June 19, 2025 • 38 mins
Ah, the bane of authors, students and copywriters the world round: the infamous typo! Something as small as a single misplaced letter can call the entire credibility of a book, text, or essay into question. Usually readers can still "get the gist," but every so often an innocent typo sows chaos, hilarity, scandal and disaster. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore some of history's weirdest, funniest -- and most expensive -- typos.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Fellow Ridiculous his historians. Thank you as always
so so much for how are you doing this? Monster?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We got to give a shout out to our super producer,
hurting my heart.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Last last one was hurting everything.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I do want to point out that beforehand, I had
like five mental typos before we start here.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
As an I.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Even clapped and when I kind of three in my
own head and clapped for her, realizing at the count
out loud.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
For that to work, we got to fun. It's a ritual.
It's technically a technical thing, but it's also fun to do.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It just gets us on board. It's a fun activity.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
And just to confirm so no one has to be worried,
I can confirm that we are in fact actually recording.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
This right now. Tight tight, Hey, you're no me. I'm
Ben Bullen you. A while back, Noel, we had a
lot of fun, uh you. Max and I were recorded
in the studio about a series on famous mistranslations.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's true, Remember that I remember nothing about it. No,
that's not true. One of them was about Coca Cola
being a ghosts.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
You're the ghost of your ancestors back Jimmy Carter wanted
to have sex with Eastern European country. Can't remember which
one specifically.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, I think it may have been Germany, or that
may have been the old the old tale about Kennedy
and the alleged donuts. I just want to make love
to the world. Yeah, we've all been there to do.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
We're talking about a sort of I guess, adjacent topic
today to mistranslations. We're talking about typos, which is, I
don't know, mistranslations is sort of its own ball of axe,
and that it requires sort of good intentions and then
just kind of missing the boat.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Typos are just.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Kind of about willy nilly, you know, making mistakes. Usually
it just involves a couple of extra letters, like you said, Bet,
But sometimes a typo can become a mistranslation, can't it,
or a very least an unintended word that has hilarious
It's an often controversial meaning and fallout.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it can change the nature of what is being communicated.
We're grateful for Research Associate Jeff factor g helping us
out with this. I was trying to do some typo
jokes as we were recording so much more when you speak,
it's more of a but I tried to. I tried
to misspell ridiculous history, and it was tough to make
(03:06):
my fingers do it.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Oh Okay, I got as you were doing verbal typos
and typographical typos. Okay, good to know you were you were,
You were committing to the bit, Ben, I respect the hustle. Uh.
Today we're talking about major typos that cause some whipsies,
some chaos.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
A little boobies, yeah, and typos are Look, there is
no organization, there is no authority that is immune to typos,
because they're very easy to mess up. If you read
a lot, then you'll notice some typos occur more often
than others. A famous example in graphic novels in particular,
(03:51):
is actually Soldier spelled solidaire.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Interesting a little inversion, perhaps right transposition rather or maybe
it's neither of those things. But you know, I guess
in this day and age, when most of our typing
or our text based communication happens on devices, we've got
a lot of auto correct typos that are kind of fun, yeah,
and can be really hilarious. I don't know this has
(04:17):
ever happened to you, Ben, but has your phone ever
accidentally gone into voice to text mode when you didn't
know it, and it was just listening in on a
whole conversation, and you look down and there's this absurdist
composed poem there waiting. Sometimes I just send them to
whoever it was composed to. Its fun, you know, for
posterity and for art.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
You know, I mentioned that I think on stuff that
I want you to know. But my most infamous and most
embarrassing typo from Auto correct. I was texting with my
mother when she was around, and I told her we
were just shooting the breeze, and I said what I
meant to say was yeah, mom, I'm thinking of growing
(04:58):
a mustache. And what Auto It's infinite wisdom decided I
meant to say was yeah, mom, I think I'm thinking
of growing a moist ache. Oh you've mentioned that before,
been a moist ache. It sounds so, oh my goodness, scandalous.
You said that to your mother, I know, but luckily, luckily,
(05:18):
she was a very forgiving woman. And it wasn't like
I was making typos over at NASA, though NASA itself
is not immune to typos. Maybe we start with a title.
I know, we both love the Wicked Bible. What have
you done? Then I'll tell you what you've done is
a brilliant segue.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh sucks the Wicked Bible.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
The King James version.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Of the Bible one of the most ubiquitous versions of
said holy text, spearheaded by Yes, you guessed it, King James. Ah, yeah,
King Jane, which one from earlier?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, that's all I need to know.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And there is, if you can museum for just about everything,
a Museum of the Bible, and they have a dot
org and they had this to say about a very
infamous typo that took place in printing of the Bible.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Of course, the King.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
James was one of the most widely circulated versions, and
that's what led to it being so ubiquitous even today
from collections, not Museum of the Bible dot org. Printing
the Bible with movable type on an early modern press
was a remarkably difficult task. As the King's printer, Robert
Barker held the exclusive right to print all English Bibles,
(06:33):
including the King James Bible, but his early editions were
marred by poor quality. And you guessed the typographical errors. Yes,
in the beginning, God said, let there be I yeah,
and everything was I.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So if I can jump in here really quick, Noel
posed this onto the universe. So I wanted to follow
up with the King James of Bible fame is King
James one of England, King James sixth of Scotland. We've
talked about this in the past, but basically those lines
were merged together after the whole King Henry eighth and
all that and all the fallout.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
He exactly good.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Note King James One, his buddy Robert Barker was making
a mess of the English language and Bible form.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
The dangers of monopoly then as now, look for the
majority of typos. If you're reading in a language that
you're already fluent in, you'll usually be able to get
the gist right because your brain will kind of pre
arrange the pattern, but it'll transpose it into the right
direction right. Yeah, yeah, including entire words right and sections
(07:47):
of phrases. But this is one of the most hilarious
history rocket typos in all of Europe.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's a typo biomission. Yes, it still is still a
type oftheless. In sixteen thirty one there was this reprint
of the King James Bible Robert Barker that we just mentioned,
teamed up with a guy named Marca Martin Lewis to
publish this. But they they whipped on one big important thing,
(08:18):
the seventh Commandment. The seventh Commandment in English translation reads
thou shaltst not commit adultery. Clear got already explicit, not
open to interpretation unless you miss the word not. That's right,
and well, not all the commandments are things you're not
supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Some of them are things you're supposed to do. So
if you didn't know.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Better, you might think, here, wait a minute, I missed
the memo on this one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
They totally missed the word not. And so this Bible
had the seventh Commandment printed as thou shalts commit adultery
and it appeared in like a thousand copies of this text.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That's right, yeah, which isn't a lot. And you got
to imagine those would be worth a pretty penny. And
that is in fact the case. I found an article
from The Guardian from back in twenty fifteen where one
of these wick rare as heck wicked Bibles went on sale,
one of only ten remaining copies of sixteen thirty one
Sinners or wicked Bible with the as the Guardian puts it,
(09:19):
infamous dipo imploring readers to commit adultery. And it went
on auction for actually the asking price was between ten
and fifteen thousand pounds. Not sure what it's sold for.
I bet we could figure it out.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Oh yeah, but speaking of.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Pounds, yeah, this was They were pounded a little bit
for this mistake.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
There was a bit of a fee involved, a bit
of a fine. Yeah, hold up to the court of
the current king at the time, keeting Charles the First
and Charles the First is just rightly upset. He said,
you guys are making us look bad. We don't support
adultery on paper. As the king, I just commit adultery.
(10:00):
And this is like totally my thing. You know, you're
messing up. You're jacking up my spot. Man blowing up
the spot. So they lose their printing license, that all
important royal approval. They get up a three hundred pound
fine held over their heads. This Eventually the fine gets
dismissed and three hundred pounds is an egregious amount of
(10:21):
money at this point, and most of the texts are
you know, astute listeners. You heard us say a thousand
copies were printed, only ten known copies remain. It's because
the government of the time actively sought to take these
take these naughty Bibles out of commission.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
And pretty seriously yeah yeah, because I mean, you know,
in these days, you couldn't just depend on people to
kind of fill in the blanks. You know, this could
have led to some you know, societal upheaval in the
wrong hands. Exactly what happened to the sanctity of marriage
is out the window because of the wicked Bible.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Could have led to a lot of really weird, uh,
domestic disagreements, you know, like, honey, I'm doing this as
a Christian.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Totally, and I'm sure there are many folks that truly
believe that that's what they're doing. This, unfortunately, did lead
to the sad, unwinding decline of Barker and his you
know life.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Really, I mean, it's.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Hard to walk that one back your whole You had
one job and you did a bad job, and you
got fined. You were the King's right hand printing man,
and now you're out in the cold. And his reputation
was shot. He was in and out of prison and
ultimately died in prison the King's Bench prison in sixteen
(11:42):
forty five, A bummer because.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
It's it's not the end though. That's true because there.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
There is a conspiracy theory at play on purpose. We still, yeah,
we still don't know exactly how the misprint happened. The
conspiracy theory is that there may have been an act
of in dust real sabotage. A rival printer knew just
had You know, this is a very small industry at
this time. It reminds me of that's seen an Anchorman,
(12:08):
where they like mess with Ron Bergundy's teleprompter and make
him tell san Diego to go f itself. I guess
he'll You know, that's an act that was an act
of sabotage, of character assassination, and perhaps, yeah, maybe somebody
had it out for the guy. I mean, they thought
he was a little too cozy with the king and
they wanted to cut him down a peg, and cut
him down a peg they did.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Good story, but maybe not entirely accurate if we go
to medieval studies expert Chris Jones, speaking with the Guardian
in twenty twenty two, he says, look, that sabotage thing,
it's a juicy story. But it's probably just a rumor.
Chris knows a lot about printing at this time in
the sixteen hundreds, and he says it's way more likely
(12:51):
that these printers were in a cutthroat, competitive industry and
they were trying to cut costs and they flew too far.
They were they committed a sin of like a budget
line Icarus. They flew too close to the typographical sun. Yes, yeah, yeah,
they were. They were cutting costs on copy editors, says Chris.
(13:12):
And that's what happened. So other people, devout Christians of
the time would have also burned their copies. That happened
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
This this is a cool story, one man, if you
can get one.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
You think they're still surprised by how affordable they are. No, really,
there's only ten h I mean. Max points out that
in twenty fifteen a copy sold for around forty four
thousand dollars in twenty twenty three money, which is way
cheaper than I thought it would be.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
For sure, when you said affordable, that is not a
fable affordable content in terms of like historical artifacts, in
terms of ancient Bibles.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Absolutely absolutely you can get reprints. However, Yeah, and reprints,
historical curios or always fun for us bibliophiles. There's another
one here that our pal Jeff found, which I had
(14:12):
not actually heard of. And this is neither. This is
massively offensive, but it's also now in retrospect, it's hilarious.
It happened in twenty ten, is very recent. The Pasta
Bible by Lee Blaylock had to be reprinted in Australia
because one recipe was supposed to call for salt and
(14:36):
freshly ground black people lest.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
They cause a hulla balloo and another breaking down of
civilization as we know it. We're cooking and eating our
brethren because of this damnable pasta Bible. I love the idea,
and it's funny that this is follow you know, there's
the Bible, Bible, the Wicked Bible, and then we got
the pasta Bible. And in my mind, it's a Bible
that's made of pasta. But that's I like it. I
(14:59):
like that it's that's salt and freshly ground black people.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Oh I was just reading. That's that's even worse.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, they meant black pepper, yes, of course, but then
I didn't even catch that they could have left out
black and it just would have been funny.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Now it's now they're gonna cause a race war. Yeah,
well it's it's an egregious misstep and it shows us
you can't trust automated uh spell check all the time.
You need someone to read line by line. Here's what
happened that we're gonna we're gonna explore this with again
some help from the Guardian. There's a recipe for tag
lit deli with sardines and Prosciutto's beautiful. Okay, yeah, yeah,
(15:39):
and uh it scandalized Penguin Australia, the publisher, because this
is the recipe that said you need salt and freshly
ground black, not pepper. Uh so this they didn't know
about this until someone bought the book and read it
(15:59):
and wrote to them and said, hey, you guys, quick
check in quick circle up, let's have a chat. At
this time, they had already printed seven thousand copies of
the Pasta Bible and they said, okay, well, we got
to take the l we got to destroy these because
we cannot be seeing, you know, advocating cannibalism. And the
(16:23):
head of the publishing in Penguin Australia at the time,
a guy named Robert Sessions later spoke to the Sydney
Morning Herald and said this is going to cost about
twenty thousand dollars, which, again surprisingly I thought it would
have cost more. But you can't really put a price
on the public embarrassment, right.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
It does appear to still be in print or something
called the Pasta Bible. It looks like kind of like
a coffee table type, you know, big color photograph type
recipe book.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Hmm, interesting coffee table cookbook. I hope it has a
big a big like bang a pal sticker on the
front that says now without cannibalism exactly. Now.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I'm seeing multiple covers of it, which leads me to
believe that it was printed in multiple additions. And I
do see a reprint or an image of the page
in question. Spelt Taglili with sardines and proscutto. You got
your spelt pasta, do your extra virgin olive oil, tablespoon
(17:26):
two and at tablespoons of butter, clothes of garlic, fresh
red chilis, chibata bread torn into small Interesting, Okay, I'd
like some more carbs with my carbs.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like the British with the toast sandwich,
which is still a phenomenal thing.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Indeed, Yeah, we've got dice preshudo twelve fresh sardine filets,
as the Brits might say. And then we've got salt
and freshly ground black people. Someone has circled it and
it says oops.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
And then we've got.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Some parsley roughly chopped and a quarter cup red wine vinegar.
Sounds like a delight except for them, oopsy.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Let me tell you why this is such a big deal, folks.
Outside of religious texts, the number one selling book format
is the cookbook.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh of course, so they often are reprinted many, many,
many many times.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, and so as of this time twenty ten, when
Sessions is speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald, he says, look,
we don't know how to recall copies that are already
out in the wild. To be very difficult. He said, look,
I'm mortified that this has become an issue. He's saying,
it's pretty much it's clearly an accident. We obviously don't
(18:34):
advocate for this, and he said it was probably automated
spell check, not our proofreaders. We think this error is forgivable.
It's a silly mistake. There's no implication. And if you
are uncomfortable with your copy of the pasta Bible, just
give it back to us and we will give you
(18:56):
a new book.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Stop being offended the public, right, yeah, go luck with that.
Don't be a bunch of doords. Oh man, you and
your you and your segues.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
I don't know if doord is going to work as
an insult.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I think it does. It kind of sounds like adults
or you know, or dork. You know is great. What's
the deal with doord?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
What's the deal with door? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
That's good. The very sign of feld in of you. Well,
what is the deal with dord? I don't know this one?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Oh yeah. It is often called arguably the most famous
dictionary typo of all time. Travel back with us to
nineteen thirty four. The new edition of Webster's New International
Dictionary has published, and the editors say, okay, we're gonna
put it. We're going to institute a different system. We're
(19:47):
listing abbreviations and words separately. And you know, these are
the kind of improvements you always see with reference works
year over year or textbooks. You know, just a little
bit of clarification that's right.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
And also, like you know, sometimes new words do get
get admitted. You know, that's sort of a thing, right,
isn't There usually like a way we always talk about
it like this, Yeah, the word ghosted got you know,
admitted to the Webster's Miriam Webster Dictionary. And also what
the Oxford English that's maybe the one that we typically
talk to.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, the oed right right, Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They make a bit of a to do about it.
It's a bit of a newsmaker whenever there's new words.
But doored unfortunately not a real word, not a new word.
It had no place or business in the zeitgeist whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, if you look at this edition from nineteen thirty four,
you'll see one entry for dor soapsis or door coppice,
which is the type of small kangaroo, and dori golden
in color. Between those two there is a word called
doored and it is described as a noun meaning density.
(20:54):
In the fields of physics and chemistry, that.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I believe that, I would absolutely believe that dude cork
the word rsule what are some other action the action
from a distance? Even, Yeah, chemistry words are already wild,
so we would believe this if we were not experts
in physics or chemistry, which we are not in nineteen
(21:17):
thirties or in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
But it was not a word. It had not been
accepted into canonical English. It wasn't it wasn't a misprint
of a word with a different definition. It just happened.
And Webster's can later go on to confirm this. But
it's also interesting if you look at the definition, there's
(21:40):
none of the usual bells and whistles of a dictionary entry.
There's no etymology, there's no sentence or example of use.
So we don't really we kind of know how this
how this ghost word came to be? Right? Who called
it a ghost? Credit?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Where credits due? That's clever, that's from snoops. Good on
you Snopes. So in the first edition of Websters, we
started to see abbreviations making the making the cut, things
like LB for pounds.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah yeah, and they were uh, they were combined with words,
so they were all in the same list. You know
about that? Then? How do you feel about that? That
seems I think that's I think it was smarter them
to divide the two. They didn't eventually do that. Right, yeah, yeah,
I think the edition was.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I think it's a convoluting element that perhaps led to
our kerfuffle here.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah. So you would be looking at the entry for
the word lazy. Everybody knows that word if you're speaking English,
and right after it would be LB four pound and
LB is already, frankly a very weird abbreviation, you know,
because there's no L and there's no B in the
actual word pound. Oh wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
So even in this first edition they were supposed to
be kind of in their own little section.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
They didn't think it through.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
They were intermingled, that's right, Ben intermingled in edition one,
and then they thought better of it, and by edition
two it was almost more of like glossary type material, right,
like a little section about an appendix let's call on.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in nineteen thirty one, the Boffins
had prepared this card that had notation on it, the
notation D or D cont forward slash density big D
or little D. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of energy.
(23:41):
This card, from what we could tell, was meant to
indicate that the next edition of the dictionary that they
printed would have listings for capital D and little D
as abbreviations for the word density I get it now,
and instead D or DC came doored and got a
(24:01):
definition that was density related in science, So the word
was already out of place. Yeah you know, and yeah,
yeah I you ever thought about ben the logistics of
we were giving them a hard time, But the logistics
of manually printing absolutely dense reference type material like this
It makes your head spin.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Absolutely the level of organization to not have it all
be totally jacked up, it really boggles the mind. So
good on you printers of the past.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
It also reminds me of that crazy, ridiculous, somewhat inspiring
but somewhat disturbing story of the creation of the Oxford
English Dictionary. You probably heard the ODA novel, Yeah, the
novel about the Professor and the mad Man. When he
became a film. I'm where we must have talked about this, Okay.
(24:54):
There's a book called The Professor and the mad Man.
It's nonfiction. It's by a guy named Simon Winchester, and
it explores this bizarre and real relationship between the chief
editor of the OED, a guy named James Murray, and
one of the most prolific contributors to the first edition
(25:15):
a guy named William Chester Minor. So what what James
Murray did you know? To your point about this being
a herculean effort, James Murray asked interested members of the
public to help contribute definition. He crowdsourced it. He crowdsourced
about that. Yeah, and it worked really well. The one
of the most frequent contributors. This guy was just always
(25:38):
mailing new entries. It turned out that he was mailing
all of these so frequently. He had because he had
a lot of time on his hands. He was a
patient and a mental asylum. Oh fun, Yeah, I'll give
you something to do. It'll give you something to do
with your hands. I guess right. What was that guy
that the guy that drew lots of weird cats? Lewis Wayne.
(26:00):
That's a fun one too, y'all check that one out.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Sad at the end of the day, but really cool
psychedelic drawings of cats and the somewhat misnomer of it,
like documenting his dissent into madness or whatever, right, like
it was a little bit overstating the case.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
We've got a series on it and the art is
just super cool. I would love that as a coffee
table book. Right. Oh that's a good call. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'd love it as an inexplicable cookbook. I want to
make a fake cookbook psychedelic. Yeah, it just says add
like a little bit of periwinkle. No, wait, that's really
add a shade of blue. Isn't a periwinkle? Also like
(26:36):
a tiny mollusk? Yeah? Yeah, so that's too real. You
could eat a periwinkle ridiculous, Yeah I have. Yeah, yeah,
they're not bad, not bad. What about a barnicle? You
ever eating a barnacle? I have not.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
People are screaming at their podcast device right now, I'll
get on with it. All right. Let's move on to
Philip Babcock Grove, editor in chief of That's Right, the
third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, who wrote an
(27:09):
article about this whole fiasco in nineteen fifty four. He said,
as soon as someone also entered the pronunciation, doord was
given the slap on the back that sent breath into
its being.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Well, you gotta read this one, Ben, this next part
about the etymologists. Yeah, yeah, it continues. Whether the etymologist
ever got a chance to stifle it, there's no evidence
it simply had no etymology. Therefore, only a proofreader had
the final opportunity at the word. But as the proof
passed under his scrutiny, he was at the moment not
so alert and not.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
As suspicious as Khel. Yeah, the proofreader the last line
of defense. So similar to similar to that weird report
about the catibalistic cookbook, this edition of the New International
Dictionary went out with doord, an entirely made up word,
(28:05):
and nobody noticed. For five years a bunch of people
were reading it, and just like us, they went, oh,
door door door is also it's it would be spelled differently,
but it's when you run into a door.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, you got door, just got door? Uh huh yeah
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I had a high school. Uh this, I don't know
if I've talked about this guy before. His name was
mister Dowd's and it's not the same as door, but
he felt like he could have been in mister dor
He was the computer teacher. But he was this really tight,
little built bodybuilder of a man and uh he uh
but like Megan, he looked like the guy that played
(28:43):
Darth Vader.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And if you'll remember him in a clockwork Orange.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
He's the big dude that carries around the writer and
this is what mister Dowd's look like. He even wore
these big, thick grim glasses. But he and his bodybuilding
buddies for fun in college. He said they would like
pick up people's Mini coopers and like move them to
a different parking.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
That's awesome. I've heard of that, brink. Yeah. Also, dord
Uh could possibly be a sub community of Nords in Skyrim.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Arrow and the Knee and as its own etymological hilarity.
Didn't we talk about how it meant to like propose
or something like that.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
You guys married, Yeah, but jumping to the Doors would
live in Uh, would live in There'd be Nords living
on the Morrow.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Wind Nor the Doors would live on the fjords of
Nords in dagger Fell, to be called Dords.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Nors.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Come on, guys, that's good. No, No, that makes sense. What
makes sense too.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
But Daggerfall is not a providence. But it's just people
who live in the city.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Of Daggerfall, right, is that in DLC. I don't know that.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Daggerfall is the largest city in High Rock, which is
also the name of the second game, Daggerfall, which takes
place in the providences of high Rock and uh hammer Fall,
which is where which is where the Dunmer I forget
it wasn't cog correct, but he threw pretty much the
dark n his hammer, and that's where atlanted hammer Fall
(30:14):
as actually the hammer you can get from Malacath in Skyrim.
By the way, the rumor is that Elder Scroll six
is believed to be in high Rock, but then other
people believe it's going to be in Hammerfall's confused with
dagger Fall, because this is always the most confusing way
to phrase these things, but no one actually knows. Moving on,
(30:37):
I intentionally do that as in a filibuster every single time
because I watched Noel's pain.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Whenever I do that, yeah, it's yeah, it's real. Potentially
Elder Scrolls will come out with its next iteration. Will
podcast still be a thing? Will World War three happen? First?
We don't know, but we do know five years after
this dictionary and thence the word doored. An editor is
a guy who works literally with Webster's dictionary is reading
(31:05):
this and he goes, hang on a tick doored. And
this person is brave enough to be the individual that
raises their hands and says yeah. Hey, maybe I'm the
dumb one here, but I've never heard of door? Why
does it have no etymology? Why does it have no
sample case? And guys, I think there may be a
(31:30):
mistake or mystery here. So they banish doored from previous
editions and almost no one noticed.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, and it's pronounced diord right rights, pronounced however you
want to, because it's not a real word. But as
you like to say, ben, English is a living language
and we're still learning it ourselves. So who's to say,
maybe doord will actually come around and finally get its due. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Because people would compile this dictionary back in the day,
(32:03):
a bunch of dictionaries were ripping each other off. So
it's kind of like how one Greco Roman historian would
make one error and everybody else would just quote that
error as gospel. So the word doored, despite being outed
as a ghost word of phantom phrase, it keeps showing
(32:24):
up in future dictionaries. And I love it. I love
faith like a real ghost. Yeah, and get rid of
weird books.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Let's make a let's make a nonsensical, ridiculous history cookbook. One.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
People will buy it because it's a cookbook. Sure, and
we're definitely gonna do it.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Two we could throw in all yeah, we're definitely gonna
get to it. Yeah, we're gonna throw in all sorts
of surreal like real Kodek Seraphinanius kind of stuff. I
would love that, Yeah, absolutely, But until then, there's actually more.
We have a bit more.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
But I think we're gonna deserve it for one of
our future Like it's gonna be its own kind of
psychedelic stew since where we just you know, throw in
a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
but no fresh ground people.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
No, No, that's a guarantee for throwing green. However, is people.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
We are going to get to more prestigious crazy typos
like the Lincoln Memorial and of course we tease NASA.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
We're just gonna tell you this. It's sometimes considered a
million dollar typo. You'll have to tune into a future episode.
Oh yeah, see what we're.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Talking The Cannibal one was only a twenty thousand dollars typo.
What could a million dollars? Maybe we got to talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I don't know, it's it's pretty short, all right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll play these radio games. Okay, let's play the ring here.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I just it's too good not to give a little
quick rundown on and I think the people deserve it.
On July twenty second, nineteen sixty two, Mariner one, the spacecraft,
you know, the one, the Mariner one, was being prepared
for a mission to Venus and was set to launch
from Cape Canaver, which you may have heard of there
in Florida. Just a few minutes after liftoff, however, they
(34:06):
shuttle did have to be destroyed due to a course correction.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah. Yeah, The official account still dispute what caused this
probe to veer dangerously off course just seconds after launch.
And a lot of people will tell you there was
a missing hyphen in the guidance code. Other people will
tell you there was a missing decimal and that's what
(34:32):
that's what created this domino effect of miss steering.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Now, this is an unmanned spacecraft. Let's just be clear, think, no,
no lives were lost due to this type of graphical error.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
But that's right.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know, when you're dealing with like code and coordinates
and things like that, every little character matters.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, this poor guy the Mariner won because I do
anthropomorphized robots fame. It lost control, it lost contact, and
NASA made the call just two hundred and ninety three
seconds after launch to blow the thing up. We know
that it was a simple coding mistake. Like you said, Noel,
it's not This computer code is not the same as
(35:15):
writing poetry or fiction. It's not supposed to be open
to soft interpretation. You're not supposed to get the gist.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
You gotta get it right overall, when we say a
million dollar typo, we're talking more than a single million
all in right, NASA lost around eighteen to five milk.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, and they they say that despite the rumors about
missing hyphens or decimals, the real culprit here was the
omission of something called an overbar for the symbol R
for radius. So just a regular capital R instead of
an R with a line over it. So an error
(35:56):
a typo of not even a full letter, just a
little like a big little D situation. Yeah, just over again. Yeah,
the big R was missing. It's a little it's happened.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, And Arthur C. Clark had some snark to dish out.
You may know him from two thousand and one a
Space Odyssey fame. He called it with his rape here
with the most expensive hyphen in history, which is you know,
it was an under par Arthur C.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Clark. He is the hat the hyphen that you're oversimplifying
it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Well, well, well yeah, you know he's got away with words.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
There's a poetry to the man. No idea what that
book is about, though, which book? Two thousand and one
Space Odyssey? You know what that's about.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
It's about the existence in the universe. What is the
star Child? There's a sequel to the movie.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I haven't seen.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
It's supposed to be terrible. Boy Scher is in it.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
It's not great. It's an airplane watch. But I love
that you're pointing out this is a multi million dollar
mistake because even when it occurred, they were already set
back eighteen point five million. That is over one hundred
and eighty million dollars today. That's exactly right, and that
is where we will leave you, fine, ridiculous historians. Huge
(37:15):
thanks to our super producer, Max.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
The Giant skyrim nerd Williams, who I love dearly with
all of my heart.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
But yeah, I don't know. I I just know Skyrim.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I have a map of the thing in my guest
room that was gifted to me by the lovely Matthew Frederick,
who we will also think and who will be joining
us on this very program. That's Matthew two hands Frederick
from stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
What are we talking about? Coconut Yeah, lovely bunch of
coconuts taking it to the extreme. This also we wanted
him with some good news. Mariner Too did launch just
thirty six days later. It flew by Venus. It was
the first successful scientific planetary mission. So NASA was able
(37:59):
to to power through this misstep, and we can't wait
for you to power through some ridiculous history with us
in the future. We've already teased some guests. Please check
out our upcoming exploration with the legendary Jorge cham check
out our Rude Dudes a Ridiculous Crime. You like our show,
(38:19):
you'll love them, Ay j Bahamas, Jacobs, the Living Type himself,
Jonathan Strickler aka the Quister, more of a semi colon really.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah yeah yeah, Oh, Colin's I have some hot takes
on those What about an Oxford comma?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I don't even get me started. Oh Man, the Oxford
comment We've got some stuff to break down off air.
We can't wait to hear your favorite ridiculous type is.
We'll see you next time before.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
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, Fellow Ridiculous his historians. Thank you as always
so so much for how are you doing this? Monster?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We got to give a shout out to our super producer,
hurting my heart.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Last last one was hurting everything.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I do want to point out that beforehand, I had
like five mental typos before we start here.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
As an I.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Even clapped and when I kind of three in my
own head and clapped for her, realizing at the count
out loud.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
For that to work, we got to fun. It's a ritual.
It's technically a technical thing, but it's also fun to do.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It just gets us on board. It's a fun activity.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
And just to confirm so no one has to be worried,
I can confirm that we are in fact actually recording.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
This right now. Tight tight, Hey, you're no me. I'm
Ben Bullen you. A while back, Noel, we had a
lot of fun, uh you. Max and I were recorded
in the studio about a series on famous mistranslations.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's true, Remember that I remember nothing about it. No,
that's not true. One of them was about Coca Cola
being a ghosts.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
You're the ghost of your ancestors back Jimmy Carter wanted
to have sex with Eastern European country. Can't remember which
one specifically.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, I think it may have been Germany, or that
may have been the old the old tale about Kennedy
and the alleged donuts. I just want to make love
to the world. Yeah, we've all been there to do.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
We're talking about a sort of I guess, adjacent topic
today to mistranslations. We're talking about typos, which is, I
don't know, mistranslations is sort of its own ball of axe,
and that it requires sort of good intentions and then
just kind of missing the boat.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Typos are just.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Kind of about willy nilly, you know, making mistakes. Usually
it just involves a couple of extra letters, like you said, Bet,
But sometimes a typo can become a mistranslation, can't it,
or a very least an unintended word that has hilarious
It's an often controversial meaning and fallout.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it can change the nature of what is being communicated.
We're grateful for Research Associate Jeff factor g helping us
out with this. I was trying to do some typo
jokes as we were recording so much more when you speak,
it's more of a but I tried to. I tried
to misspell ridiculous history, and it was tough to make
(03:06):
my fingers do it.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Oh Okay, I got as you were doing verbal typos
and typographical typos. Okay, good to know you were you were,
You were committing to the bit, Ben, I respect the hustle. Uh.
Today we're talking about major typos that cause some whipsies,
some chaos.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
A little boobies, yeah, and typos are Look, there is
no organization, there is no authority that is immune to typos,
because they're very easy to mess up. If you read
a lot, then you'll notice some typos occur more often
than others. A famous example in graphic novels in particular,
(03:51):
is actually Soldier spelled solidaire.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Interesting a little inversion, perhaps right transposition rather or maybe
it's neither of those things. But you know, I guess
in this day and age, when most of our typing
or our text based communication happens on devices, we've got
a lot of auto correct typos that are kind of fun, yeah,
and can be really hilarious. I don't know this has
(04:17):
ever happened to you, Ben, but has your phone ever
accidentally gone into voice to text mode when you didn't
know it, and it was just listening in on a
whole conversation, and you look down and there's this absurdist
composed poem there waiting. Sometimes I just send them to
whoever it was composed to. Its fun, you know, for
posterity and for art.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
You know, I mentioned that I think on stuff that
I want you to know. But my most infamous and most
embarrassing typo from Auto correct. I was texting with my
mother when she was around, and I told her we
were just shooting the breeze, and I said what I
meant to say was yeah, mom, I'm thinking of growing
(04:58):
a mustache. And what Auto It's infinite wisdom decided I
meant to say was yeah, mom, I think I'm thinking
of growing a moist ache. Oh you've mentioned that before,
been a moist ache. It sounds so, oh my goodness, scandalous.
You said that to your mother, I know, but luckily, luckily,
(05:18):
she was a very forgiving woman. And it wasn't like
I was making typos over at NASA, though NASA itself
is not immune to typos. Maybe we start with a title.
I know, we both love the Wicked Bible. What have
you done? Then I'll tell you what you've done is
a brilliant segue.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh sucks the Wicked Bible.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
The King James version.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Of the Bible one of the most ubiquitous versions of
said holy text, spearheaded by Yes, you guessed it, King James. Ah, yeah,
King Jane, which one from earlier?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, that's all I need to know.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And there is, if you can museum for just about everything,
a Museum of the Bible, and they have a dot
org and they had this to say about a very
infamous typo that took place in printing of the Bible.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Of course, the King.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
James was one of the most widely circulated versions, and
that's what led to it being so ubiquitous even today
from collections, not Museum of the Bible dot org. Printing
the Bible with movable type on an early modern press
was a remarkably difficult task. As the King's printer, Robert
Barker held the exclusive right to print all English Bibles,
(06:33):
including the King James Bible, but his early editions were
marred by poor quality. And you guessed the typographical errors. Yes,
in the beginning, God said, let there be I yeah,
and everything was I.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So if I can jump in here really quick, Noel
posed this onto the universe. So I wanted to follow
up with the King James of Bible fame is King
James one of England, King James sixth of Scotland. We've
talked about this in the past, but basically those lines
were merged together after the whole King Henry eighth and
all that and all the fallout.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
He exactly good.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Note King James One, his buddy Robert Barker was making
a mess of the English language and Bible form.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
The dangers of monopoly then as now, look for the
majority of typos. If you're reading in a language that
you're already fluent in, you'll usually be able to get
the gist right because your brain will kind of pre
arrange the pattern, but it'll transpose it into the right
direction right. Yeah, yeah, including entire words right and sections
(07:47):
of phrases. But this is one of the most hilarious
history rocket typos in all of Europe.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's a typo biomission. Yes, it still is still a
type oftheless. In sixteen thirty one there was this reprint
of the King James Bible Robert Barker that we just mentioned,
teamed up with a guy named Marca Martin Lewis to
publish this. But they they whipped on one big important thing,
(08:18):
the seventh Commandment. The seventh Commandment in English translation reads
thou shaltst not commit adultery. Clear got already explicit, not
open to interpretation unless you miss the word not. That's right,
and well, not all the commandments are things you're not
supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Some of them are things you're supposed to do. So
if you didn't know.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Better, you might think, here, wait a minute, I missed
the memo on this one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
They totally missed the word not. And so this Bible
had the seventh Commandment printed as thou shalts commit adultery
and it appeared in like a thousand copies of this text.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That's right, yeah, which isn't a lot. And you got
to imagine those would be worth a pretty penny. And
that is in fact the case. I found an article
from The Guardian from back in twenty fifteen where one
of these wick rare as heck wicked Bibles went on sale,
one of only ten remaining copies of sixteen thirty one
Sinners or wicked Bible with the as the Guardian puts it,
(09:19):
infamous dipo imploring readers to commit adultery. And it went
on auction for actually the asking price was between ten
and fifteen thousand pounds. Not sure what it's sold for.
I bet we could figure it out.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Oh yeah, but speaking of.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Pounds, yeah, this was They were pounded a little bit
for this mistake.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
There was a bit of a fee involved, a bit
of a fine. Yeah, hold up to the court of
the current king at the time, keeting Charles the First
and Charles the First is just rightly upset. He said,
you guys are making us look bad. We don't support
adultery on paper. As the king, I just commit adultery.
(10:00):
And this is like totally my thing. You know, you're
messing up. You're jacking up my spot. Man blowing up
the spot. So they lose their printing license, that all
important royal approval. They get up a three hundred pound
fine held over their heads. This Eventually the fine gets
dismissed and three hundred pounds is an egregious amount of
(10:21):
money at this point, and most of the texts are
you know, astute listeners. You heard us say a thousand
copies were printed, only ten known copies remain. It's because
the government of the time actively sought to take these
take these naughty Bibles out of commission.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
And pretty seriously yeah yeah, because I mean, you know,
in these days, you couldn't just depend on people to
kind of fill in the blanks. You know, this could
have led to some you know, societal upheaval in the
wrong hands. Exactly what happened to the sanctity of marriage
is out the window because of the wicked Bible.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Could have led to a lot of really weird, uh,
domestic disagreements, you know, like, honey, I'm doing this as
a Christian.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Totally, and I'm sure there are many folks that truly
believe that that's what they're doing. This, unfortunately, did lead
to the sad, unwinding decline of Barker and his you
know life.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Really, I mean, it's.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Hard to walk that one back your whole You had
one job and you did a bad job, and you
got fined. You were the King's right hand printing man,
and now you're out in the cold. And his reputation
was shot. He was in and out of prison and
ultimately died in prison the King's Bench prison in sixteen
(11:42):
forty five, A bummer because.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
It's it's not the end though. That's true because there.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
There is a conspiracy theory at play on purpose. We still, yeah,
we still don't know exactly how the misprint happened. The
conspiracy theory is that there may have been an act
of in dust real sabotage. A rival printer knew just
had You know, this is a very small industry at
this time. It reminds me of that's seen an Anchorman,
(12:08):
where they like mess with Ron Bergundy's teleprompter and make
him tell san Diego to go f itself. I guess
he'll You know, that's an act that was an act
of sabotage, of character assassination, and perhaps, yeah, maybe somebody
had it out for the guy. I mean, they thought
he was a little too cozy with the king and
they wanted to cut him down a peg, and cut
him down a peg they did.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Good story, but maybe not entirely accurate if we go
to medieval studies expert Chris Jones, speaking with the Guardian
in twenty twenty two, he says, look, that sabotage thing,
it's a juicy story. But it's probably just a rumor.
Chris knows a lot about printing at this time in
the sixteen hundreds, and he says it's way more likely
(12:51):
that these printers were in a cutthroat, competitive industry and
they were trying to cut costs and they flew too far.
They were they committed a sin of like a budget
line Icarus. They flew too close to the typographical sun. Yes, yeah, yeah,
they were. They were cutting costs on copy editors, says Chris.
(13:12):
And that's what happened. So other people, devout Christians of
the time would have also burned their copies. That happened
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
This this is a cool story, one man, if you
can get one.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
You think they're still surprised by how affordable they are. No, really,
there's only ten h I mean. Max points out that
in twenty fifteen a copy sold for around forty four
thousand dollars in twenty twenty three money, which is way
cheaper than I thought it would be.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
For sure, when you said affordable, that is not a
fable affordable content in terms of like historical artifacts, in
terms of ancient Bibles.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Absolutely absolutely you can get reprints. However, Yeah, and reprints,
historical curios or always fun for us bibliophiles. There's another
one here that our pal Jeff found, which I had
(14:12):
not actually heard of. And this is neither. This is
massively offensive, but it's also now in retrospect, it's hilarious.
It happened in twenty ten, is very recent. The Pasta
Bible by Lee Blaylock had to be reprinted in Australia
because one recipe was supposed to call for salt and
(14:36):
freshly ground black people lest.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
They cause a hulla balloo and another breaking down of
civilization as we know it. We're cooking and eating our
brethren because of this damnable pasta Bible. I love the idea,
and it's funny that this is follow you know, there's
the Bible, Bible, the Wicked Bible, and then we got
the pasta Bible. And in my mind, it's a Bible
that's made of pasta. But that's I like it. I
(14:59):
like that it's that's salt and freshly ground black people.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Oh I was just reading. That's that's even worse.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, they meant black pepper, yes, of course, but then
I didn't even catch that they could have left out
black and it just would have been funny.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Now it's now they're gonna cause a race war. Yeah,
well it's it's an egregious misstep and it shows us
you can't trust automated uh spell check all the time.
You need someone to read line by line. Here's what
happened that we're gonna we're gonna explore this with again
some help from the Guardian. There's a recipe for tag
lit deli with sardines and Prosciutto's beautiful. Okay, yeah, yeah,
(15:39):
and uh it scandalized Penguin Australia, the publisher, because this
is the recipe that said you need salt and freshly
ground black, not pepper. Uh so this they didn't know
about this until someone bought the book and read it
(15:59):
and wrote to them and said, hey, you guys, quick
check in quick circle up, let's have a chat. At
this time, they had already printed seven thousand copies of
the Pasta Bible and they said, okay, well, we got
to take the l we got to destroy these because
we cannot be seeing, you know, advocating cannibalism. And the
(16:23):
head of the publishing in Penguin Australia at the time,
a guy named Robert Sessions later spoke to the Sydney
Morning Herald and said this is going to cost about
twenty thousand dollars, which, again surprisingly I thought it would
have cost more. But you can't really put a price
on the public embarrassment, right.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
It does appear to still be in print or something
called the Pasta Bible. It looks like kind of like
a coffee table type, you know, big color photograph type
recipe book.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Hmm, interesting coffee table cookbook. I hope it has a
big a big like bang a pal sticker on the
front that says now without cannibalism exactly. Now.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I'm seeing multiple covers of it, which leads me to
believe that it was printed in multiple additions. And I
do see a reprint or an image of the page
in question. Spelt Taglili with sardines and proscutto. You got
your spelt pasta, do your extra virgin olive oil, tablespoon
(17:26):
two and at tablespoons of butter, clothes of garlic, fresh
red chilis, chibata bread torn into small Interesting, Okay, I'd
like some more carbs with my carbs.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like the British with the toast sandwich,
which is still a phenomenal thing.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Indeed, Yeah, we've got dice preshudo twelve fresh sardine filets,
as the Brits might say. And then we've got salt
and freshly ground black people. Someone has circled it and
it says oops.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
And then we've got.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Some parsley roughly chopped and a quarter cup red wine vinegar.
Sounds like a delight except for them, oopsy.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Let me tell you why this is such a big deal, folks.
Outside of religious texts, the number one selling book format
is the cookbook.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh of course, so they often are reprinted many, many,
many many times.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, and so as of this time twenty ten, when
Sessions is speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald, he says, look,
we don't know how to recall copies that are already
out in the wild. To be very difficult. He said, look,
I'm mortified that this has become an issue. He's saying,
it's pretty much it's clearly an accident. We obviously don't
(18:34):
advocate for this, and he said it was probably automated
spell check, not our proofreaders. We think this error is forgivable.
It's a silly mistake. There's no implication. And if you
are uncomfortable with your copy of the pasta Bible, just
give it back to us and we will give you
(18:56):
a new book.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Stop being offended the public, right, yeah, go luck with that.
Don't be a bunch of doords. Oh man, you and
your you and your segues.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
I don't know if doord is going to work as
an insult.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I think it does. It kind of sounds like adults
or you know, or dork. You know is great. What's
the deal with doord?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
What's the deal with door? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
That's good. The very sign of feld in of you. Well,
what is the deal with dord? I don't know this one?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Oh yeah. It is often called arguably the most famous
dictionary typo of all time. Travel back with us to
nineteen thirty four. The new edition of Webster's New International
Dictionary has published, and the editors say, okay, we're gonna
put it. We're going to institute a different system. We're
(19:47):
listing abbreviations and words separately. And you know, these are
the kind of improvements you always see with reference works
year over year or textbooks. You know, just a little
bit of clarification that's right.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
And also, like you know, sometimes new words do get
get admitted. You know, that's sort of a thing, right,
isn't There usually like a way we always talk about
it like this, Yeah, the word ghosted got you know,
admitted to the Webster's Miriam Webster Dictionary. And also what
the Oxford English that's maybe the one that we typically
talk to.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, the oed right right, Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They make a bit of a to do about it.
It's a bit of a newsmaker whenever there's new words.
But doored unfortunately not a real word, not a new word.
It had no place or business in the zeitgeist whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, if you look at this edition from nineteen thirty four,
you'll see one entry for dor soapsis or door coppice,
which is the type of small kangaroo, and dori golden
in color. Between those two there is a word called
doored and it is described as a noun meaning density.
(20:54):
In the fields of physics and chemistry, that.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I believe that, I would absolutely believe that dude cork
the word rsule what are some other action the action
from a distance? Even, Yeah, chemistry words are already wild,
so we would believe this if we were not experts
in physics or chemistry, which we are not in nineteen
(21:17):
thirties or in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
But it was not a word. It had not been
accepted into canonical English. It wasn't it wasn't a misprint
of a word with a different definition. It just happened.
And Webster's can later go on to confirm this. But
it's also interesting if you look at the definition, there's
(21:40):
none of the usual bells and whistles of a dictionary entry.
There's no etymology, there's no sentence or example of use.
So we don't really we kind of know how this
how this ghost word came to be? Right? Who called
it a ghost? Credit?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Where credits due? That's clever, that's from snoops. Good on
you Snopes. So in the first edition of Websters, we
started to see abbreviations making the making the cut, things
like LB for pounds.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah yeah, and they were uh, they were combined with words,
so they were all in the same list. You know
about that? Then? How do you feel about that? That
seems I think that's I think it was smarter them
to divide the two. They didn't eventually do that. Right, yeah, yeah,
I think the edition was.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I think it's a convoluting element that perhaps led to
our kerfuffle here.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah. So you would be looking at the entry for
the word lazy. Everybody knows that word if you're speaking English,
and right after it would be LB four pound and
LB is already, frankly a very weird abbreviation, you know,
because there's no L and there's no B in the
actual word pound. Oh wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
So even in this first edition they were supposed to
be kind of in their own little section.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
They didn't think it through.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
They were intermingled, that's right, Ben intermingled in edition one,
and then they thought better of it, and by edition
two it was almost more of like glossary type material, right,
like a little section about an appendix let's call on.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in nineteen thirty one, the Boffins
had prepared this card that had notation on it, the
notation D or D cont forward slash density big D
or little D. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of energy.
(23:41):
This card, from what we could tell, was meant to
indicate that the next edition of the dictionary that they
printed would have listings for capital D and little D
as abbreviations for the word density I get it now,
and instead D or DC came doored and got a
(24:01):
definition that was density related in science, So the word
was already out of place. Yeah you know, and yeah,
yeah I you ever thought about ben the logistics of
we were giving them a hard time, But the logistics
of manually printing absolutely dense reference type material like this
It makes your head spin.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Absolutely the level of organization to not have it all
be totally jacked up, it really boggles the mind. So
good on you printers of the past.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
It also reminds me of that crazy, ridiculous, somewhat inspiring
but somewhat disturbing story of the creation of the Oxford
English Dictionary. You probably heard the ODA novel, Yeah, the
novel about the Professor and the mad Man. When he
became a film. I'm where we must have talked about this, Okay.
(24:54):
There's a book called The Professor and the mad Man.
It's nonfiction. It's by a guy named Simon Winchester, and
it explores this bizarre and real relationship between the chief
editor of the OED, a guy named James Murray, and
one of the most prolific contributors to the first edition
(25:15):
a guy named William Chester Minor. So what what James
Murray did you know? To your point about this being
a herculean effort, James Murray asked interested members of the
public to help contribute definition. He crowdsourced it. He crowdsourced
about that. Yeah, and it worked really well. The one
of the most frequent contributors. This guy was just always
(25:38):
mailing new entries. It turned out that he was mailing
all of these so frequently. He had because he had
a lot of time on his hands. He was a
patient and a mental asylum. Oh fun, Yeah, I'll give
you something to do. It'll give you something to do
with your hands. I guess right. What was that guy
that the guy that drew lots of weird cats? Lewis Wayne.
(26:00):
That's a fun one too, y'all check that one out.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Sad at the end of the day, but really cool
psychedelic drawings of cats and the somewhat misnomer of it,
like documenting his dissent into madness or whatever, right, like
it was a little bit overstating the case.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
We've got a series on it and the art is
just super cool. I would love that as a coffee
table book. Right. Oh that's a good call. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'd love it as an inexplicable cookbook. I want to
make a fake cookbook psychedelic. Yeah, it just says add
like a little bit of periwinkle. No, wait, that's really
add a shade of blue. Isn't a periwinkle? Also like
(26:36):
a tiny mollusk? Yeah? Yeah, so that's too real. You
could eat a periwinkle ridiculous, Yeah I have. Yeah, yeah,
they're not bad, not bad. What about a barnicle? You
ever eating a barnacle? I have not.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
People are screaming at their podcast device right now, I'll
get on with it. All right. Let's move on to
Philip Babcock Grove, editor in chief of That's Right, the
third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, who wrote an
(27:09):
article about this whole fiasco in nineteen fifty four. He said,
as soon as someone also entered the pronunciation, doord was
given the slap on the back that sent breath into
its being.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Well, you gotta read this one, Ben, this next part
about the etymologists. Yeah, yeah, it continues. Whether the etymologist
ever got a chance to stifle it, there's no evidence
it simply had no etymology. Therefore, only a proofreader had
the final opportunity at the word. But as the proof
passed under his scrutiny, he was at the moment not
so alert and not.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
As suspicious as Khel. Yeah, the proofreader the last line
of defense. So similar to similar to that weird report
about the catibalistic cookbook, this edition of the New International
Dictionary went out with doord, an entirely made up word,
(28:05):
and nobody noticed. For five years a bunch of people
were reading it, and just like us, they went, oh,
door door door is also it's it would be spelled differently,
but it's when you run into a door.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, you got door, just got door? Uh huh yeah
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I had a high school. Uh this, I don't know
if I've talked about this guy before. His name was
mister Dowd's and it's not the same as door, but
he felt like he could have been in mister dor
He was the computer teacher. But he was this really tight,
little built bodybuilder of a man and uh he uh
but like Megan, he looked like the guy that played
(28:43):
Darth Vader.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And if you'll remember him in a clockwork Orange.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
He's the big dude that carries around the writer and
this is what mister Dowd's look like. He even wore
these big, thick grim glasses. But he and his bodybuilding
buddies for fun in college. He said they would like
pick up people's Mini coopers and like move them to
a different parking.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
That's awesome. I've heard of that, brink. Yeah. Also, dord
Uh could possibly be a sub community of Nords in Skyrim.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Arrow and the Knee and as its own etymological hilarity.
Didn't we talk about how it meant to like propose
or something like that.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
You guys married, Yeah, but jumping to the Doors would
live in Uh, would live in There'd be Nords living
on the Morrow.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Wind Nor the Doors would live on the fjords of
Nords in dagger Fell, to be called Dords.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Nors.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Come on, guys, that's good. No, No, that makes sense. What
makes sense too.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
But Daggerfall is not a providence. But it's just people
who live in the city.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Of Daggerfall, right, is that in DLC. I don't know that.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Daggerfall is the largest city in High Rock, which is
also the name of the second game, Daggerfall, which takes
place in the providences of high Rock and uh hammer Fall,
which is where which is where the Dunmer I forget
it wasn't cog correct, but he threw pretty much the
dark n his hammer, and that's where atlanted hammer Fall
(30:14):
as actually the hammer you can get from Malacath in Skyrim.
By the way, the rumor is that Elder Scroll six
is believed to be in high Rock, but then other
people believe it's going to be in Hammerfall's confused with
dagger Fall, because this is always the most confusing way
to phrase these things, but no one actually knows. Moving on,
(30:37):
I intentionally do that as in a filibuster every single time
because I watched Noel's pain.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Whenever I do that, yeah, it's yeah, it's real. Potentially
Elder Scrolls will come out with its next iteration. Will
podcast still be a thing? Will World War three happen? First?
We don't know, but we do know five years after
this dictionary and thence the word doored. An editor is
a guy who works literally with Webster's dictionary is reading
(31:05):
this and he goes, hang on a tick doored. And
this person is brave enough to be the individual that
raises their hands and says yeah. Hey, maybe I'm the
dumb one here, but I've never heard of door? Why
does it have no etymology? Why does it have no
sample case? And guys, I think there may be a
(31:30):
mistake or mystery here. So they banish doored from previous
editions and almost no one noticed.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, and it's pronounced diord right rights, pronounced however you
want to, because it's not a real word. But as
you like to say, ben, English is a living language
and we're still learning it ourselves. So who's to say,
maybe doord will actually come around and finally get its due. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Because people would compile this dictionary back in the day,
(32:03):
a bunch of dictionaries were ripping each other off. So
it's kind of like how one Greco Roman historian would
make one error and everybody else would just quote that
error as gospel. So the word doored, despite being outed
as a ghost word of phantom phrase, it keeps showing
(32:24):
up in future dictionaries. And I love it. I love
faith like a real ghost. Yeah, and get rid of
weird books.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Let's make a let's make a nonsensical, ridiculous history cookbook. One.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
People will buy it because it's a cookbook. Sure, and
we're definitely gonna do it.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Two we could throw in all yeah, we're definitely gonna
get to it. Yeah, we're gonna throw in all sorts
of surreal like real Kodek Seraphinanius kind of stuff. I
would love that, Yeah, absolutely, But until then, there's actually more.
We have a bit more.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
But I think we're gonna deserve it for one of
our future Like it's gonna be its own kind of
psychedelic stew since where we just you know, throw in
a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
but no fresh ground people.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
No, No, that's a guarantee for throwing green. However, is people.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
We are going to get to more prestigious crazy typos
like the Lincoln Memorial and of course we tease NASA.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
We're just gonna tell you this. It's sometimes considered a
million dollar typo. You'll have to tune into a future episode.
Oh yeah, see what we're.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Talking The Cannibal one was only a twenty thousand dollars typo.
What could a million dollars? Maybe we got to talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I don't know, it's it's pretty short, all right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll play these radio games. Okay, let's play the ring here.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I just it's too good not to give a little
quick rundown on and I think the people deserve it.
On July twenty second, nineteen sixty two, Mariner one, the spacecraft,
you know, the one, the Mariner one, was being prepared
for a mission to Venus and was set to launch
from Cape Canaver, which you may have heard of there
in Florida. Just a few minutes after liftoff, however, they
(34:06):
shuttle did have to be destroyed due to a course correction.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah. Yeah, The official account still dispute what caused this
probe to veer dangerously off course just seconds after launch.
And a lot of people will tell you there was
a missing hyphen in the guidance code. Other people will
tell you there was a missing decimal and that's what
(34:32):
that's what created this domino effect of miss steering.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Now, this is an unmanned spacecraft. Let's just be clear, think, no,
no lives were lost due to this type of graphical error.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
But that's right.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know, when you're dealing with like code and coordinates
and things like that, every little character matters.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, this poor guy the Mariner won because I do
anthropomorphized robots fame. It lost control, it lost contact, and
NASA made the call just two hundred and ninety three
seconds after launch to blow the thing up. We know
that it was a simple coding mistake. Like you said, Noel,
it's not This computer code is not the same as
(35:15):
writing poetry or fiction. It's not supposed to be open
to soft interpretation. You're not supposed to get the gist.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
You gotta get it right overall, when we say a
million dollar typo, we're talking more than a single million
all in right, NASA lost around eighteen to five milk.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, and they they say that despite the rumors about
missing hyphens or decimals, the real culprit here was the
omission of something called an overbar for the symbol R
for radius. So just a regular capital R instead of
an R with a line over it. So an error
(35:56):
a typo of not even a full letter, just a
little like a big little D situation. Yeah, just over again. Yeah,
the big R was missing. It's a little it's happened.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, And Arthur C. Clark had some snark to dish out.
You may know him from two thousand and one a
Space Odyssey fame. He called it with his rape here
with the most expensive hyphen in history, which is you know,
it was an under par Arthur C.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Clark. He is the hat the hyphen that you're oversimplifying
it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Well, well, well yeah, you know he's got away with words.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
There's a poetry to the man. No idea what that
book is about, though, which book? Two thousand and one
Space Odyssey? You know what that's about.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
It's about the existence in the universe. What is the
star Child? There's a sequel to the movie.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I haven't seen.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
It's supposed to be terrible. Boy Scher is in it.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
It's not great. It's an airplane watch. But I love
that you're pointing out this is a multi million dollar
mistake because even when it occurred, they were already set
back eighteen point five million. That is over one hundred
and eighty million dollars today. That's exactly right, and that
is where we will leave you, fine, ridiculous historians. Huge
(37:15):
thanks to our super producer, Max.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
The Giant skyrim nerd Williams, who I love dearly with
all of my heart.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
But yeah, I don't know. I I just know Skyrim.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I have a map of the thing in my guest
room that was gifted to me by the lovely Matthew Frederick,
who we will also think and who will be joining
us on this very program. That's Matthew two hands Frederick
from stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
What are we talking about? Coconut Yeah, lovely bunch of
coconuts taking it to the extreme. This also we wanted
him with some good news. Mariner Too did launch just
thirty six days later. It flew by Venus. It was
the first successful scientific planetary mission. So NASA was able
(37:59):
to to power through this misstep, and we can't wait
for you to power through some ridiculous history with us
in the future. We've already teased some guests. Please check
out our upcoming exploration with the legendary Jorge cham check
out our Rude Dudes a Ridiculous Crime. You like our show,
(38:19):
you'll love them, Ay j Bahamas, Jacobs, the Living Type himself,
Jonathan Strickler aka the Quister, more of a semi colon really.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah yeah yeah, Oh, Colin's I have some hot takes
on those What about an Oxford comma?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I don't even get me started. Oh Man, the Oxford
comment We've got some stuff to break down off air.
We can't wait to hear your favorite ridiculous type is.
We'll see you next time before.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
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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