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XERA, the original Mexican 'border blaster' radio station, was so powerful you could hear it's signal on things like wire fences and mattress springs.
 
Francis E. Dec Esc. said:
XERA, the original Mexican 'border blaster' radio station, was so powerful you could hear it's signal on things like wire fences and mattress springs.
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Also, near the station, the ambient electricity was so high that wires connected to nothing would light up light bulbs.

The Wall of Voodoo song "Mexican Radio" was about these stations.

 
At one point in the early 1900s, Nevada was so depopulated after most of the silver mines had run dry there was talk of revoking its statehood and dividing up its territory between California, Utah, and Arizona.
 
Francis E. Dec Esc. said:
XERA, the original Mexican 'border blaster' radio station, was so powerful you could hear it's signal on things like wire fences and mattress springs.
Click to expand...
Until the early 2000s, 1170 AM was only used by one station in the US, KVOO in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because it was the only station on that frequency, it could crank up the wattage to levels other stations weren't allowed to. Since AM propagates off the atmosphere, at night, the station could be heard as far away as Guam. It could also be picked up via telephone, which necessitated using filters. It's since turned into a talk-radio station, and is no longer the sole user of the frequency, so those days are over.
 
35 years ago to the day, Stanislav Petrov saved all our asses.
1983 Soviet Nuclear False Alarm Incident.

tl;dr:
Faulty filthy commie tech malfunctions and reports launch of 5 US ICBMs inbound on Moscow. Russian officer decides that it doesn't make any sense, so he decides to not pass the alarm to the higher ups, thus preventing a "retaliation" attack. Had he called in his superiors to warn them of the "attack", the ruskies would have launched their entire arsenal, leading to everyone else on the globe joining in on the fireworks soon therafter.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
35 years ago to the day, Stanislav Petrov saved all our asses.
1983 Soviet Nuclear False Alarm Incident.

tl;dr:
Faulty filthy commie tech malfunctions and reports launch of 5 US ICBMs inbound on Moscow. Russian officer decides that it doesn't make any sense, so he decides to not pass the alarm to the higher ups, thus preventing a "retaliation" attack. Had he called in his superiors to warn them of the "attack", the ruskies would have launched their entire arsenal, leading to everyone else on the globe joining in on the fireworks soon therafter.
Click to expand...
There was actually a forum that did a play-by-post game in an alternate history where the warning was passed on, the Russians launched, the US retaliated and the US and the Soviet Union are mass graveyards while the rest of the world tries to rebuild.
 
DrJonesHat said:
There was actually a forum that did a play-by-post game in an alternate history where the warning was passed on, the Russians launched, the US retaliated and the US and the Soviet Union are mass graveyards while the rest of the world tries to rebuild.
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Unlikely that the Soviet Union would only have targeted the US, they would have at least hit the NATO countries. I doubt that there would be any "rebuilding" after a full-scale nuclear war, from what I've read, between the radiation and the smog in the atmosphere, higher-level life on the planet would die shortly thereafter.
 
BlueSpark said:
Unlikely that the Soviet Union would only have targeted the US, they would have at least hit the NATO countries. I doubt that there would be any "rebuilding" after a full-scale nuclear war, from what I've read, between the radiation and the smog in the atmosphere, higher-level life on the planet would die shortly thereafter.
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Yeah, that's what would really happen, but some people clung (and still cling) to the delusion that civilization could survive in some form and some idiots even think we could "win".
Related: The made for TV movie "The Day After" was criticized because it downplayed how destructive an exchange at that time would have been. Carl Sagan went on TV right after it aired and explained, much to the chagrin of the hawks in government that anyone who survived the intial exchange would die shortly after because the food chain would be destroyed. If you didn't die of starvation, the ozone layer would be completely gone and you'd die from tumors all over your body. But thankfully, we're past all that nonsense and wouldn't dream of electing another guy who's easily swayed by the last person he talked to.
 
During the Depression people ate rice pudding
The Dom. Rep's Revolution started at the same time as the Civil War
Bananas are berries
Avocadoes are considered fruit
 
There was a backup space shuttle launch pad at Edwards Air Force base that was built in case the Florida site was destroyed in a hurricane. It was never used, and I think it was dismantled when the shuttles were retired.
 
Jesus Christ himself supposedly beat the living shit out of a preacher with a whip and wrecked his church because the guy was using the church to swindle people out of their money, and Jesus considered this the most blasphemous thing he'd ever seen.

Kinda makes me wonder who else Jesus would beat down if he was still walking the earth today.
 
Count groudon said:
Jesus Christ himself supposedly beat the living shit out of a preacher with a whip and wrecked his church because the guy was using the church to swindle people out of their money, and Jesus considered this the most blasphemous thing he'd ever seen.

Kinda makes me wonder who else Jesus would beat down if he was still walking the earth today.
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It gets even crazier: On his way to said church, Jesus got hungry and wanted to eat figs from a tree a little off the road. When he reached the tree, it had no fruit, so Jesus cursed the tree to remain barren.

And this kind of reminds me of a really famous moment in german pop culture, when Klaus Kinski completely lost his shit in a live tour in 1971.
The Tour was called "Jesus Christ Erlöser" (Jesus Christ [the] Redeemer), basically an artsy fartsy project of Klaus Kinski (well known for being choleric) where he'd cite bible verses, his own writing and so on. The church and many religious people took issue with this, which culminated in this scene where Klaus Kinski asks some heckler to come on stage:

Mount Kinski errupts at 1:15s

Translation:
Hecklers: *general heckling*
Kinski: Shut your trap, so you can hear what I'm going to say now. [to some other heckler] And above all, you, with the big mouth, you come here. Come here.
Dude in blue sweater: Folks, I'm not big with speeches, and it's possible that some of you are looking for Christ, but I do not think he [Kinski] is that.Christ was, to my knowledge, an indulgent person and if someone disagreed with him, then he tried to convince him, he would not have told him to shut his trap.
Kinski: "NO HE DIDN'T TELL HIM TO SHUT HIS TRAP, HE TOOK A WHIP AND STRUCK HIM IN HIS TRAP! THAT'S WHAT HE DID!!! YOU STUPID PIG! This can also happen to you. There's two options now. Those that aren't part of this SCUM throw them out or they spent their money in vain!"

Kinski alone is pretty weird, he served in the Wehrmacht during WW2, was captured 2 days after being deployed and sent to a POW camp.
By May 1945, at the end of the war in Europe, the German POWs were anxious to return home. Kinski had heard that sick prisoners were to be returned first, and tried to qualify by standing outside naked at night, drinking urine and eating cigarettes. He remained healthy but finally was returned to Germany in 1946, after spending a year and four months in captivity.

Arriving in Berlin, he learned his father had died during the war, and his mother had been killed in an Allied air attack on the city.
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I am, as far as I know, one of four people on the planet who has played the Playboy Table Top RPG. At least, I'm one of the few to admit to it.
 
Francis E. Dec Esc. said:
Anglo-Saxons believed any kind of sudden pain or illness was caused by elves shooting invisible arrows into your body. That's why we still use the term 'stroke' to refer to sudden brain injury, it's short for 'elf-struck'.
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From Middle English stroke, strok, strak, from Old English *strāc (“stroke”), from Proto-Germanic *straikaz (“stroke”), from Proto-Indo-European *streyg- (“stroke; to strike”). Cognate with Scots strak, strake, straik (“stroke, blow”), Middle Low German strēk (“stroke, trick, prank”), German Streich (“stroke”).
You tried.
 
The heart is an endocrine gland. It secrets a peptide hormone that cause the kidneys to increase sodium excretion.
 
wylfım said:
From Middle English stroke, strok, strak, from Old English *strāc (“stroke”), from Proto-Germanic *straikaz (“stroke”), from Proto-Indo-European *streyg- (“stroke; to strike”). Cognate with Scots strak, strake, straik (“stroke, blow”), Middle Low German strēk (“stroke, trick, prank”), German Streich (“stroke”).
You tried.
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The OED claims this:

6.6 An attack of disease. a.6.a An apoplectic or (now more usually) paralytic seizure. Formerly †the stroke of God's hand.

1599 A. M. tr. Gabelhouer's Bk. Physic 25/2 An excellent Cinnamome water for the stroke of Gods hande.
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