The FAA Can't Stop People From Throwing Live Turkeys Out Of Planes
UPDATE: Some interesting comments:
1
The story (although it may be apocryphal) is that the origin of the WKRP episode traces its roots back to my home town of Phillipsburg, KS where they threw turkeys off of the top of the courthouse believing they could fly. As the story goes, a young Gordon Jump (who would later play Mr. Carlson) covered the event as a radio reporter.
2
There was once a guy name Ted Stepien from Cleveland who was a complete and utter moron, but he was rich (sound familiar?). He was universally acknowledged to be one of the worst team owners in any sport in US History. The NBA actually passed a rule to prevent teams from making the stupid trades that Stepien made.
Anyway, Ted also owned a local softball team, and decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cleveland's tallest building by tossing softballs from the top. Here is a link to what happened next.
I went to college with a girl whose dad played on that softball team, which is how I know the story. For the longest time I thought this was the genesis of the WKRP episode, until I realized this happened TWO YEARS AFTER the show.
3
Stepian was copying a stunt from 40 years earlier.
I would have thought Arthur Carlson would have been dead by now...
ReplyDeleteThey swore under oath that as God is their witness, they thought turkeys could fly.
ReplyDeleteHe did indeed. I guess when he retired from the radio station, he moved to Arkansas!
ReplyDeleteThe story (although it may be apocryphal) is that the origin of the WKRP episode traces its roots back to my home town of Phillipsburg, KS where they threw turkeys off of the top of the courthouse believing they could fly. As the story goes, a young Gordon Jump (who would later play Mr. Carlson) covered the event as a radio reporter.
ReplyDeleteThere was once a guy name Ted Stepien from Cleveland who was a complete and utter moron, but he was rich (sound familiar?). He was universally acknowledged to be one of the worst team owners in any sport in US History. The NBA actually passed a rule to prevent teams from making the stupid trades that Stepien made.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Ted also owned a local softball team, and decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cleveland's tallest building by tossing softballs from the top.
Here is a link to what happened next: http://jayyoo.com/post/46330025429/ted-stepien-softball-drop-from-terminal-tower
I went to college with a girl whose dad played on that softball team, which is how I know the story. For the longest time I thought this was the genesis of the WKRP episode, until I realized this happened TWO YEARS AFTER the show.
Stepian was copying a stunt from 40 years earlier.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.si.com/vault/1985/03/11/620572/when-baseballs-fell-from-on-high-henry-helf-rose-to-the-occasion
In my pointless examination of the Alaska elections systems, I found out that there were a couple ballot measures in the 1990s regarding the practice of "shooting wolves from planes".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/09/aerial_wolf_gunning_101.html
Obviously, in this case the animals are the targets and not the ammunition, and there are no cases of drunken Inuit with over-sized slingshots propelling wolves from a C-130 to messy death on the permafrost below, so far as I know...
That doesn't mean that propelling innocent canids from gigantic slingshots has never happened though, since one can generally count on humans to try anything once, and "Fox Tossing" or "Fox Bouncing" was actually a popular aristocratic pastime in Central Europe in the 1600s and 1700s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_tossing
The most famous practitioner was Polish-Saxon King Augustus II "the Strong", best known for getting his ass handed to him repeatedly by the Swedish King Charles XII in the Great Northern War. I don't know if the Swedes got their advantage on the battlefield from easily assembled modular cannons and warships and pop songstresses with a habit of exposing themselves, but my disinterest in investigating further means that I'm assuming it was.