
New York Times misreported part of the story. They said
everybody could hear Genevieve's crying for help during the commission
of these awful crimes, and that the people who heard
her in New York City looked out their windows and watched,
(26:20):
or closed their windows and ignored it. Yeah, apparently, well,
the Times, The New York Times said that there were
thirty eight bystanders who turned their back on this innocent
woman dying in such a horrific way. This would later
lead to the concept of what we call the bystander effect,
(26:41):
the bystander effect just for side note, folks, the bystander
effect is the inaction of people in groups when they
feel that they are observers. That's why you could see
it today when you look at public altercations or crimes
and you're wondering, why is it anyone helping? Why is
(27:01):
everybody on their phone right just filming?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
It's that bubble effect. It's that sensation of being disconnected.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, and it's not that these people are necessarily malicious.
It's a version of the fight eyereezer fawn also true. Yeah,
so the best way to get around that. By the way, folks,
we hope you never have to be in this situation.
But if you are resuscitating someone, or if you're trying
to staunch a wound, you are in a public space.
(27:30):
When you say called nine one one to someone never
say somebody called nine one one. You don't know if
anybody will. You point to someone, you make eye contact
and you say.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
You do this or just do it, and you know.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Maybe there's also a sense with the bystander effective people
not wanting to get involved for personal reasons. Perhaps they're
concerned that it might get them in trouble or whatever.
This led to the creation of these things called good
Samaritan laws that are a sense actually a micro version
of immunity if you are participating in the reporting of
(28:06):
a crime or someone being in danger.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, good, I love that you're bringing that up. A
good Samaritan law is something that offers legal protection to
someone who helps another person in distress. It means that
if you are if you are voluntarily helping someone who
is a victim of something, you cannot be later sued
(28:32):
for doing the wrong thing. Also, speaking of our pals
Mitchell and Webb, I want to shout out their excellent
sketch and Mitchell Webb look about good Samaritans.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Do you remember that that one is not ringing a
bell right off the rim.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
It's funny, you could tell David.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
It always great. Oh, I love those guys.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, and if anyone isn't familiar, they are also the
stars of Peep Show, and they have a sketch comedy
show called that Mitchell and Webb look that is also
worth your time.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yes, yeah, And speaking of the time, we know that
New York Times, for one reason or another got this
story wrong or embellished it. And later historians would have
a theory about this. They would say, maybe people weren't
calling police because it was so complex to do so.
(29:21):
Any calls that you made to the police, if you
knew the number, because there's not a nine to one
one number yet, they would go to a local precinct.
And any response that precincts could do would depend on
whether there was an individual sergeant or other ranking personnel
that might handle the call. Otherwise it might say, oh,
(29:42):
we've gone home for the day.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well there's not You know, at anytime there's a sense
of futility, you know, for an act like that, people
are going to tend to not do the thing, not
to mention if it's come complicated or involves like too
much minutia or whatever.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
It's important for the bear of entry.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
For something as critical as reporting a crime or someone
in danger to be as low as possible.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, and this, this conundrum is part of the reason
why there are different versions of good Samaritan laws around
the world. In some places they have a thing called
the duty to rescue law, which says that you are
legally required to try to help someone. It's tough to enforce.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Do we have that here?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Is that a thing? I've always wondered about that because
it does seem like it would require a lot of
legwork to prove that.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, we have, we have good Samaritan here. Mexico has
duty to rescue, as does a lot of Western Europe.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
But it's a lot of pressure, is what that is.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't act, but I
almost wonder if that would be like paralyzing to some people.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Oh sure, yeah, especially if you are you know, you're
not trained up in things like CPR or the I
almost called the Heimlich maneuver. I almost called it the
van Helsing maneuver. That's a very different approach to.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
The Jean Claud van dam maneuver. Right, right, this, so this.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Idea makes sense before, Like you were saying, no before
nineteen sixty eight, the only way to reach the police
was by dialing zero, hitting the operator in the switchboard
and hoping they were not too busy to transfer your call.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
There was a lot of opportunity for communication breakdown. But
in nineteen sixty seven, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement
and Administrative Justice recommended creating one single number that could
be used across the entire nation for reporting these kinds
of emergencies.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, and this was all based on the public outcry
on the Genovies case. So the FCC won't let me
be or let me be met.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Kidding, The f went to something something something on MTV.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
They went to AT and T, private company obviously super
in bed with the government, And in November of nineteen
sixty seven, the FCC and AT and T say, all right,
we've got to figure out a number that people can
call whenever there's a crisis. AT and T, not the
US government, not Uncle Sam. AT and T chose the
(32:21):
actual number, and they went with nine one one because
it was easy to memorize and they were still working
with rotary phones.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So I'm wondering, do they like focus group this? Do
you think like, I mean, I understand what you're saying
I'm just wondering, like, why not why not one? One?
Why not twelve? Why not something that would require few?
But maybe it's what we were saying too earlier. This
is enough numbers where you couldn't do it by accidents.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, they needed three.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It makes sense because otherwise, if it was just one
misdial and then all of a sudden you got you're
getting flooded with with one two calls, you.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Know, I mean yeah, dialing nine nine nine on a
rotary phone physically takes longer, and putting one as the
second digit in this pattern works pretty well with spatially, Yeah,
with the telephonic systems at the time, so they can
they can use that pattern that one is the second
digit to help prioritize things. But look, still Bell systems
(33:24):
while a monopoly in AT and T, while definitely still
a monopoly, they don't run everything. So independent phone companies
are not in the emergency telephone plan.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
What's an independent phone company?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Is not really a thing anymore, exactly.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
I mean, I'm half joking, but it really is something.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Even in our lifetime, I don't know that we had
you know, mom and pop phone companies anymore, just mo Bell, Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So some people chose to get ahead of the game.
We've got to give the flowers to Alabama. The ATC
Alabama Telephone Company said, all right, we're gonna do this,
but we're gonna We're not gonna wait for the big dogs.
We're going to go to Haleyville, Alabama. That's gonna be
our location for our nine to one one service. So
(34:13):
the first US emergency call service is made in Alabama.
It's a nine to one one service, and the first
call is made in nineteen sixty eight by the then
Speaker of the House rank and fit by the names,
and then it's a test call. It's an ahoy HOI.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
I was gonna say today, say AHIHI.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
To US Rep. Tom Bevel. And then later same year
it's March first, nineteen sixty eight. AT and T gets
their system rolled out partially in Huntington, Alabama.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
In nineteen seventy three, the White House's Office of Telecommunication
issued a national statement that supported the use of nine
one one and pushed to take any and further by
establishing a Federal Information Center to kind of help with
the logistics of all of it, to assist government agencies
and rolling the system out nationally.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, yeah, and again we see some statements, but are
those statements going to lead to action or is it
sound and fury signify nothing. A full national rollout of
nine to one one would take years and years, and
it's still to our earlier point, unevenly distributed for much
(35:31):
of this time. The city of Chicago had nine to
one one service as early as nineteen seventy six, but
the Illinois Commerce Commission didn't let this get to the
suburbs of Chicago until nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
We're holding back in the offering nine to one one
to her customers. That's crazy, That is a little bit nutting.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
By nineteen seventy nine, we had a pretty big boom time,
with twenty six percent of the US population having access
to nine one one. This continued exponentially over the course
of the next decade or so, as it increased to
fifty percent by nineteen eighty seven, and then ninety three
percent by the year two thousand. What's that extra eight
(36:24):
percent there or seven ten percent there in two thousand.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
That didn't have nine one one in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Right, right? And then people are still working to improve
the system. It is very rural thing.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
It has to be just rural, right, I mean, that's
definitely often.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And so as of March of twenty twenty two, we're
happy to report ninety eight point nine percent of the
US population had access.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
But where's that one point one percent?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
I got to know who these one point one percent
of the population are that don't have access to nine
one one?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
And are they Okay, we will never know, guess not.
That's a terrible thing.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
They're truly the forgotten one point.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Someone in the hinterlands of Alaska. Maybe yeah, they make
a very remote area.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
That has to be it.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And there are still vast swaths of the interior of
the United States that don't have, you know, cell coverage,
so that could explain part of it. Look, the modern
system is a marvel of engineering and coordination. There is
no question it saved millions of lives. The technology is
continuing to evolve. We see all sorts of new innovations,
(37:33):
like the ability to just text nine to one one
from your cell phone, Like have you ever done that?
Have you ever? If you have an iPhone? You may
have accidentally but the wrong urgency and it's like, do
you want to make an emergency co ops.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I actually once said by but did that? And then
I butt said yes, And then I got a call
from from emergency services, and I think I answered the
phone and just apologize. But I did look up, like
where in the US do people not have access to
nine one one? And of course what comes up right
away is parts of Alaska or again Washington State, Idaho, Wyoming,
North and South Dakota or Montana. But despite that, you
(38:13):
did mention that some of these places are also places
that are gonna have spotty cell signal. It's a little
bit of a different game because of what you're talking about,
the access through cell carriers to reach to reach emergency
services despite where you are physically.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, so the system continues to be improved upon. We
hope you never have to call the numbers. We hope
you do remember the numbers in your neck of the
Global Woods.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
What's the order for nine to one one?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
I think it starts with a two. We want to
take a moment to thank all the first responders and
nine to one one operators. Your service is often unsung.
We know that, like we have a loose abstract idea
of how incredible least stressful this could be uh. And
(39:02):
if you have ever worked in you know, even even
a call center, right, a non emergency call center, you
know that it can be a tremendously stressful job.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And and on nine one one, much like on these
call centers, they're operating from a set of protocols as well,
and so they might sometimes not react the way you
would like them to when you're under duress, because it
is it is part of their mandate to go through
this checklist of questions that might.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
Seem irrelevant, and maybe they are whatever, like whatever.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
That's right, But it's just they are just they are
trained to do that, and they are being recorded and monitored,
as we know when we have a big public crime
and we hear those nine to one one tapes.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
So these people are under a lot of scrutiny.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
I'm not saying there aren't operators nine one one operators
out there that don't do a great job. That's certainly
we've seen plenty of cases of that with stuff they
don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
But by and large, you're right, Ben, these people are
doing God's work. Yeah, I agree with you there. We
also want to end this episode. We're keeping it at
one part with a couple of things. First off, thank
you again to Norman McDonald who, almost a century ago
out there in London decided something needed to be done
(40:16):
about this problem. Writing and making your voice heard does
make a difference. This guy made a huge difference. Something
like this probably would have happened, but it happened the
time it did because of this guy's strength of character.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
It's a good note for all of us to remember
too that despite how things may feel sometimes, you know,
government wise, you know overwhelming, like how can I possibly
change anything? If you start small and like make a
suggestion at your local level, you know, go to like
a community you know, town hall or whatever it is,
(40:52):
you know, organize around a local commissioner or whatever to
get something done. There are plenty of success stories of
things like that that oftentimes can spread outward to the bigger,
greater picture, you know, of the country that you live in.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
So don't don't be despaired, y'all.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
The way I always enjoy it is this think global,
act local, just because it rives.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
But you know, people also say, like think globally, shop
locally or even I've seen people say meme locally. You know,
how I follow who does Athens, Georgia based memes, and
his tagline on his account is think globally, meme locally,
which I think is delightful.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
So yeah, pee locally, poop globally whatever.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Well that's or vice versa depending on the day.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
But Ben you you you found a handful of really fun,
pretty lighthearted examples of nine to one one calls gone awry.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, yeah, this is the thing we want to add
on here, just so we have a bit of levity.
After thinking all the first responders and emergency call operators,
we want to share with you just a few examples
of how cartoonishly people can have a different definition of emergency.
(42:09):
This your butt dial story stands out because there was
a situation in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Right yeah, burglar in Shelby County, Ohio was caught by
police when he accidentally butt dialed nine to one one
while breaking into a home with the intent of robbing it.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
Making matters worse when.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
The cops showed up, he hid in a closet and
then you know, charge your phone, bro it went ding
ding or put that on silent man, what a sloppy
crook low battery alarm went off, which you know, I mean,
come on.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
Man, it's twenty twenty four. Let's let's put our phones on.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Silent, always have your photo on silence.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
It's just the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Do not disturb as default, you know what I mean,
text in advance. If someone calls me today, I assume
it's an emergent.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
One has died.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, So we're getting some of this from readers digest.
You can find some excellent threads across the internet from
first responders and nine to one one operators themselves. But
we're again, we're just sharing some of the lighthearted ones
to the earlier drug example. All right, there's this guy
in Lincoln, Nebraska who comes back to his house one
(43:18):
day and he finds someone has robbed his house and
they have insults upon injury, stolen his favorite hookah pipes.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, and whilst you go ahead and laugh out there
in ridiculous historian land. But people that are really into
that stuff, No, those things can be very very valuable,
very expensive, like a really expensive glassware or whatever. It's
a whole niche kind of you know, market unto itself,
and they may very well have been out one thousand
dollars for the right kind of bomb.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, and he clearly had an emotional attachment. So he
calls nine to one one and the law the first responders,
law enforcement shows up because it's a report of a burglary, right,
it's their job to show up. And then when they
get there, Nol, they find that he grows all smell. Yeah,
he grows a lot of cannabis.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
A lot of pot plants not legal in Lincoln, Nebraska. Also,
this was in the era where it wasn't really legal
most anywhere. But yeah, he did end up kind of
telling on himself. He must have been stoned when he
made the call in the first place. Bong Ye, stoned
and heartbroken. I bet he had a cute name for
(44:30):
the hooka pipes.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Too, probably bomb Bongie.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah we've got one. We've got another win from our
own home state of Georgia.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Yeah we do. And it's not pronounced Dacula as much
as we'd like it to be.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
It's if you've ever driven around on I twenty in
the Atlanta area, like going towards I believe it's on east,
but you'll pass a place called Dacula. Counts Dacula, but
it's Tekula, Georgia or Tequila perhaps it felt like Dracula.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
It sure is.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
Yeah, it's it's a spooky, spooky.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Town, as evidenced by this tale of a woman contacting
police when her Chevy van went missing.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
What could be spookier than that? At least it wasn't
an odyssey, right Ben?
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Thank you?
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Later that day, the woman called back to report that
the vehicle had been found.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Where was it found?
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Then?
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Where was the vehicle?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
It was in her yard. She just had a really
atrucious yard. So apparently she or someone parked it in
their yard behind tall weeds.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Or maybe she just hadn't driven it in a while
and the weeds literally grew up around it over the skin,
you know, I mean sure, So she was probably stone too,
and she made the call.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
It feels like there's a lot of story between the
lines on that one. We'll hand on this. There's a
guy who Okay, there is a known issue with some people,
perhaps driven by loneliness, perhaps a mental situation, perhaps paranoia.
There are people who are regulars calling nine to one
one when there's not what nine to one one would
(46:01):
consider an emergency, like not domestic abuse, it's just you know,
someone's a lukie loo and they're consistently reporting things.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
That they think are suspicious, and there may be mental
health issues at play here. So I would think that,
you know, what I did look up in terms of,
you know, when is it crossing the line to abuse
or to misuse nine one one, And it is on
a case by case basis, so I would imagine they
would be able to be like, oh, poor old mister
Wilson and he's calling again asking for a pack of smokes.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
He doesn't mean any harm.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
And after a certain point, if it really is clogging
up the resource, then something probably has to be done.
But the thing is, though, you also can't like block
them from calling nine to one one because they could
eventually have a genuine emergency. You know, you can't take
away people's nine to one one privileges.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
And sometimes we see this happen in medical facilities as well.
Somebody may just continually go to you are with no
you know, discernible emergency medical situation. Right, Yeah, So this
takes us to one example of this. A guy in Canada,
in a town called Lundar made a bunch of calls
(47:15):
to nine to one one and eventually, since we said
it's a case by case basis, the operators say, okay, okay, Bud, listen,
then you gotta stop calling. There are real emergencies, and
every time that we are dealing with your frivolous stuff,
we are risking the lives of other people. So if
(47:37):
you call again, this is your last warning. If you
call one more time, you are going to go to
jail for exploiting this system. And then he said, well,
if you're coming to get me, can you bring along
some cigarettes? Well that's my real reason for calling. He
(47:58):
called nine to one one the way people would call
like a friend coming over, or like the way a
drunk person would ask the Uber eats guy to bring
some stuff back.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Yeah that's.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Oh man, poor guy, he's probably just lonely, didn't have
anybody that would bring him a pack of smokes. I mean,
I can you only imagine too that there are examples
of people calling nine.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
One one as well, just to have their company, you.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Know what I mean. Like the world can be a
lonely place, Yes it can.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
Sorry, So we said we were going to end on
an upnote, but here we are.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's true though, you know, hey, check on your folks,
check check on your elderly.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
And here's our up. Here's our up note for this.
We are a community and we're so glad you have
joined us. You know, one thing I can say about podcasting,
as imperfect and new a genre of media as it is,
is that I think it does unite people, hopefully in
a largely wholesome way.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Would I would like to think largely wholesome. We keep it,
keep it largely wholesome. Here on Ridiculous, Sister, they were
at least medium wholesome.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Pep Max, you had something on your mind.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
Yeah, I wanted to.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Just leave with a funny story to uh end this episode.
So one of my best friends of all time, her
name's Chelsea. She was a emergency call dispatcher for a
number of years, very stressful dub. She she eventually left
it because she's just like, I can't do this weird
hour and stuff like that. But throughout the time she
would tell me some of the weirdest ones she got.
(49:30):
And one one night, it was a call from a
couple they had, you know, been doing some things in
the bedroom and we're just trying to be very vague
about what the problem was. My friend Chelsea's like, hey, ma'am,
I really need to know what's wrong with your partner
to figure out what it is, and say, well, we
were trying some you know, I'm gonna try to get
this a little cleaner.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
But let's just say something was stuck in his bill.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
But I think we got your drifts there. Yeah, cheeky,
but I get it very chea.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
And then the next part of that story is the
attending physician at the er, you know, looking at a
X ray with like a lego.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Oh god, why how has that become a tropech.
Speaker 4 (50:11):
Yes it is.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Chelsea told me that they had to inject a good
bit of muscle relaxers into.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Him, could have given him some poppers. Namy, gosh, we
said we were going to keep it PG.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Well, as that's fine as long as we don't explain
the poppers thing, So look it up on your own.
Thank you so much for tuning in. Everybody, stay safe
out there. And again, the biggest thing for us to
end on with is we've got a lot of ridiculous
historians in the audience today who are first responders or
who do work with the nine to one one system
(50:42):
or another emergency call system, maybe a mental health system,
things like that. Thank you, so much for your service.
And while we're thanking people, let's roll some credits. Thanks
to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Indeed, thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme, Chris
for Hasiotis and Eve's Jeffcoat here and Spirit.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Big big thanks to Gabe Lucier first of his name.
I don't know if it's true, but I feel like
saying this entirely likely. Yeah, let's see. Thanks to of course,
our rude dudes over at Ridiculous Crime, Elizabeth Zarin and Dave.
You can check out a couple of collaboration episodes we
have with them. Oh thanks to our pals at Daily
(51:25):
Zeitgeist who started doing video episode.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Ah.
Speaker 4 (51:28):
Good for them. Maybe maybe we'll get there one day,
maybe we'll join the big leagues.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Huge thanks to the quiz Stara Jonathan Stricklan. He will
be on before the end of the year, maybe definitely
early on record.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
Yeah, I think we could say, but.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
I think we do a holiday Let's do a holiday
episode with that old quizter.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
Also thanks to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs the Puzzler and.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance. Thanks again to you, Noel.
This was this was good? I think we kept it wholesome.
We'd love to hear everybody's favorite whimsical nine to one
one calls over on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
That's right, and we'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
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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