Month: January 2021

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This is Why “It’s A Wonderful Life” Flopped at the Box Office, and How It Ended Up a Holiday Classic

There’s a good chance your family has some kind of tradition when it comes to the movies you watch during the holidays. It might be children’s classics, like Charlie Brown or How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

It might be modern favorites like Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story, or maybe you just love marathoning every Hallmark Christmas movie they can throw at you in the span of two months.

If you’re like my family, you enjoy mixing in an oldie or two, like White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Meet Me in St. Louis, and yes, It’s a Wonderful Life.

Image Credit: Republic Pictures

The story of George Bailey’s descent into despair and subsequent triumph over the certainty that everyone would be better off without him has become a tradition for many, and I don’t know about you, but that heartwarming ending gets me every single time.

It’s a little surprising to learn, then, that audiences originally panned the film so hard that it was considered a complete box office flop – this despite Academy Award magnet Frank Capra at the helm and America’s beloved everyman, James Stewart, in the starring role.

None of that mattered to audiences in 1946, and the flop was so bad that it killed Liberty Films, Capra’s production company.

Image Credit: Republic Pictures

Frank Capra had made a name for himself in the 1930s with hits like It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He took a break during the war to produce propaganda films for the government, but in 1946 he was ready to jump back into producing films about the thing he loved most – freedom.

Liberty Films was born, and they decided their first film would be an adaptation of a short story titled The Greatest Gift (alternate title: The Man Who Was Never Born).

It was, of course, It’s a Wonderful Life, and with a $2 million budget, it was a huge risk.

The production process was fraught with drama. There were script rewrites, a bloated shooting schedule, and they have trouble keeping crew, all of which meant most of the budget was gone before filming even wrapped.

Image Credit: Republic Pictures

It’s a Wonderful Life released just after The Best Years of Our Lives, and it soon became clear that audiences and critics alike preferred the hard-hitting drama of the latter to the message of hope and the worth of simple values espoused by Capra and Co.

The Best Years of Our Lives won awards, it won the box office, and everyone forgot It’s a Wonderful Life ever existed. Capra sold his Liberty Films to Paramount and he only directed 5 more films in his career (none of which achieved what his pre-war movies did).

In 1974, though, a clerical error resurrected It’s a Wonderful Life from certain death on a dusty shelf.

The woman who owned the film’s copyright forgot to file for a renewal, and the movie entered public domain. Any television station could air the movie as often as they liked without paying a cent – and as you may have realized, networks aren’t shy about roping in viewers with – to quote Mr. Potter – “sentimental hogwash.”

People who were experiencing life after WWII wanted nothing to do with the sweet nostalgia of the film, but it turns out that audiences 30 years later had a strange sort of yearning for those days.

Image Credit: Republic Pictures

The Wall Street Journal spoke with Capra about the film’s revival after it was clear it was going to stick.

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.

The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it.

I’m like a parent whose kid grows up to be president.

I’m proud…but it’s the kid who did the work. I didn’t even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea.”

In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled that Republic Pictures, the film’s original copyright owner, could regain ownership of the movie. What that means is that now NBC is the only one who is allowed to show it, and they manage to show some restraint – they typically air it once or twice during the holidays.

So, there you have it. Proof that you really never can predict success, and there are no bad stories – sometimes you just have to wait 30 or so years to find the right audience.

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The Air Force Is Putting Lasers on Their Fighter Jets

You read that right, my friends – laser death rays are a really real thing that the actual military is going to be utilizing in the near future.

I mean, I realize that most of this timeline is a horror show and The Jetsons’ promised us flying cars and our hoverboards are a horrible imitation, but I mean…death rays are pretty cool, right?

The Air Force is working on a laser weapon, known as SHiELD. It’s a pod-mounted laser that’s meant to protect fighters from incoming missiles, and will be used initially to protect older fighters with less effective stealth technology.

Image Credit: U.S. Navy

SHiELD stands for Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator. Lockheed’s plan is to mount the laser on the fuselage or wing of a fighter jet, and will eventually be used in conjunction with a second weapon – the Tactical Airborne Laser Weapon System – to shoot down air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.

At the moment, pilots only have access to passive defenses against incoming missiles, like evasive action or managing to fly outside an incoming missile’s sensor arc, maybe launching flares or other measures meant to confuse tech.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

This new laser would be the first active anti-missile defense in history – and yeah, go ahead and imagine something straight out of Star Wars.

The systems will take up space on fighter jets that is typically reserved for bombs and missiles of their own, which means they won’t be added to stealthy aircraft.

Instead, SHiELD and TALWS will go on fighter jets like the F-15E, F-15C, and the new F-15EX, because they have room for more than one bomb the way it is.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

And get this: the laser could very conceivably be controlled by something that looks a lot like R2D2.

Even so, there are a few downsides to using lasers. Water moisture and smoke particles in the air can dilute a laser’s strength, and they can’t travel all that far without the beam weakening.

They’ll also have to be able to focus on the missile for long enough to heat it to the point of dissolving, which could prove tricky in an actual combat scenario.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

Even if there are problems that still need to be untangled, there’s no doubt that laser weapons are the future, and will likely go on almost all warplanes in the future.

All that’s left is to make it more practical, more affordable, and then the future is here, my friends.

And I say we could all use a win.

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Normal Words That Can Be Pronounced Two Very Different Ways

No one would argue the fact that English is a tough language. It beats up other languages in dark alleys and goes through their pockets for loose vocab – at least, that’s the word on the street.

Which is why it’s not surprising there are several words that are spelled exactly the same, and mean the same thing, but are pronounced differently depending on the speaker.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Fun, right?

At least if you know about these 10 words in advance, you’ll see them coming.

10. Data

It can be pronounced DAH-ta or DAY-ta, and is defined as “individual facts, statistics, or items of information.”

Officially, any word that comes directly from Latin (“data” does), and the stressed syllable ends in a vowel, then the vowel should have a long sound in English.

So DAY-ta is technically correct.

9. Laboratory

Do you go to work in the LAB-ore-a-tor-ee or the la-BORE-a-tree?

Easy – are you British? If so, you use the latter, and the Americans, the former.

8. Vase

There’s VAYS (rhymes with “lace”) and VAHZ (rhymes with “Oz”), but in the modern world, the latter pronunciation often comes off as too refined or “snooty” for most ears.

It is, of course, popular in Britain.

7. Mature

This one has more than two pronunciations – mah-CHURR, mah-CHOOR, and ma-TYOOR.

It used to be that pronunciations with the long ‘T’ were preferred and the others seen as lowbrow, but that’s shifted since the 1980s.

6. Tomato

This one has been made famous by a song, and New Englanders, especially, will cling to the tuh-MAH-toes with their cold, dead fingers.

The rest of us enjoy a nice summer tuh-MAY-toe and less pretension.

5. Appalachia

Have you visited Appa-LAY-sha or Appa-LATCH-a, my friends?

This one is probably dependent on which side of the Mason-Dixon line you call home. Northerners are more likely to pronounce the middle syllable like “lay,” while Southerners choose “latch.”

4. Gala

Will you be attending the GAY-luh or the GAL-uh, my good woman?

Well, properly it should be GAY-luh, since the stressed syllable ends in a vowel, but since the 1930s, either version is understood and accepted.

3. Leisure

LEH-shure or LEE-shure again comes down to South vs. North, with most Southerners preferring the British pronunciation that rhymes with “pleasure” and others opting to pronounce it so it rhymes with “seizure.”

2. Electoral

Where you you put the stress on this word – is it el-LECK-toral or el-ek-tore-ul? Maybe el-leck-TOR-al?

There’s no right answer, but the “uncultivated” latter choice is becoming more and more popular.

1. Celtic

Even though the traditional and native pronunciation is KEL-tick, the word came to English through French, which utilizes the softer ‘c’, resulting in SELL-tick.

Classical Latin would also demand the hard ‘c,’ but I would try convincing any Boston Celtics fans to change their ways, if I were you.

Good luck in the world of reading aloud. It’s designed to terrifying you!

Do you have a memory of making a mistake reading aloud? Share so we can all cringe along with you!

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A Driverless Race Car Swerved Into a Barrier for No Reason, So Maybe The Future Isn’t as Close as We Think

There are times when it feels like the future is RIGHT NOW.

We have instant communication with anyone in the world at the snap of our fingers. There are jetpack men flying through the sky. The military is developing death ray lasers for their fighter jets.

Plenty of people think driverless cars are going to be here before we know it; we’re going to be able to eat with both hands or shut our eyes if we need to while our cars take care of the details.

Now, as someone who enjoys driving a manual transmission, that doesn’t sound all that good to me – and after you read about what happened to this driverless race car, it’s probably not going to sound that good to you, either.

The autonomous car came courtesy of Roborace, who is involved in an autonomous racing league. They were broadcasting their Season Beta 1.1 race in order to showcase the potential of high speed auto races that don’t endanger human drivers.

One of the cars didn’t make it, I’m afraid.

One of the engineers explained what happened on Reddit, and said the steering mechanism was locked to the right during a process in which a human driver guides the car to the start line. That meant when the race started for real, the car drove straight into a barrier on the right side of the track.

The engineer called it an “extremely rare event,” and honestly, it sounds to me like it was more human error than an oopsie by the car.

You should definitely check this shizz out for yourself, though – there are a surprising number of self-driving racing leagues around, and you never know.

We might get treated to another crash here and there without having to worry if someone has gotten hurt in the process.

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70% of Lottery Winners End Up Totally Broke and Other Things Lotto Winners Won’t Tell You About Life After the Win

All kinds of people dream of winning the lottery. Hitting it big, striking it rich, and never having to work another day in their lives. Their kids’ college paid for, retirement handled, no more stress or worries (at least when it comes to finances).

The dream is what keeps people buying tickets, even when they know the odds are beyond long.

And some people, of course, win – but that doesn’t mean all of their dreams come true.

At least not forever.

6. They find out who their friends are.

Image Credit: Pexels

People will come out of the woodwork asking for money, even sometimes if they don’t really need it.

Harsh, maybe, but an easy way to weed out your true friends.

5. 70% of lottery winners end up broke.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Whether they won $500 million or “just” $1 mil, it takes them an average of 5 years to blow through it all.

4. It’s all relative.

Image Credit: Pexels

Even people who won more than a million bucks have reported feeling like they got the shaft when they’re in a room with people who won $100 million or more.

3. Everyone deserves a second chance.

Image Credit: Pixabay

If there’s a second-chance drawing, where you mail in your ticket or register the serial number, do it.

You don’t even have to buy another ticket, and many people don’t know about them, so the odds are better than usual.

A bit.

2. They regret their impulse purchases.

Image Credit: Pexels

Sure, you have the money for that 10,000 square-foot house, but do you need it? Do you want to pay someone to clean it? Is it haunted?

These are all questions you’ll answer…before you plant the For Sale sign in the yard.

1. They still play.

Image Credit: Pixabay

I mean, gambling is an addiction for many, so this shouldn’t be a surprise.

And since they’re broke now, they have just as much reason to buy a ticket as the rest of us.

I’m not sure whether any of these surprise me or not.

But I’ve gotta say…I’d still take my chances if the money was offered.

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Scientists Successfully Reversed the Human Aging Process for the First Time

I’m one of those people who thinks that living forever – or even for an extremely long time – seems like more of a curse than a blessing.

That said, if we could live a very long time in bodies that weren’t slowly breaking down, betraying us a bit every day, well…that could change opinions.

And it turns out that, according to researchers at Tel Aviv University, the key might be as simple as the air we breathe – the scientists involved say they’ve reversed the aging process in elderly people using “oxygen therapy.”

Image Credit: Pexels

They used hyperbaric oxygen chambers to target specific cells and the DNA linked to shorter lifespans, a process that claims to have found the “holy grail” of staying young, according to their press release. They also published the results in Aging.

The therapy involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized environment and reversed the effects of aging in 35 people over the age of 64.

The participants remained in the chamber for 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week for 3 months while researchers studied its impact on senescent cells, which are associated with tissue and organ deterioration.

In addition, they measured the length of each person’s telomere, a molecule linked to premature cellular aging.

Image Credit: Pixabay

They found that the participants’ telomeres had enlarged by an average of 20%, and their senescent cells decreased by up to 37% by the end of the trial.

In layman’s terms, they were around 25 years younger than when they’d started.

The study’s co-author, Shai Efrati, spoke about the results in part of their statement.

“The significant improvement of telomere length shown…provides the scientific community with a new foundation of understanding that aging can, indeed, be targeted and reversed at the basic cellular-biological level.”

Participants did not change anything else about their lifestyles – not diets, medications, or anything else thought to impact how a person’s body handles aging.

Dr. Amir Hadanny, another of the study’s authors, believes the pressurized chamber’s brief oxygen shortages cause call regeneration.

Image Credit: Pexels

“Until now, interventions such as lifestyle modifications and intense exercise were shown to have some inhibition effect on the expected telomere length shortening. What is remarkable to note in our study, is that in just three months of therapy, we were able to achieve such significant telomere elongation – at rates far beyond any of the current available interventions or lifestyle modifications.”

It sounds a bit like science fiction to me, but it’s just science – and the results are very real.

Welcome to the future, y’all. It sounds like more of us are going to be around to see it.

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People Share “Let That Sink In” Facts That Are Hard to Believe

Do you want to know ALL the info there is out there?

Well, that’s impossible, but today we’ve got 14 crazy facts to wrap your head around.

Let’s take a look!

1. Kaboom #2!

It took humanity approximately 4 times longer to switch from copper swords to steel swords than it took to switch from steel swords to nuclear bombs.

2. Eat mur ckcn!

There are more chickens in America than people on the planet.

3. Oh, is that all?

To be in the top 1% of Americans in terms of income, you need to rake in about $400,000 a year.

Round it off to $1,000 a day.

4. Unluckiest nurse ever.

The Titanic had two sister ships, the Britannic and the Olympic. There was a woman called Violet Jessop, a nurse and a cruise liner stewardess that worked on all three.

The Olympic crashed into a warship whilst leaving harbor but was able to make it back.

She was on the Titanic as it sank and is referenced in the Titanic film, a stewardess that was told to set an example to the non english speaking passengers as the ship sank. She looked after a baby on lifeboat 16 until being rescued by the Carpathia the next day.

It’s not known what exactly caused the sinking of the Britannic but the lifeboats hit the water too early. As the ship sank, the rear listed up and a number of the lifeboats were sucked into the propellers. Violet had to jump out of the lifeboat she was in and sustained a serious head injury, but survived.

She was on board for all three incidents in the space of 5 years.

She went back to continue to work at sea for another thirty years before retiring in 1950. She died of Heart failure in 71.

5. Now THAT is big… and small… and big.

If the sun were scaled down to the size of a white blood cell, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of the continental United States.

The vastness of space is mind boggling.

6. Wait… how many?!

The US dropped 26,172 bombs [in 2016].

That’s almost 72 per day.

That’s about 3 bombs an hour. Every hour. For the entire year.

In 2017, the US had already dropped more bombs than that by September.

7. Feel old now?

Macaulay Culkin is now older than Catherine O’Hara was when she played his mom in Home Alone.

8. Savage!

France was still using the guillotine when the first Star Wars film came out.

9. Kaboom!

Next to the US army, Disney world is the largest buyer and importer of explosives in the USA.

10. What the what?!?

The first electric car was invented at the end of the nineteenth century and it went 65 mph.

11. Lot of concrete!

China used more concrete in 3 years than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century.

12. Weird orbit

The Moon orbits us from the west to the east, but we see it move across the sky east to west because of the rate of the Earths rotation.

Our observation is like being in a faster car watching a slower car (heading in the same absolute direction) fall further and further behind us.

13. F**king Texas…

There are more tigers privately owned in Texas than tigers in the wild.

14. Yes, the Air Force is #1.

The US navy has the second largest air force in the world.

Mind blowing, right? Who would have thought that a nurse could be THAT unlucky. Wow!

Have a fact that you’d like to share with us? Do that in the comments!

Thanks, fam!

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