Latest / Ridiculous History / Nazis, Churchill and Chocolate

Transcript

Nazis, Churchill and Chocolate · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, welcome to the show, this show. My name
0:27
Speaker 1: is Ben, my name is Noel. Noel, what are we
0:29
Speaker 1: doing here? I just thought it was a cool cadence
0:31
Speaker 1: for ridiculous history. Oh I see what you did there?
0:34
Speaker 1: You said the name of the show, so people know
0:38
Speaker 1: what they're listening to. Yes. Yes, for everyone who is
0:41
Speaker 1: in such a rush to hear the latest episode that
0:43
Speaker 1: they haven't bothered to read the title and aren't sure
0:46
Speaker 1: what show they're listening to, you are in the right
0:48
Speaker 1: place and right and let us know. Should we do
0:49
Speaker 1: an entire show a rhyming show, or we're just like
0:52
Speaker 1: the whole thing rhymes? I think I don't know if
0:53
Speaker 1: we have the band with to pull that off. Ben,
0:55
Speaker 1: I bet we could pull it off, though, Nol. We
0:57
Speaker 1: would just have to take it slow at first, then
1:00
Speaker 1: eventually accept that some rhymes will be better and some
1:03
Speaker 1: will be worse. You know what, That's a good way
1:06
Speaker 1: to approach life. Is true, Indeed, it is true. Indeed,
1:11
Speaker 1: this is of course the show where we look at
1:13
Speaker 1: all these strange, fascinating, at times silly and often ridiculous
1:18
Speaker 1: stories of yesteryear, and this one that that you found
1:23
Speaker 1: was completely new information to me. I had no idea,
1:28
Speaker 1: and Nolan I have talked about. Oh, and also shout
1:31
Speaker 1: out to our super producer, Casey Pegrum Hey, Casey, we
1:34
Speaker 1: got a thumbs up. He's in a good mood today. Uh.
1:38
Speaker 1: Nolan and I have talked often about these strange cockamami
1:43
Speaker 1: assassination attempts that sound like there's something out of Naked Gun.
1:47
Speaker 1: You mean, just like in our spare time it comes up,
1:51
Speaker 1: because what is spare time right now? I love the
1:54
Speaker 1: Naked Gun movies. Um, what I always think about is
1:57
Speaker 1: all of the kind of James Bond and esque devices
2:01
Speaker 1: that were already so ridiculous they barely needed to be satirized,
2:05
Speaker 1: but the Naked Gun always managed to kind of take
2:07
Speaker 1: it to another level. Absolutely. And the truth of the
2:12
Speaker 1: matter is that in decades past, with the emergence of
2:18
Speaker 1: modern intelligence agencies or their precursors, from let's say call
2:24
Speaker 1: it after World War One through World War Two and
2:27
Speaker 1: on and on to the present day, UH, we saw
2:30
Speaker 1: this rise in very what should we call them, out
2:34
Speaker 1: out of the box plans to assassinate world leaders. Probably
2:40
Speaker 1: one of the most famous examples for this for most people,
2:44
Speaker 1: it would be UH, the CIA's plans and their various
2:48
Speaker 1: attempts to either humiliate, undermine, or assassinate Fidel Castro. You know, like,
2:55
Speaker 1: what are some of the weird things they tried there?
2:57
Speaker 1: I mean, the one you think of is like practically
2:59
Speaker 1: a prank that you would play on, you know, an
3:02
Speaker 1: unsuspecting friend who smokes lots of cigars, the old exploding
3:07
Speaker 1: cigar trick. You think about it from like Looney Tunes
3:09
Speaker 1: and stuff, And I always thought of it as you know,
3:11
Speaker 1: like a little ha ha, but no, if there was
3:13
Speaker 1: like thermite in that thing. But take your head off, right,
3:17
Speaker 1: And what we found was that Fidel Castro and the
3:20
Speaker 1: CIA are not unique entirely. And what you introduced me
3:25
Speaker 1: to is today's topic, very strange story about former British
3:30
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Winston Churchill. And it's cool because there's actually
3:34
Speaker 1: a biopic coming out about Churchill with the absurdly talented
3:40
Speaker 1: Gary Oldman portraying um Mr Churchill. So Churchill was one
3:46
Speaker 1: of the first European leaders that was vehemently opposed to
3:52
Speaker 1: Adolph Hitler and the Nazis, and it sounds like kind
3:55
Speaker 1: of like a no brainer, but it was there. You know,
3:58
Speaker 1: there was sort of a I don't know, not I
4:01
Speaker 1: don't ask, don't tell policy, but kind of like let's
4:04
Speaker 1: see what happens kind of policy in Churchill you know,
4:06
Speaker 1: really took up the mantle of this is a humanitarian crisis,
4:11
Speaker 1: this is an issue of um good versus evil, and
4:14
Speaker 1: sort of framed the UK as being on the good side. Um.
4:19
Speaker 1: His broadcasts really boosted the nation. The whole mindset of
4:25
Speaker 1: the nation um and who were pretty freaked out by
4:28
Speaker 1: what Hitler would be capable of. And as a result,
4:32
Speaker 1: Hitler and his you know god squad, uh really really
4:38
Speaker 1: wanted to put an end to this man. How how
4:43
Speaker 1: do you? How do you do a thing like that?
4:44
Speaker 1: I mean the Churchill was incredibly insulated, you know, he
4:49
Speaker 1: as you know, any leader of a nation is constantly
4:54
Speaker 1: under surveillance, kept under lock and key. You know, how
4:58
Speaker 1: are they going to reach a guy like that, right,
5:00
Speaker 1: one of the most protected non royal family members in
5:04
Speaker 1: the in the Kingdom. But he was actually like working.
5:06
Speaker 1: You know, you'd think they would protect him more. They
5:08
Speaker 1: just kind of prop up a queen and you know,
5:11
Speaker 1: just kind of trundle her out during you know events,
5:14
Speaker 1: smile away, oh boy. Uh So in two thousand and
5:18
Speaker 1: twelve we finally learned what they were planning. And oh, body,
5:24
Speaker 1: is it weird? Yeah, this is not a thing that
5:26
Speaker 1: was like super common knowledge until a letter or a
5:30
Speaker 1: few letters. I have a parcel of letters, shall we say,
5:33
Speaker 1: was unearthed Um bearing a secret stamp a little on
5:39
Speaker 1: the nose, isn't it. He just like, don't look at this,
5:41
Speaker 1: it's secret. Okay, that's I'm going to open that right
5:45
Speaker 1: on up. Uh. And the letter was commissioned by a
5:52
Speaker 1: Lord Victor Rothschild, who was an m I five senior
5:56
Speaker 1: intelligence chief. Now, Ben, is this the Roth's child of
6:00
Speaker 1: Roth's child, Roth's child? I was a mouthful Yeah, related
6:03
Speaker 1: to for sure, big powerful family from from the UK,
6:08
Speaker 1: far reaching political control and even to this day, uh
6:13
Speaker 1: influence over the banking system of the UK and politics
6:18
Speaker 1: correct financial clout. For sure, Lord Victor Rothschild during peacetime
6:23
Speaker 1: was a scientist and a key member of the Rothschild
6:27
Speaker 1: banking dynasty. When he so he wrote this letter to
6:34
Speaker 1: talented illustrator that he was aware of named Lawrence Fish.
6:38
Speaker 1: Is such a good British name. And on May four,
6:44
Speaker 1: Lord Victor Rothschild wrote to Mr Fish and asked him
6:48
Speaker 1: to draw poster sized images of a particular type of
6:52
Speaker 1: chocolate for the purposes of warning the public to be
6:56
Speaker 1: on the lookout a nice chucky. You've seen that episode
7:01
Speaker 1: of Money Python where they have the is a candy
7:03
Speaker 1: company that has an assortment, and they're all really unpleasant.
7:07
Speaker 1: Like one of them it's called like the the New
7:10
Speaker 1: Get Surprise, and then you bite into it, it shoots
7:12
Speaker 1: out bolts through either cheek, piercing them from the inside.
7:15
Speaker 1: And there's one that's the Crunchy Frog that has has
7:19
Speaker 1: an actual tiny amphibian inside of it and the crunch
7:22
Speaker 1: comes from the crunch of its bones. Uh, this particular
7:26
Speaker 1: device would be quite at home in that assortment because
7:30
Speaker 1: one of the devices that was sketched out by Mr
7:33
Speaker 1: Fish was a chocolate bar containing a layer within that,
7:41
Speaker 1: when snapped, would explode. That's right, you see, Lord Victor
7:47
Speaker 1: Rothschild had received word of a possible Nazi plot to
7:51
Speaker 1: kill Winston Churchill by smuggling this chocolate into the war
7:56
Speaker 1: cabinets dining room. And this war cabinet here is a
8:00
Speaker 1: group of people, it's not a specific cabinet. I just
8:03
Speaker 1: now I'm victory of Winston Churchill getting up at three
8:06
Speaker 1: in the morning and his skivvy's and then walking to
8:10
Speaker 1: the war to get chocolate. You know he had some fine,
8:14
Speaker 1: fine silk pajamas. You're probably right, and you're probably right
8:19
Speaker 1: the treating question. This chocolate bar was finally wrapped in
8:24
Speaker 1: black and gold paper and labeled uh Peter's Chocolate. And
8:28
Speaker 1: here's the thing. It wouldn't have aroused suspicion, at least
8:32
Speaker 1: the Nazis hoped, because it wasn't a fake chocolate bar.
8:37
Speaker 1: It was actually chocolate. And they put a lot of
8:41
Speaker 1: thought into this. Right. According to a British spy who
8:44
Speaker 1: actually firsthand got a look at this exploding delicacy, Um,
8:50
Speaker 1: he was able to draw the first artist's rendering of it.
8:54
Speaker 1: And what it was was a steel plate, a very
8:57
Speaker 1: thin steel plate, covered by a thin layer of dark chocolate.
9:01
Speaker 1: And as I said before, when the chocolate bar was
9:04
Speaker 1: broken along those those nice square lines where you can
9:07
Speaker 1: get you a little piece, you know you want to
9:09
Speaker 1: snap it because it's tempered chocolate. We'll get it in
9:11
Speaker 1: a second, um that would detonate the device. And only then,
9:17
Speaker 1: that is when there was a canvas strap that connected
9:21
Speaker 1: to the explosive inside. And only once you broke it,
9:24
Speaker 1: could you actually see it had a seven second delay
9:27
Speaker 1: following that very satisfying snap, and apparently was powerful enough
9:33
Speaker 1: explosive that the effects could be felt for uh several
9:37
Speaker 1: meters in all directions, right, and this was high powered explosive. Yeah,
9:44
Speaker 1: And in all the research about this, I couldn't find
9:47
Speaker 1: specific mention of the type of explosive used. But in
9:51
Speaker 1: this cash of drawings uncovered from mr Fish there there
9:55
Speaker 1: were multiple drawings various devices exactly, one of which looked
9:59
Speaker 1: sort of a military are a issue crock pot, I
10:01
Speaker 1: guess um where there was a false bottom and it
10:04
Speaker 1: had like you know, peas and bangers and mash kind
10:07
Speaker 1: of dish on the inside, and it looks like it
10:10
Speaker 1: used thermite, which then you can probably speak to. This
10:13
Speaker 1: is a pretty powerful substance that can burn through steel
10:19
Speaker 1: and when ignited properly and used in a certain way,
10:21
Speaker 1: can cause some serious carnage. Yeah. Thermite is a composition
10:27
Speaker 1: of metal powder that could be a fuel a metal oxide.
10:30
Speaker 1: The thing with thermite is when you ignite it with heat,
10:33
Speaker 1: it undergoes pretty intense exothermic reduction oxidation or redox. If
10:40
Speaker 1: you want to be cool with the the explosive crew
10:43
Speaker 1: uh redox reaction, and most varieties of this stuff are
10:48
Speaker 1: not explosive. They just create brief burst of heat and
10:51
Speaker 1: high temperature in a small area. But you can make
10:55
Speaker 1: it explosive, and that's what you'll see the That's how
11:00
Speaker 1: you can make like thermite hand grenades and stuff like that,
11:03
Speaker 1: so it can be weaponized. And I guess because we're
11:06
Speaker 1: dealing with such a thin, um and small item. Like
11:10
Speaker 1: I said, even though I didn't see specific mention of
11:12
Speaker 1: thermite and the chocolate bar drawing, it was in some
11:14
Speaker 1: of the other drawings in this cache of of of illustration.
11:17
Speaker 1: So um, let us know if you've heard anything beyond
11:21
Speaker 1: um this speculation. But the point is this could really
11:27
Speaker 1: do some serious damage, especially if you're holding it close
11:30
Speaker 1: to your face. It would, you know, cause a blast
11:33
Speaker 1: that would you know, could of course kill you. Right,
11:36
Speaker 1: And this chocolate bar, in an our our opinion, was
11:42
Speaker 1: one of the strangest devices, but it was, as as
11:45
Speaker 1: we said, one of several. There's the military mess ten
11:50
Speaker 1: and there are a couple of different diagrams I believe
11:53
Speaker 1: of the chocolate which you can view online. There's a
11:57
Speaker 1: historian named Nigel West to speaking with the BBC, said
12:02
Speaker 1: that he believes Rothschild probably paid out of pocket for
12:06
Speaker 1: these diagrams. Uh. This just for context with Lord Victor Rothschild.
12:12
Speaker 1: It's not like he was hard up for the scratch
12:15
Speaker 1: or the cheddar. But he was a good uh, a
12:17
Speaker 1: good citizen. He was a very what's the word patriotic
12:23
Speaker 1: individual and wanted to use his wealth um for the
12:26
Speaker 1: greater good. And he was I guess sort of more
12:28
Speaker 1: of a consultant, I guess, or like a board member
12:30
Speaker 1: of some kind. Yeah, he just for person draw salary. Right,
12:34
Speaker 1: just for perspective. When m I five was scouting out
12:39
Speaker 1: some offices to locate in Paris, he said, you guys
12:42
Speaker 1: just used one of my mansions. You got a few, Yeah,
12:45
Speaker 1: you guys just kicking around to he was the Paris mansion.
12:49
Speaker 1: And so once Fish completed the illustrations and sent them
12:53
Speaker 1: to Rothschild, he liked them so much that he had
12:57
Speaker 1: he had one framed in his home library. And this
13:00
Speaker 1: is top secret stuff and then you put the remaining
13:03
Speaker 1: prints in storage. So when these letters were found, when
13:14
Speaker 1: this parcel of letters was found in historians around the
13:18
Speaker 1: world wondered, well, what happened to the illustrations because at
13:21
Speaker 1: first they only found the letters. But then super recently
13:24
Speaker 1: in early September of UM, some of the members of
13:28
Speaker 1: the Rothschild family we're sorting through some documents and they
13:32
Speaker 1: found the drawings, and experts consider them pretty incredible for
13:38
Speaker 1: pre digital graphics. These are like hand drawn kind of
13:41
Speaker 1: cross sections of diagrams of all these different devices. And
13:45
Speaker 1: actually here in the house Stuff Works offices in Atlanta, Georgia,
13:49
Speaker 1: upon City Market, we have UM a bunch of framed
13:52
Speaker 1: illustrations that are right along these lines. We've got one
13:54
Speaker 1: that shows a gas mask in cross section and all
13:57
Speaker 1: the different layers of that. We have one that shows
14:00
Speaker 1: believe like a NERF gun or or something like super
14:03
Speaker 1: super soccer. That's what it is, but very similar in
14:05
Speaker 1: style and not an easy feat to do accurately by hand,
14:09
Speaker 1: especially you know in in in those days. And we're, yeah,
14:13
Speaker 1: we're huge fans of cutaway diagrams. If you have any
14:17
Speaker 1: really cool ones, please send them to us, because we will.
14:20
Speaker 1: We'll just look at them for fun. We literally want
14:23
Speaker 1: to know how stuff works, It's true. And so the
14:25
Speaker 1: chocolate bar drawing in particular was seriously compelling because it
14:31
Speaker 1: really could actually work um because you know, people like
14:36
Speaker 1: a nice tasty chocolate treat, and the bar was designed
14:40
Speaker 1: to detonate um using minimal effort from the individual consuming
14:47
Speaker 1: said treat. Right, So, like, all you gotta do is
14:49
Speaker 1: do that thing you're gonna do anyway, give it a snap.
14:51
Speaker 1: You don't have to do anything special. It won't feel
14:53
Speaker 1: unusually difficult. Doesn't have to be any particular line, right,
14:57
Speaker 1: because the whole thing runs throughout the whole bar, so
14:59
Speaker 1: it be like you know, breaking in half or just
15:01
Speaker 1: breaking off a little piece. Yeah, and so this kind
15:05
Speaker 1: of strategy, spycraft espionage was very common on the German side.
15:10
Speaker 1: They were super into it. Oh and I forgot to
15:12
Speaker 1: mention Lawrence Fish the reason he got hit up for this.
15:16
Speaker 1: He was the son of one of the three m
15:18
Speaker 1: I five counter sabotage agents at the top, so there
15:22
Speaker 1: was a family relation there too. He wasn't I don't
15:24
Speaker 1: think Rothschild was just you know, flipping through a magazine
15:28
Speaker 1: and said, ah, this is the guy. Let me just
15:32
Speaker 1: ask him this weird question. There's another weird detail at
15:36
Speaker 1: about Churchill at the end. But as as Noll said,
15:40
Speaker 1: they've we found these documents quite recently when the Rothschild
15:44
Speaker 1: family were sorting through stuff on the estate in September,
15:48
Speaker 1: and you have to wonder how strange and fascinating that
15:52
Speaker 1: cave of wonders must be. Yeah, look at this trove
15:55
Speaker 1: treasures untold, yes, yes, exactly, gizmos as a plenty, and
16:00
Speaker 1: you know, I'll tell you it's significant to that the
16:03
Speaker 1: Germans did not use milk chocolate. They didn't use white chocolate.
16:07
Speaker 1: They use dark chocolate, and that is because of the
16:10
Speaker 1: way chocolate in a chocolate bar, and dark chocolate in particular,
16:13
Speaker 1: has to be tempered. So what's the deal with tempering then? Right? Okay,
16:18
Speaker 1: Tempering chocolate is essentially melting it and then stirring it
16:21
Speaker 1: vigorously as it cools. Pastry chefs know all about this.
16:26
Speaker 1: I learned about it pretty recently because my daughter is
16:28
Speaker 1: a big fan of this new pastry cooking show on
16:31
Speaker 1: Netflix called Zombo's Just Desserts, and also The Great British Bakeoff,
16:36
Speaker 1: where tempering chocolate is hugely important when they're making decorations
16:40
Speaker 1: or things that have to stand up to pressure or
16:43
Speaker 1: like you know, chocolate shapes that they then put on
16:46
Speaker 1: cakes or decorate the sides with it, because otherwise it
16:49
Speaker 1: will not hold its shape and it will melt all
16:51
Speaker 1: over the place. The same is true for a chocolate bar.
16:54
Speaker 1: In order to be able to hold it and have
16:55
Speaker 1: it be you know, manipulatable and break on those lines
16:59
Speaker 1: of the marcation, the chocolate has to be tempered correctly, right.
17:03
Speaker 1: And one of the questions would be why why tempered chocolate?
17:07
Speaker 1: So I propose that we take a page from our
17:09
Speaker 1: good friends Lorn and Annie over at our sister show
17:13
Speaker 1: food Stuff, and we'll talk it just briefly about the
17:16
Speaker 1: food science here. The short answer for why you would
17:19
Speaker 1: want to temper chocolate is that chemically it's composed of
17:23
Speaker 1: several different tiny crystals, six to be exact. Of these
17:27
Speaker 1: six there are, there's one desirable type, and they're called
17:31
Speaker 1: beta crystals. Developing informing these crystals is what makes that's
17:36
Speaker 1: the key to the good chocolate. So the one in
17:39
Speaker 1: comparison be like a cup of chicken stock. It might
17:41
Speaker 1: seem homogeneous, uniform throughout, but the fat's gonna rise to
17:45
Speaker 1: the surface. And when chocolate is an emulsion, but if
17:50
Speaker 1: you warm and melt it, you break the emulsion as
17:52
Speaker 1: it cools. Cocoa butter rises to the surface unattractive but harmless,
17:57
Speaker 1: and sometimes that even makes people throw away the chocolate.
18:01
Speaker 1: We can briefly laundry lists the reasons you would do.
18:04
Speaker 1: You a temper chocolate, avoid fat and sugar bloom, you know,
18:07
Speaker 1: those white streaks or blotches on the surface. You raise
18:10
Speaker 1: the melting temperature the finished chocolate so it doesn't melt
18:13
Speaker 1: on contact with your fingers, which would be super awkward
18:16
Speaker 1: if someone's like, hey, what is it? Why is there
18:17
Speaker 1: canvas at this bar? Uh preserves you know, the keeping quality,
18:22
Speaker 1: cools it quickly, and it gives it that classy glossy
18:26
Speaker 1: shine makes it especially if you're using it like like
18:29
Speaker 1: a pastry chef would use it. And the final most
18:31
Speaker 1: important thing, not just for pastry chefs, but for would
18:36
Speaker 1: be Nazi assassins again, would be Nazi assassins, is that
18:41
Speaker 1: tempering chocolate gives it that capacity for that crisp, clean
18:45
Speaker 1: snap at to pop the pea for emphasis. There's a good, good,
18:49
Speaker 1: good pe popper. Good thing. We've got these nice popper
18:53
Speaker 1: stoppers on our mics here. Um, but yeah, and I
18:55
Speaker 1: hope I didn't set it up too much at the
18:57
Speaker 1: top of the show. This sound like this was a
18:58
Speaker 1: successful attempt, because everyone's like, I don't remember hearing about
19:01
Speaker 1: any exploding chocolate bars and attempts on Winston Churchill's life. Yeah,
19:05
Speaker 1: because it didn't really happen. Um, these were beta tests
19:09
Speaker 1: at the very best, right, these drawings. But my question
19:13
Speaker 1: to you, Ben is these drawings were commissioned by the
19:16
Speaker 1: British government based on technology the Nazis may have had. Um,
19:22
Speaker 1: how where what's the connection there? Reported by a British
19:25
Speaker 1: spy who was embedded on the German side. And because
19:29
Speaker 1: this this is part of the story that they don't
19:32
Speaker 1: emphasize too much. It's just a funny little detail. So
19:37
Speaker 1: the British spy was actually the first one to draw
19:40
Speaker 1: the diagram. Uh, let's say, I don't wanna I don't
19:43
Speaker 1: want to cast too much aspersion on the guy, but
19:46
Speaker 1: let's say he was stressed and maybe a little distracted
19:48
Speaker 1: with this other stuff, because apparently the first drawing he
19:50
Speaker 1: made was just garbage, terrible, you know, it's like a
19:53
Speaker 1: dumpster fire candy bar drawing. But then Fish was past
19:57
Speaker 1: those documents and was able to get a little more
20:01
Speaker 1: granular and detailed with it. So I just have this
20:04
Speaker 1: picture in my head of Lord Rothschild reading the messages
20:09
Speaker 1: from the spy and going mmmmm, quite quite and then going,
20:14
Speaker 1: oh no, it's a very poor sketched This won't do
20:18
Speaker 1: one bit. And then you know who's who has the
20:23
Speaker 1: boy who draws? Someone send a someone send a memo
20:27
Speaker 1: to the boy, the boy. I hope he addressed it,
20:29
Speaker 1: dear the boy. Yes, of course, that's how they referred
20:31
Speaker 1: to their underlings. I hope we've done a pretty good
20:42
Speaker 1: job establishing the worry that they were tackling at this time,
20:48
Speaker 1: or that they were addressing because as well, I hate
20:52
Speaker 1: to overuse the word and all, but as ridiculous as
20:55
Speaker 1: it sounds today, in this was a very real concern.
20:59
Speaker 1: This was quite possibly a way to kill the Prime Minister. Absolutely,
21:03
Speaker 1: And then looking through these, uh, these drawings, the thing
21:05
Speaker 1: that that occurred to me was, you know, think about
21:07
Speaker 1: what happens when we go through airport security. Now we
21:09
Speaker 1: gotta take out our laptops. There's all kinds of like
21:11
Speaker 1: they have to. We can't have you know, hair gel
21:14
Speaker 1: or certain types of liquid because the technology now and
21:18
Speaker 1: the everyday objects that it could be embedded in are
21:22
Speaker 1: much more complex these drawings and these devices are very
21:27
Speaker 1: very analog and very um just practical and functional. And
21:31
Speaker 1: it required you know, a physical uh touch to actually detonate,
21:36
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to being done by remote or
21:38
Speaker 1: being integrated into the circuitry of a phone or a
21:41
Speaker 1: computer or something like that. So this this was cutting
21:44
Speaker 1: edge for the time, right sure, yeah, this stuff. I
21:46
Speaker 1: really appreciate you saying that because this stuff is all mechanical,
21:49
Speaker 1: there's no there's no sort of electronic wizardry or sorcery
21:53
Speaker 1: going on here. We also want to tell you about
21:58
Speaker 1: just a couple of the other items, no life think
22:00
Speaker 1: you mentioned that army mess kit that does look like
22:02
Speaker 1: a crock pot. They also had a motor oil can
22:07
Speaker 1: with explosives inside. You know, maybe not, maybe that's a
22:11
Speaker 1: little too on the nose, since motor oil is already
22:14
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing around fire. Uh. One of the ideas,
22:18
Speaker 1: going back to this history in Nigel West, that Germany
22:21
Speaker 1: was focusing on was destroying ships that would reach the
22:25
Speaker 1: United Kingdom so they could deprive Britain of food stuffs.
22:31
Speaker 1: And this would be you know, this is almost like
22:33
Speaker 1: a siege mentality at that point. And we say this
22:37
Speaker 1: because sure, killing the prime minister of an enemy country
22:41
Speaker 1: would be a setback. Yeah, to say the least. It's
22:46
Speaker 1: a tremendous coup, right, But if you really want to
22:50
Speaker 1: shut down the entire country, then do something that affects everybody.
22:55
Speaker 1: So they were really focusing on trying to sink or
22:58
Speaker 1: destroy the ships while they were out, let's see and um.
23:02
Speaker 1: According to an article on the BBC that we found
23:06
Speaker 1: from Nick Higghum, the chocolate bar might have been the
23:09
Speaker 1: most bizarre explosive device that they found in these drawings,
23:14
Speaker 1: but the one that was probably potentially the most effective
23:17
Speaker 1: involved the timer. Very intricate timer that would go off
23:21
Speaker 1: after twenty one days and involve a rotating disk and
23:25
Speaker 1: at the top it says in bold letters, do not
23:28
Speaker 1: unscrew here, and at the very bottom equally bold. According
23:32
Speaker 1: to this article, unscrew here first. So, you know, very
23:36
Speaker 1: important to get those timers right to assure that the
23:39
Speaker 1: ship went down well out of range of any kind
23:42
Speaker 1: of help. Yeah, and devious, right, ingenious daytime. Uh, and
23:47
Speaker 1: you know, if we're being objective about it, it's some
23:50
Speaker 1: really impressive engineering. We we do have I think a
23:54
Speaker 1: cool place to close here, Uh that I think you
23:57
Speaker 1: will enjoy one of these things might be a surprise
23:59
Speaker 1: for uneral. You will be happy to know, friends and
24:02
Speaker 1: neighbors that Lawrence Fish went on to become quite a
24:06
Speaker 1: successful designer graphic artist, right, and he had a longer
24:12
Speaker 1: rewarding career. What I probably should have mentioned at the top,
24:17
Speaker 1: and this is going to be the last fact for
24:18
Speaker 1: me regarding this story, is that Winston Churchill himself believed
24:24
Speaker 1: he had another layer of protection in addition to the
24:29
Speaker 1: state security forces, in addition to the power of the
24:33
Speaker 1: United Kingdom's military. You see, Winston Churchill believed that he
24:39
Speaker 1: heard voices and he would obey what those voices told
24:43
Speaker 1: him to do when he was convinced on several occasions
24:47
Speaker 1: that it had saved his life. And it's a very
24:49
Speaker 1: it's a very strange kind of HALLOWEENI anecdote to add
24:53
Speaker 1: their uh, he would hear the voices telling him in
24:56
Speaker 1: this sort of a bicameral mind thing, almost sit here,
25:00
Speaker 1: do this, screwed over here, and followed it without question.
25:05
Speaker 1: I would call that intuition, but that's just me. He
25:08
Speaker 1: was very specific that it was a golden voice that
25:11
Speaker 1: he would hear. Interesting. I wonder if it told him
25:14
Speaker 1: to keep drinking. Probably did, And I wonder if it
25:17
Speaker 1: plays into um Gary Oldman's depiction of him in this
25:21
Speaker 1: upcoming film Churchill, which we will have to go see. Yes,
25:25
Speaker 1: we can only hope. We are off today to fanboy
25:29
Speaker 1: a little bit about the flawed but amazing historical figure
25:34
Speaker 1: known as Winston Churchill, who famously and perhaps unknowingly to himself,
25:40
Speaker 1: avoided death by chocolate. Oh, I was holding on to
25:44
Speaker 1: that reference for a while. I think there's like a
25:47
Speaker 1: that's like a fancy like T. G. I Friday's style. Uh,
25:50
Speaker 1: you know, molten lava chocolate cake, because it's really death
25:53
Speaker 1: by chocolate. Absolutely that exists as a thing. Yeah, what's
25:56
Speaker 1: your favorite delicious treat um, explosive of or otherwise Write
26:01
Speaker 1: us at Ridiculous at how stuff works and let us know.
26:03
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Facebook, on Instagram. Still
26:06
Speaker 1: working on that vision board for Pinterests. It will come
26:08
Speaker 1: one day, um, but not today, my friends, and we
26:12
Speaker 1: hope you join us on another day for another installment
26:15
Speaker 1: of ridiculous history.