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Short Stuff: The Church Choir That Didn't Explode · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Dave is here in spirit. He wanted
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to let us know that he's thinking of each and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: every one of you individually, and this is short stuff,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: that's right. I was raised in the church choir, my friends,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: so this one hits really close to home. Actually not
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: at all, right, but I did sing in the church choir.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I've seen church choir's performed before, so it really hits
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: home for me too. This is a really fun story,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I think. Is this Were you familiar with the story before?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: You know where I first heard of it a time
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: life books? Ad? Are you really? Is there anything those
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: things haven't taught us? I don't know. I wish I
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: had a upset of those. Those are fun me too.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We'll have to go on eBay and look for him together.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they're all there. So, um, what we're talking
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: about is not necessarily just a church choir. It's almost
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: tangential to it. Or we're really talking about is one
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of the most astounding coincidences in a history of documented history, Like,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: there's no coincidence that really holds a candle to this.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: In my book and there's plenty of coincidences. I remember
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: we did an entire episode on one. Remember the poor
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: guy who was in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and survived them both. Um, there's been some amazing coincidences before.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: This one, to me takes the cake. It's a pretty
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: good one. And we're talking about a terrible incident that happened,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: but it could have been a lot worse. On the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: evening of March first, nineteen fifty and Beatrice in Nebraska,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: when a church blew up, I mean blew up, like
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the walls blew out, the roof came down, windows got
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: knocked out of houses in the vicinity, a radio station
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: got knocked off the air by the blast. However that works.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: It was. It was a big time explosion that just
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: destroyed this church. Uh. And I guess we should go
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: ahead and say how this happened. Uh. The ideas that
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: there was probably a gas leak, and that gas leak
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: just you know, did what gas leaks do and filled
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a space with gas. And Uh, there was a gentleman
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: there who would show up. What was his name? Was
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: it the reverend himself? It was the reverend. Yeah, Walter Clempole. Yeah,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: what a great reverend name, Reverend Clinpole in nineteen fifties,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Nebraska reverend name too. So he shows up at his
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: West Side Baptist church, uh, like he always does ahead
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of time, to light the furnace to get it nice
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and warm for choir practice, because in early March in
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: that part of Nebraska can be a little chilly. Uh.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: And then he went back home to go to dinner.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And so the idea is that this gas fills up,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: it eventually reaches the flame of that furnace and church explodes. Okay,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: so a church exploding from a natural gas explosion lit
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: by a reverend. This is not all about making reverend
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Climpole look back. Now, he didn't like that furnace because
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: he wanted to blow up the church. Like you said,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: he was lighting it for choir practice. What makes this
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: astounding is that that explosion took place at seven pm
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: on March one, like you said, which was a Wednesday,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and every Wednesday was choir practice, and every Wednesday at
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: seven twenty pm choir practice started. So this explosion that
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: destroyed the entire church took place five minutes after choir
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: practice officially started. And The thing that makes this the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: most astounding coincidence of all time is that not one
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: single member of that fifteen person choir was in the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: church at the time. Every single one happened to be late.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: That's right, Uh, And I think we should save the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: reasons for everyone being late till after the break with
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: a little cliffhanger, but before the break. Uh. If you're
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out the odds of something like this happening,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: there's no exact scientific way to do that, obviously, But
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: what they can do, and what they have done, is
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: look back and said, well, how often were people generally
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: late at choir practice at this church, and what are
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the odds of that happening to everybody? And they kind
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: of went back and look at past um choir practices
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and saw that each person would be late about of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the time one and every four choir practices. So everyone
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: being gone for this specific night ended up being a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: you guessed it, one in a million chance. Yeah. I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: think all of them had either an equal chance or
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: twice the chance of being struck by lightning that year,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: as this actually happening is all of them being late
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: for choir practice at the same time Okay. I think
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: that's a great setup. We'll come back after our short
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: break and we'll talk about why these folks were late
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: right after this. So before we get going on the reasons,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I think one important thing we didn't point out is
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it's not like everyone got on a bus somewhere to
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: go to choir practice and the bus broke down. Like
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: everyone was late for their independent reasons. Some had a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: little bit of overlap, as we'll see, but that's sort
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of the remarkable part of all this. Yeah, yeah, it
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: is amazing. So um, Reverend clempole Uh, he usually got
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: there as early as anybody. Um, he usually got there
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: about seven ten um. And it turns out that his daughter,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: who was going to come with a Marylyn Ruth, the
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: dress she had put on it was was dirty. So
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: his wife, the Mrs Reverend Walter clempole Um, had to
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: put a new dress on the irony board get it ready,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and that made the family late. That's pretty okay. I
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: like that one. That's a good one. It just keeps
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: going from there, though, And we should mention we could
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: not find Reverend Walter Clemple's wife's name. We are not
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: just doing the antiquated thing of calling a woman Mrs
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: so and so so and so husband's name, right, thank
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you for that. So let's go over some of these
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: all right. So, Um, like I said, it just keeps
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: going from Reverend Clemple and his family's reason for being late.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Next up, we've got Ladona vander Grifft, which sounds like
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a made up name. She was struggling with the geometry problem.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: She was a sophomore in high school, and um, she
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: she was like, I'm not letting this problem beat me.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I have to finish this before I leave for choir practice.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Best part of this whole story, I think, I think
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: so too. So she not only did that make her late,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: but it also ended up making the sd s sisters
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Royena and um what was her name? Sadie Rona and
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Sadie st S were late because of La Donna indirectly
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: as well, right, because I think they were supposed to
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Uh were they supposed to ride together? Yeah? Well no,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: they had car trouble. The sts sisters had car, so
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: they called La Donna. Vander Griffin said, hey, can you
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: come pick us up? She said, just after I figure
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: out this Pythagorean theorem thing. Oh yeah, yeah, so they
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: were supposed to ride together, I got you. Yeah, Yeah,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: but they weren't supposed to they they they only called her.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: They would have arrived had their car not been um
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: in trouble. And then even furthermore, had La Donna not
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: been doing geometry, all three of them might have made
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: it on time. Yeah, they were double blessed. Yes, amazing stuff. Uh.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And of course the reason I say double blest is
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: obviously with a situation like this in a church, the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: entire church believes that this was God's hand leading them
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: away from that explosion. Naturally, I would too, indubitably, indubitably
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: what else do we have here? We have Mrs Leonard Schuster.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Uh And and Schuster went to her mom's house to
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: get her ready for a missionary meeting. Apparently, so that's
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: what made Schuster late, Right, had to untirer mom's shoes,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: each to their own shoe. What about Herbert Kith? He
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: was a late operator, which is that's the late operator
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: in Nebraska's name. In sure, he supposedly had a letter
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: that he had been putting off writing, and he finally
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: sat down to write it, and the letter itself made
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: him late. Um, And that's apparently unusual for him. He
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the most prolific letter writer, but that was
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the one for him. Do you know what it sounds
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: like to me? What sounds like chary practice wasn't much
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of a priority for anyone there. It kind of sounds like,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I got a math problem. I really need to write
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: this letter. Yeah. Or Joyce Black really demonstrates that too.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: She was a stenographer, she said. Um. And by the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: way she was saying all this, they were all saying
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: all this stuff to Life magazine, which did an article
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: on this couple of weeks after it happened, called why
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the choir was late? Um. She said, I was feeling
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: just playing lazy. It was very cold out my my
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: house was cozy and toasty, and I was just hanging
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: out there, all right, That's why I was late. But
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: she was the most forthright of all the very honest,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: very honest. Uh. The piano player herself, Marylyn Paul. Uh.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Usually the piano players there pretty early, and I think
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Marylyn had a knack for arriving about a half hour early.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: But Marylyn must have eaten some turkey for dinner, because
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: she fell asleep and her mom woke her up at
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: seven fifteen and she said, all right, and well, I
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: gotta get out of here. I'm kind of already late.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And it says here she only had time to tidy
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: up and then leave. Let me clean up a bit first.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: So her mom was actually the choir director, and she
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: was late because Marylyn and was late. So I I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: like in all this stuff too. I wonder if like
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: she was mad at Maryland or was like, why are
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: you not waking up at seven in the evening? Who
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: who naps like that? Um? Or if if everybody was
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: very patient. I like to think they're all very patient
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and polite waiting for one another. You know. Well, it
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: says that that mom tried unsuccessfully to awaken her earlier, right,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. There was a ghastly at church
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in a carbon monoxide leak in the Paul's will you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: wake Up? And then Lucille Jones and Dorothy would um.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: They were neighbors and they were both in the choir,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: so they would naturally ride together. And one of them,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: oh I think it was Lucille, was listening to a
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: radio program from seven to seven third, probably Mannix or
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: co Jack and um and uh again. Dorothy was just
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: sitting there patiently waiting for her friend to finish listening
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: to this radio program. Unbelieved bole. We also left out
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Harvey all the last one. What did Harvey do? He
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: had the worst excuse of all of them. He was
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: taking care of his kids, his wife was out of town,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and he started talking, and I guess talking makes Harvey
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: loose track of time. But he lost track of time
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: and ended up being like, I guess as kids, I'm
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: not sure. I could not, for the life of me
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: find that Life magazine article directly. Um, we have to
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: thank our friends at Snopes for helping us out a
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: big time with this one. Yeah, it's probably the kids
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: were like, Dad's finally talking to us, right, He's paying
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: attention to us. Yeah, but I can tell he doesn't
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: know what time it is. Yeah, this is one of
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the stories. I'm glad there wasn't some gross dark thing underneath. No,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it was all above the boards and uh amazing. So
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: all of those people, for all those different reasons, were
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: late to choir practice, and had they all made it
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: on time, they would have perished in that explosion. I
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: love it. Thanks Time, Life Books, Thanks Snopes, Thanks to you, Chuck,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: thanks to Dave for producing this, thanks to you guys
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: for listening to it, and short Stuff is out. Stuff
• 12:13
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• 12:15
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