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Coal miner, union activist, and singer Nimrod Workman performs the traditional Appalachian folk song 'Oh Death'
History Nerd7,843,461 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
When Idris Elba's wax figure unlocked his phone instantly
History Nerd1,351,430 görüntüleme • 12 gün önce
Jackie Gleason, the legendary American comedian and star of “The Honeymooners”, on the time he got CBS to send him a private train to Miami: In the 1960s, Gleason decided he was done shooting his show in New York. He wanted Miami, and he wanted to arrive there in style. “When we’re doing the Honeymooners, I had a big contract for that for two years. And after the first year, I said I didn’t want to do it. And they didn’t believe me. They thought I had a job somewhere else. And finally, they realized that I just didn’t want to do it.” When the network came crawling back and asked him to do another show, Gleason was out in California shooting a picture. He said yes — but only under one condition: “I said, ‘All right.’ I said, ‘But I want a train that goes to Florida.’ Because I had come down here and played golf and liked it and I figured might as well go to Florida and do the show. Play golf all the time and they went for it.” They went for it. What followed was a rolling party stretching coast to coast. Gleason breaks down what was on board: “Everything. We had two Dixieland bands come from California and they would spell each other. I’d say to them, ‘Take five miles,’ and the parties went on 24 hours.” Asked if there were girls on the train, he laughs: “Boy, there were girls. There certainly were. And they were very, very nice girls. Nothing on it happened. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it didn’t. Might have been because the berths were too small, but regardless of that, nothing happened on that trip.” Asked if there was a bar on the train, his answer is perfect: “A bar. The train was a bar. I guess that’s a classic example of what clout is.” Then he drops the line that captures the whole story in a single breath: “‘Send a train, please.’ That’s right. When you’ve got good ratings and you’re one, two, or three in the ratings, there is nothing your little heart desires that they don’t provide.”
History Nerd69,027 görüntüleme • 1 gün önce
In August 2014, a local news reporter at the Wayne County Fair in Pennsylvania pulled aside a small boy who had just come off one of the rides. His name was Noah Ritter, he was five years old, and he was there with his grandfather, visiting from Wilkes-Barre. The reporter asked him what he thought of the ride. Noah did not really answer. Instead, he launched into a wandering, breathless monologue built almost entirely around one word: apparently. "It was great, and apparently I've never been on live television before," he said. He explained that he does not usually watch the news "because I'm a kid," and that his grandpa hands him the remote after they watch the Powerball drawing. The reporter tried to steer him back to the ride. Noah obliged, briefly. "Wow, it was great." Why? "Because apparently you're spinning around and apparently every time you get dizzy. Yeah, that's all you do is get dizzy." He kept returning to the fact that he was on television. "I've never ever been on live television. I never ever be on live television." He mentioned the super slide too, and how going down it had scared him half to death. The reporter, by this point clearly aware she had something unusual on her hands, asked for his name and turned to his grandfather to spell it out. R-I-T-T-E-R. From Wilkes-Barre. "All right, buddy. Good stuff." The clip ran on WNEP, a local station serving northeastern Pennsylvania. Within days it had spread across the internet. Noah became known as the "apparently kid," and the interview turned into one of the defining viral local news moments of that year.
History Nerd1,077,561 görüntüleme • 27 gün önce
In a rare interview, Tolkien is asked why he spent 14 years building the world of The Lord of the Rings. His answer reveals a philosophy of creation rooted in something deeper than storytelling. When pressed on whether the hobbits and their world emerged from his unconscious, Tolkien pushes back. He describes himself as a "meticulous sort of bloke" who spent those years "finding time schemes and getting everything right." The appendices, the languages, the social customs, and the histories all existed before the story itself. In fact, the world came first. The Hobbit was almost an accident: "It existed in posy and in large scale plan before The Hobbit was written. The Hobbit was intact originally an attempt to write something outside it and drew into it." The interviewer, surprised, asks why. Why create an entire world before writing a single story within it? Tolkien's response gets to the heart of his creative philosophy: "Because being made by a creator, one of our natural factors is wishing to create. But since we aren't creators, we have to subcreate. Let's say we have to rearrange the primary material in some particular form which pleases us, which may it isn't necessarily a moral pleasing. It's partly aesthetic pleasing." This idea of subcreation is central to Tolkien's worldview. Humans cannot create something from nothing, but they can reshape what already exists into forms that satisfy an aesthetic vision, not merely a moral one. When the interviewer suggests that moral concerns should outweigh aesthetic ones, Tolkien disagrees. He argues that an "aesthetic facet is as strongly to be predicated as a moral one in this world." On the question of good and evil, Tolkien explains that the Dark Lord was not always dark. He fell, "several stages down of Lucifer." The One Ring, he says, represents "a power so enormous that even if a good man were to use it against a bad it would corrupt the good man." He emphasizes that this idea predates the atomic bomb. He had been developing these stories since his undergraduate years, long before modern allegorical interpretations could be applied. Asked whether he would rather be remembered as a man who said something or a man who made something, Tolkien rejects the distinction: "I don't think you can distinguish. The made things unless it says something won't be remembered."
History Nerd42,224 görüntüleme • 1 gün önce
Paul McCartney reveals John Lennon complimented him exactly once in their entire songwriting partnership The most successful songwriting duo in history wrote together for roughly a decade. They produced the catalogue that reshaped popular music. And in all that time, by Paul's own account, John praised his work to his face on a single occasion. Asked whether he and John were competitive as writers, Paul doesn't hesitate: "Yeah, we were competitive. Yeah. Not openly, but we later admitted, yeah, you know, so Paul's written a good one there. I better get going." The rivalry ran underneath everything. One would hear the other's new song, register it as a challenge, and quietly raise his own game. Paul describes the internal monologue plainly: "That's a bit good. Right. Here we go. Come on." He gives a concrete example of how this shaped the catalogue. When John wrote "Strawberry Fields Forever," reaching back into his Liverpool childhood, Paul answered with a song reaching back into his own: "If he'd written Strawberry Fields, I would write Penny Lane. You know, he's remembering his old area in Liverpool. So, I'll remember for mine." Two of the most beloved songs in the Beatles catalogue, written as quiet returns of serve. Then comes the part that lingers. Asked whether they complimented each other when one wrote something great, Paul answers: "Once." Once. In all those years of writing together. The one time it happened, Paul remembers exactly which song it was. "Here, There and Everywhere," from Revolver: "John sort of just when it finishes wrote a really good song that I love that song. And I was like, 'Yes, he likes it.' You know, I've remembered it to this day. It's pathetic really." Decades on, he still remembers the moment. He calls his own remembering of it pathetic, but the fact that he remembers at all says something about what a word from John was worth to him. Asked whether he ever returned the praise, Paul is more generous about himself, with a caveat: "Yeah, I would tell him his stuff was great. You'd normally have to be a little bit drunk. It helped."
History Nerd436,216 görüntüleme • 22 gün önce
The first cat video ever was shot by louis lumière in 1899. colorized + speed fixed
History Nerd559,671 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
Obama reveals what life is really like inside the White House: In a candid interview with Jimmy Kimmel, the former president pulled back the curtain on the small, strange details of presidential life that most people never think about. Can he walk down to the kitchen at night for a snack? "I mean I could, I don't," Obama admitted. When Kimmel pressed whether someone is in the kitchen at all times, or if he'd have to wake staff up for a sandwich, Obama clarified: "Yeah, I wouldn't wake somebody up to have a sandwich." He confirmed he is in fact allowed to open the fridge himself. "There's a refrigerator and there's silverware." But cooking? That's another story: "It has been a while. I won't lie about that." Then Kimmel asked the question everyone wonders: does the president ever drive? "I'm able to drive," Obama said, before recounting the one time he tried during his presidency. A former staffer had pulled up to the South Lawn in a new electric car. "He was very excited about it. I said, well yeah, let's try it out. I just grab his keys and we just go out. I start circling the South Lawn and the Secret Service..." Their reaction? "No matter what you do, do not let him out. They were pretty upset." Top speed of the presidential joyride: 35 miles per hour. Even the dentist comes to him. There's a full dental chair and tools set up in the basement of the White House. Obama recalled showing up one day saying, "I've got a cap that's loose, sir, here we are." And Daylight Saving Time? Someone else resets the clocks for him too.
History Nerd287,398 görüntüleme • 24 gün önce
Comedy legend Norm Macdonald telling a story about meeting his new neighbor: The setup is simple. Norm has moved into a new place, and being neighborly, he knocks on the door next to his to introduce himself. "I'm your new neighbor," he tells the guy. "Good to see you, nice to nice to run into you, welcome to the neighborhood." The neighbor mentions he works at the University of Science. When Norm asks what he does there, the guy says: "I'm a professor of logic." Norm has never heard of it. So the professor offers to explain by example: "Do you own a dog house?" "Yes I do." "Well then that means you probably have a dog." "Yes." "Well that means you're likely you have a family if you have a dog." "Yes I do." "Well then that means you got kids, you're married." "Yes yes I am." "Well then you're a heterosexual man." "Yes sir I am." The professor explains the trick: "You see that's logic there. I asked if simply from finding out you had a dog house I made this series of inferences and I found you're a heterosexual man simply from the fact that you had a dog house." Norm is amazed. "Good God isn't that something." He says goodbye, invites the professor over for a chicken sometime, and heads off to catch a bus. At the bus stop, no bus is coming. A guy lights a cigarette, hoping it will summon one. It doesn't. Norm tells him, "Well that theory really worked huh." The guy shrugs: "Sometimes it works." Then the guy asks what's new, and Norm cannot help himself. He has just learned something fascinating. "I met my neighbor. He had a hell of an interesting job. He's a professor of logic down at the University of Science." The guy at the bus stop has never heard of logic either. So Norm, freshly trained, offers to demonstrate. "Let me ask you a question. Do you own a dog house?" "No I don't own a dog house." A pause. Then the guy at the bus stop delivers his own series of inferences: "Oh yeah you're one of them gays."
History Nerd326,654 görüntüleme • 29 gün önce
This is a recorded interview with a woman who grew up on a rice plantation before the Civil War. Listen to how she remembers it. "It was a lovely happy time," she says, "living in open spaces with many lovely colored people and animals and flowers and fields." She describes Saturdays riding a buggy to the plantation, a dairyman named April who "didn't do anything else but love us and skim cream," a cook "we adored." Nearly a hundred enslaved people on the property. In her telling, they were not the enslaved — they were "our friends." Then the part that gives the whole thing away: "It's no disgrace to see they're like children… because they are like happy children, some of them, because they like to sit in the sun rather than work hard, and they'd rather play than work."
History Nerd116,167 görüntüleme • 12 gün önce
In 1977, Sylvester Stallone explained why he wrote Rocky and how he convinced Hollywood to let an unknown actor play the lead. When asked why he wrote the script, Stallone described what he saw as a problem with the films of that era: "I felt at the time that cinema, at least the movies I had been seeing were at an all-time low. It was everything was anti-society, anti-Christ, anti-government, anti-everything. And there was no one to root for." He believed films move in cycles, and he wanted to bring back something that had been lost: "I wanted to get back into the cycle of the films of the 40s and the 50s where people say, 'Hey, gee, I missed the good old films.' Yet Hollywood hasn't taken heed and hasn't made any good old-fashioned type films where morality was at the forefront." Up to that point, Stallone's career had been built on tiny roles, what he called "atmosphere": "I was mostly what is known as atmosphere, always in the background or the guy that was being the drunk that was being stepped over in the gutter and other lame roles." Writing Rocky was his way of giving himself one real shot before disappearing: "I felt that gee, if I was going to go down at least into professional obscurity, I wanted to at least have the opportunity to say to myself, well, you tried. You put your best foot forward and you didn't make it." He knew the character had to match what he could authentically play: "I surely couldn't pass myself off at least as a lawyer in a three-piece suit. I just don't think I have that kind of appeal or whatever it is. So I wanted to take it much more basic. A man from the street. All right. What kind of a man? An underdog. And that being a professional fighter I think has that connotation to it." When the script reached studio executives, they wanted a star. They floated James Caan, Burt Reynolds, Ryan O'Neal, Gene Hackman, and Robert Redford. Stallone's pitch for himself came down to persistence and economics: "Usually it's the old syndrome of knocking on the windows, pestering them, pressing my face in the door, honking their horn in the driveway. In other words, making a real pain in the neck out of myself." "I kept saying I work a lot cheaper and a lot harder and for a lot longer." The film was eventually made for $960,000, which Stallone described as roughly the cost of "a good toothpaste commercial."
History Nerd376,541 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
Ronald Reagan once roasted Frank Sinatra by pretending to endorse him for President of the United States: Reagan opens by acknowledging that Sinatra had been a loyal political ally: "This is Frank Sinatra's night and I'm here out of gratitude. Frank worked for me in all my campaigns. He was with me all the way to the governor's mansion. Without his help, who knows? I might have been president." He then jokes about the rivalry he had lost to be there that night: "When this program was being planned, the producer hadn't decided what political figures would participate. It was a choice between me and Governor Brown, and I lost again." From there, Reagan pivots into the central bit, mock-arguing that Sinatra would make an excellent Commander-in-Chief. On cabinet appointments: "He has many friends, and I'm sure he'd appoint only the most qualified to his cabinet. Who better than Sammy Davis Jr. as Secretary of Health, Education, and Jewelry?" On scandal management: "Of course, in politics, there's always gossip and ugly rumors. I'm happy to expose one for the falsehood that it is. He has not granted a Pizza Hut franchise at Camp David. It'll be in the White House where it belongs." On national defense: "Frank Sinatra will make a president who is strong on defense, but again will have concern for humanity. Scientists at his urging have developed an intercontinental ballistics missile that is not a weapon of mass destruction. It only hits photographers." On fiscal policy: "I asked him what he thought of the energy bill. He didn't hesitate a second. He said, 'Pay it.'" On working with Congress: "He won't have any trouble with Congress. They'll pass all the legislation he sends over just to get his autograph." And on foreign policy: "He'll settle that canal business, too. Panama wants a canal, he'll give them Venice." Reagan closes with the punchline that lands the whole bit. Sinatra wouldn't take the job anyway: "As you probably gathered by now, I think Frank Sinatra would make a fine president. But I don't know whether we can get him to run. Is it worth it? If you have to give up being a king?" The genius of the roast is its structure. Every "endorsement" doubles as an affectionate jab, and the final line elevates Sinatra above the presidency itself, delivering the ultimate compliment disguised as a joke.
History Nerd252,121 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
An IRA leader explains why killing British soldiers is "an advantage" (1972): In a chilling 1972 interview, an IRA leader identified only as Mr McAn is asked about his reaction to the death of a second British soldier that week. His response reveals the cold strategic calculus at the heart of the Troubles. "Well, my reaction as a member of the IRA would be another FAL casualty for Crown forces, a certain amount of satisfaction," he says. He then briefly acknowledges the human cost: "On the personal level, of course, we realize that this is a terrible personal tragedy for someone's family, that this is possibly some young woman being left a widow, possibly children being left without a father, someone's son has been killed." But he immediately pivots back to his political framing: "But this is the whole tragedy of the situation in Ireland: British troops are not wanted, and while they are forced to remain here against the will of many of them, I'm sure tragedies like this are obviously going to continue." The interviewer presses harder, asking whether these deaths were an advantage or disadvantage to the IRA. McAn does not hesitate: "I would say that the deaths of British troops in Ireland for the first time in 50 years would be a definite advantage." When asked why, he explains the logic: "It has without any doubt done more than anything over the past 50 years to bring it home to the British public that unless their troops are withdrawn from Ireland, unless the just demands of the Irish people are met, these tragedies are going to increase." The interviewer puts the question plainly: "So that you see a political advantage in British troops being killed?" McAn's answer is a single word. "Yes." The exchange captures something rarely stated so openly in conflict: The deliberate use of violence as political messaging aimed not at the soldiers themselves, but at the public watching back home. 1972 would go on to become the bloodiest year of the Troubles.
History Nerd210,452 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
In 1977, before anyone knew what Star Wars would become, Alec Guinness sat down to explain how a knighted Shakespearean actor ended up in a science fiction film he almost turned down. The script arrived while Guinness was finishing a picture in Hollywood. The name attached to it impressed him. "I heard it had been delivered by George Lucas, and I thought that was impressive because he was a respected young director." Then he learned what kind of film it was, and his enthusiasm collapsed: "When I found out it was science fiction, I thought, 'oh crumbs,' and felt it simply wasn't for me. But then I started reading." What kept him going wasn't the writing. By his own account, the writing was a problem: "It seemed to me the dialogue was pretty ropey, but I had to keep turning the page. That is an essential quality in a script. You have to want to know what happens next." That instinct, the inability to put the pages down, was enough. He met Lucas, the two got on well, and Guinness found himself signing on. Then comes the part of the interview that has since become legend, told here in 1977 with no idea of how the numbers would balloon. Guinness recounts the percentage deal: "My agent asked for 2% because we didn't think it would make any money. I'd never had a percentage on a film before." The story of how it grew is almost comic in its modesty: "The day before the film opened in San Francisco, George Lucas phoned me. He's very diffident and shy, and said he thought the movie was going to be all right. He said they were grateful for the little alterations I suggested and offered me another half percent, making it two and a half. A few weeks later, I asked the producer for something in writing, and he mentioned a quarter percent, so it ended up being 2 1/4%." A modest slice of a film nobody expected to earn anything. Asked what fascinated him about it, Guinness reached past the genre and landed on something simpler: "I think it has a marvelous healthy innocence. It has great pace, it's wonderful to look at, and it's full of guts. There are no horrors and no sex at all." He described the strange aftereffect of watching it: "It had a sort of wonderful freshness about it. It was like fresh air. When I came out of the cinema into London, I thought the city looked gritty and full of rubbish because the film had been so invigorating. It's simple stuff for all ages." And already, before the franchise existed, people were reading more into it than Guinness ever intended. Asked if he was becoming a kind of guru figure, he answered with characteristic dryness: "I am getting some pretty strange letters. One said, 'my wife and I have got problems, would you come over and live with us for a few months?'"
History Nerd94,353 görüntüleme • 14 gün önce
Donald Trump on why he didn't want to be President in 1980: In a fascinating interview with Rona Barrett, a 34-year-old Donald Trump is asked if he would ever want to be President of the United States. His answer might surprise you: "I really don't believe I would, Rona. But I would like to see somebody as the president who could do the job." Trump explains why the most capable people stay away from politics: "Most men are frightened of politics today… The most capable people are not necessarily running for political office and that is a very sad commentary on the country. They head major corporations and they had this and that, but they are not running for political office." When Barrett pushes him on why he himself wouldn't run, given his wealth and accomplishments, Trump gives a revealing answer: "Because I think it's a very mean life. I would love and I would dedicate my life to this country, but I see it as being a mean life." He continues with a critique of the political process itself: "Somebody with wrong views and somebody with the kind of views that are maybe a little bit unpopular, which may be right but may be unpopular... wouldn't necessarily have a chance of getting elected against somebody with no great brain but a big smile. And that's a sad commentary for the political process." Trump points to television as the culprit, using a striking historical example: "The Abraham Lincolns of the world... Abraham Lincoln would probably not be electable today because of television. He was not a handsome man and he did not smile at all. He would not be considered to be a prime candidate for the presidency and that's a shame, isn't it?" Despite his reluctance to run himself, Trump expresses a strong belief in the power of the right leader: "There is one man that can turn this country around. I could tell you I know a number of people that would be excellent presidents… they're very, very competent, they're leaders, they have the respect of everybody, and they would be fabulous presidents. But they're not running for political office." What Trump said he'd rather do at the time: "What I would like to be involved in is trying to help choose somebody or working with a group of people whereby they put up a candidate who would be acceptable to be the president of the country."
History Nerd217,271 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
Shadow puppetry in the 1930s. Pure artistry with nothing but hands and light
History Nerd13,338 görüntüleme • 2 gün önce
Sidney Williams, a WWII veteran, explains why he would never volunteer for war again, and why no one else should either: When asked about his experiences, Sidney recalls a haunting encounter in no man's land. "One Jerry who I laid out sniped him and he laid down out in no man's land. He was there for about over ten minutes, about 20 yards out." Sidney dragged the wounded German soldier back to his lines, but the man was already dying. "I laid him on the first day... it was all blue in the face. I said to him, 'You're a fool. You should have given yourself up and you'd have been taken prisoner. But he turned to run, so I shot him in the back of the head.'" Another memory haunts him even more deeply. A young soldier had wandered into the wrong lines: "I never forgot that fella. He was only a young fella, only about 15 or 16. He had a brand new uniform on and he must have got lost, coming from his own lines into our lines and just strayed. I felt sorry. He was only a kiddie. I'm sorry I did it to him." When asked how many people he killed during the war, Sidney can't give a number: "Oh God, couldn't say. I was in the Lewis guns, blazing by penny... I'm still here, still alive and kicking." Beyond the killing, Sidney describes the relentless misery of daily survival in the trenches. The impossibility of staying clean, the constant hunger, and the lice: "Trying to keep clean, you're smothered in lice. You thought you got rid of them, you got more on you. They used to breed... it just simply comes up to you. Through a good night's rest and then... I've got the memories." When finally asked the question that cuts to the heart of it all, was it all worth it? Sidney's answer is unequivocal: "No. Never ever. Never volunteer. You're old enough now, and they will get me again. The volunteer? Not me. Never." His reasoning is simple and devastating: "I've seen all this butchery. I know what I've been through. I'll never volunteer for anything else." Sidney Williams' testimony is a reminder that behind every war statistic is a human being carrying memories that never fade. The young German with the new uniform. The man shot in the back of the head. The lice. The hunger. He survived. But he carried it all with him for the rest of his life.
History Nerd184,258 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
