What would the world have been like if Adolf Hitler had never seen a rise to power? We may have come really close to finding out in September 1918, at least according to the dictator.
If you believe Hitler’s story, it was on September 28 that, as a young Lance Corporal (top row, second from the right in the picture above), he found himself in the path of Private Henry Tandey, who would go on to become the most decorated British soldier of the war. Hitler was injured and unable to fight, and it was because of that, he said, that Tandey spared him.
“That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again,” the dictator allegedly said. “Providence saved me from such devilish accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us.”
Hitler claimed to have discovered the identity of the man who saved him when he spotted Tandey depicted in a famous painting by Italian artist Fortunino Matania. But experts are doubtful that this encounter ever occurred, in part because there are records showing that his military unit was 50 miles south of Tandey’s on September 28. Additionally, Hitler had been on military leave for the two days prior—September 28 would have been his first day back.
Dr. David Johnson, who wrote a biography of Pvt. Henry Tandey, believes the dictator invented the story to further perpetuate his own mythos: “With his god-like self-perception, the story added to his own myth—that he had been spared for something greater, that he was somehow ‘chosen.'”
For his part, Tandey usually chose his words carefully when he discussed the event. Though he acknowledged that he had spared enemy lives on that date, he didn’t remember Hitler at all (though he would have looked much different). But after his hometown of Coventry, England, was bombed in 1940, Tandey was quoted as saying, “If only I had known what he would turn out to be. When I saw all of the women and children he had killed and wounded, I was sorry to God I let him go.”
If he had been killed, though, would it have made a difference? Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, thought it would have. Before he was hanged at Nuremburg for his crimes, Frank said, “The Führer was a man who was possible in Germany only at that very moment. Had he come, let us say, 10 years later, when the republic was firmly established, it would have been impossible for him. And if he had come 10 years previously, or at any time when there was still the monarchy, he would have gotten nowhere. He came at exactly this terrible transitory period when the monarchy had gone and the republic was not yet secure.”
Historian Henry Ashby Turner Jr., author of Thirty Days to Power, speculates that without Hitler, Germany would have fallen under a military government. That government would have likely turned its attention to domination of the Polish Corridor. This would have resulted in a conflict between Germany and Poland, but not the entire world—and World War II would have been avoided entirely.
For years, Nike teased the possibility of mass-producing the self-lacing shoes made famous by Michael J. Fox in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II. A replica shoe that was screen-accurate but didn’t self-lace was released in 2011; October 2015 saw Fox presented with a prototype that actually worked.
Now, fans of the series and sneakerheads are anxiously awaiting the pending release of the real thing. The good news? It’ll only cost you $10 to have a chance at owning a pair of the Nike Mags that were worn by Marty McFly. The bad news? It’s via a lottery system, and only 89 pairs are being made available.
Nike is currently accepting raffle entries through a digital storefront for the Mags, with all proceeds benefiting The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
The Draw, as the company calls it, began on Tuesday, October 4 and runs through October 11. Winners will be announced October 17, with exorbitant price gouging on eBay expected to commence moments later.
While it might seem like a paltry number of shoes, Nike probably realizes an entire line of space boot-looking sneakers aren’t for mass consumption. The adaptive fit technology that automatically sizes the sneaker for a custom fit is being eyed for the lucrative athletics market, with the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 slated for release next month.
The word Mamihlapinatapai is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word” and means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin.”
The highest paid CEO in the U.S. was John Hammergren of McKesson Corp in 2011, in excess of $700 million. At a company annual meeting in 2013, an employee asked for wages increases and was fired 4 months later. In June 2014, he returned to the company’s annual meeting to ask that Hammergren’s $292 million […]
When it comes to food, it seems like children’s vocabulary consists of negative words only. This is especially true, when eating out with kids. Well, The Deli at Mansion Park, Pennsylvania offers kids menu, that is appealing to the most picky eater. The kids’ menu of The Deli consists of: “I Don’t Know” (a hot […]
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, illustrator Terry Gilliam, and director Ian MacNaughton joined forces to create Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a show that quickly became one of television’s most influential comedy series after making its premiere on October 5, 1969—and remains so to this day, nearly 50 years later.
1. IT WAS INFLUENCED BY SPIKE MILLIGAN.
Spike Milligan created The Goon Show (a favorite of The Beatles), a surrealistic radio program starring himself, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers before Milligan moved to television with Q… (1969-1982). The first series, Q5, debuted less than a year before Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and made quite an impact.
“Terry Jones and I adored the Q… shows,” Michael Palin said. “They were filled with surrealism and invention, and [Milligan] took huge risks … When it came to Python, Terry [Jones] and I were so impressed that we looked for the name of the director on the end credits and hired him. That’s how we met Ian MacNaughton.”
2. THERE WERE MANY POTENTIAL TITLES.
A BBC executive originally wanted to name the series Baron von Took’s Flying Circus as a nod to Barry Took, the network’s comedy adviser, who was credited with bringing the Pythons and BBC together. He was also the warm-up comic for the studio audience before the first night of filming. But there were plenty of other considerations for the title, including Owl Stretching Time;Bunn, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot;Whither Canada?;Ow! It’s Colin Plint;A Horse, a Spoon, and a Bucket;The Toad Elevating Moment; and The Algy Banging Hour. The BBC, in a state of agitation, was keen on “Flying Circus,” and the troupe added “Monty Python.”
3. THE OPENING THEME WAS JOHN PHILIP SOUSA’S “THE LIBERTY BELL.”
The Pythons chose John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” (as played by the Band of the Grenadier Guards) as their theme song, largely for financial reasons: Since it was in the public domain, it was free.
4. THE GIANT FOOT IN THE OPENING CREDITS BELONGS TO CUPID.
The giant foot seen in the show’s opening credits belongs to Cupid, and comes from Bronzino’s painting “An Allegory with Venus and Cupid.” According to The National Gallery, the painting dates back to “about 1545” and was presented to King Francis I of France as a gift. Terry Gilliam saw the painting at The National Gallery in 1969 while searching for some Flying Circus inspiration.
5. IT WAS ALMOST CANCELLED AFTER ONE EPISODE.
According to some unearthed internal memos, BBC1 controller Paul Fox said the troupe went “over the edge of what was acceptable.” Head of arts features Stephen Heast said they “wallowed in the sadism of their humor.” Entertainment chief Bill Cotton thought Monty Python “seemed to have some sort of death wish.” Despite those thoughts, and low audience ratings, the show managed to hang on for three and a half seasons—for 45 total episodes—through 1974.
6. THE PARROT SKETCH WAS ORIGINALLY WITH A CUSTOMER AND A CAR SALESMAN.
Cleese and Chapman penned How to Irritate People, a sketch special which also starred Michael Palin that aired in the United States in January 1969. What would become the “Dead Parrot” sketch originally had Chapman complaining that the car he had just purchased from Palin was literally falling apart, with Palin consistently denying the glaring, mounting evidence. When writing for the first season of Flying Circus, Cleese and Chapman thought about reviving the basic idea for the sketch, but improving it by giving it a different setting, and casting Cleese as the customer instead of Chapman.
7. THE PYTHONS WERE PAID ABOUT $200 PER EPISODE.
In that same aforementioned internal BBC memo, it was revealed that the Pythons were compensated £160 per episode, which would be about $208.78 today.
8. “AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT” CAME FROM REAL NEWS SHOWS.
When two news stories that had no relation to the other were presented back-to-back on BBC TV and radio broadcasts, the anchor would say “And now for something completely different.” That was no longer the case after Monty Python made it popular.
9. JOHN CLEESE GOT A DIRTY LOOK WHILE RESEARCHING THE CHEESE SHOP SKETCH.
“I always remember going into the local delicatessen with this notebook and just standing there writing down the names of all the cheeses in the cheese display cabinet,” Cleese recalled with a laugh. “One of the shop assistants watching me with a very suspicious look.” According to Cleese, he and Palin used almost all of the varieties he had scribbled down. Some, like “Venezuelan Beaver Cheese,” were invented.
10. CLEESE LEFT THE SERIES BEFORE ITS FOURTH AND FINAL SEASON.
Cleese, who had to be persuaded to continue co-writing and co-starring after its first batch of episodes, wanted to move on before the others did. “I wanted to be part of the group, I didn’t want to be married to them—because that’s what it felt like,” Cleese said. “I began to lose any kind of control over my life and I was not forceful enough in saying no.”
11. THE EPISODES WERE ALMOST TAPED OVER.
In 1971, Terry Jones was informed by the BBC that, as was standard penny-pinching procedure at the time, the network was about to erase all of the original Monty Python tapes. Gilliam purchased the videotapes before they were erased.
12. DALLAS WAS THE FIRST CITY TO SHOW IT IN AMERICA.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
PBS station KERA-TV had the honor of being the first American city to broadcast the series, thanks to its first chief executive, Bob Wilson, who first saw the show through one of his reporters. It made its American debut on September 22, 1974, in the middle of their final season in England.
13. ABC WAS SUED FOR HEAVILY EDITING SOME EPISODES.
The American Broadcasting Company acquired the American rights to the six episodes of season four, which they wanted to run as two 90-minute, late-night specials. When the troupe saw how ABC put together the first special, they filed for an injunction against ABC running the second one. ABC had removed eight minutes of material from the three episodes, including all of the uses of the words “damn,” “hell,” and “naughty bits” as well as entire characters, and—worst of all—punchlines.
The Pythons sued the network, and Gilliam and Palin appeared in court in New York. The judge watched both versions, and laughed more at the original British cuts, but ruled in ABC’s favor anyway. By the time the U.S. Court of Appeals heard the case in December 1975, the second special had already aired. In a settlement, the rights to those episodes went back to the Pythons, who sold it to PBS.
14. THE SHOW HAS MADE ITS MARK IN THE COMPUTING WORLD.
When Guido van Rossum first implemented his programming language Python, he was reading published Flying Circus scripts.
It’s widely believed that unsolicited emails became known as “spam” thanks to the multi-user dungeon online community back in the 1980s. “Spam” was used to describe pointless data flooding. It was a reference to the classic Monty Python sketch (above).
Massage therapy probably isn’t one of the first things most people think about when they consider treatment options for what ails them. In the west, we’re pretty well conditioned to believe that a pill or perhaps even surgery is the answer to most of our health problems. Surely there are times when those approaches will offer the best result, but in many cases there are alternatives. One of them is massage therapy. Lots of people swear by it, so it is definitely worth checking out. Here are 9 ways you may benefit from massage therapy. 1. Back pain This might
Pocky sticks appeal to kids and grown-ups alike, but a classy version of the Japanese treat is being marketed exclusively at an older clientele. As RocketNews24 reports, snack manufacturer Glico plans to release a whiskey-flavored line of their beloved Pocky sticks later this month.
The boozy variety, dubbed Adult Amber (Otona no Kohaku in Japanese), looks like the traditional chocolate-covered pretzel stick. The dough has been flavored with malt extract reminiscent of fermented mash and dusted with fine salt that adds a layer of complexity. The final touch is a coating of bitter chocolate infused with a whisky aroma.
The product is designed to pair well with alcohol, and it even comes in a package that resembles a high-end liquor bottle. Adult Amber received its first launch last November before Glico’s inventory quickly ran dry. The snack sticks will once again be available in limited supply this time around (about 300,000 boxes in total) and will be sold exclusively through Amazon Japan starting October 25. The boxes can be preordered for $9.70, which should give snack-lovers ample time to plan the perfect booze and candy tasting menu for Halloween.
Everyone is afraid of something. The more common phobias are claustrophobia (the fear of confined spaces), arachnophobia (the fear of spiders) and acrophobia (the fear of heights). There are some really strange phobias out there that are so rare they’re never talked about. Here are 9 bizarre phobias you won’t believe exist – but they do! 1. Pediophobia Pediophobia is the fear of dolls. While most people will admit that some dolls are definitely creepy, some people are afraid of any doll no matter how normal or weird it looks. These people have pediophobia and are even afraid of mannequins
