LANE: Welcome to Touring History, the podcast where we pretend we're qualified to talk about the past. I'm Lane—
DAVE: And I'm Dave, and before we dive into today's cavalcade of historical chaos, we need to thank our sponsor, Randy's Donuts. You know, Randy's has been a World Famous icon since 1952—
LANE: —which, fun fact, is actually one of our stories today—
DAVE: —and that giant donut on the roof in Inglewood has become one of LA's most iconic landmarks. I mean, when Iron Man sits inside your donut sign to eat actual donuts, you know you've made it. When you're dealing with the kind of historical disasters we're about to discuss, you need donuts from a place that's survived Hollywood and still makes them fresh.
LANE: Speaking of substance, Dave, it's June 14th, which means we have birthdays, flag controversies, space monkeys, and—oh God—we're doing the asteroid story again, aren't we?
DAVE: Oh, we're absolutely doing the asteroid story. But first...
LANE: Birthdays! Starting with Marla Gibbs, who's 94 today. You know her from The Jeffersons, but here's the thing that gets me—she didn't even start acting professionally until she was in her 40s.
DAVE: That's actually fascinating because it connects to this whole pattern I've noticed about people who—
LANE: —Dave, we have Boy George turning 64, Lucy Hale at 36, Jesy Nelson at 34, and Kevin McHale at 37. Can we just acknowledge that Boy George is 64? Like, that's a sentence that exists now.
DAVE: You know what's weird? All these people, different generations, but they all had to navigate fame in completely different media landscapes. Marla Gibbs dealt with three networks and that was it. Boy George had MTV. Lucy Hale had social media from day one—
LANE: And Kevin McHale went from Glee to... well, that's a whole other conversation about how show business chews people up. But speaking of things that endure, Dave, let's talk about flags.
VIDEO PROMPT: Colonial-era military camp with men in rough uniforms gathering around makeshift tables, Continental Congress delegates in wigs pointing at maps, dusty Philadelphia streets
DAVE: June 14th, 1775. The Continental Congress establishes the Continental Army, and I have to ask—was this the most optimistic military decision in history?
LANE: Oh, here we go. Dave's got opinions about 18th-century military strategy.
DAVE: No, but think about it! They're like, "We're going to fight the most powerful military in the world with... farmers. And maybe some of them have guns."
LANE: To be fair, it worked out. Eventually. After a lot of people died and France bailed us out.
DAVE: Which brings us to two years later...
VIDEO PROMPT: Independence Hall meeting room with delegates examining fabric swatches, Betsy Ross-style figure sewing by candlelight, early American flag designs spread across wooden tables
LANE: June 14th, 1777—Congress approves the Stars and Stripes flag design. And Dave, this is where your flag obsession really kicks in, doesn't it?
DAVE: Look, I'm not obsessed with flags, I just think it's fascinating that they spent time during a war to argue about fabric arrangements. Like, people are dying, and they're like, "But should it be thirteen stripes or fifteen?"
LANE: Well, they needed something to rally around besides "not being British," which, let's be honest, is still pretty much our entire national identity.
DAVE: Fast-forward to 1934, and Pennsylvania celebrates the first official Flag Day. Which feels very Pennsylvania—taking something that already existed and making it official through bureaucracy.
VIDEO PROMPT: Biplane on grassy airfield with mechanics making final checks, two pilots in leather jackets and goggles climbing into cockpit, worried crowd of onlookers, early morning mist
LANE: But let's jump to 1919, because this is where things get genuinely insane. Alcock and Brown begin the first nonstop transatlantic flight. In what was basically a flying coffin with wings.
DAVE: You know that reminds me of a story, Dave—wait, I'm Dave.
LANE: You're having an existential crisis about your own name?
DAVE: No, I was going to tell you about my great-uncle who was convinced he could build a plane in his barn in 1923. The barn is still there. The plane... well, there are pieces of it embedded in the oak tree out back.
LANE: That's somehow both touching and terrifying. Unlike Alcock and Brown, who actually made it across the Atlantic, which in 1919 was basically magic.
VIDEO PROMPT: German military vehicles rolling down Champs-Élysées past closed shops, somber Parisians watching from sidewalks, Nazi flags being raised over government buildings
DAVE: June 14th, 1940. German troops enter Paris, and the first prisoners are deported to Auschwitz.
LANE: This is one of those days where history just... it's a lot. We're not going to make jokes about this one, folks.
DAVE: Yeah, some things deserve respect and remembrance, not comedy. Moving forward...
VIDEO PROMPT: Rocket launch pad in desert setting with scientists in white coats, small monkey in space capsule with monitoring equipment, dramatic rocket liftoff with smoke and flames
LANE: 1949, and we launched a monkey into space. Albert II, specifically, who became the first mammal to reach space and return alive.
DAVE: Okay, but can we talk about the fact that Albert II implies there was an Albert I?
LANE: There was! Albert I died in the attempt. As did Alberts III and IV. This was not a great gig for monkeys named Albert.
DAVE: I'm starting to see a pattern here with human decision-making. "The first four Alberts died horribly, but Albert V might be different!"
LANE: Speaking of questionable human decisions...
VIDEO PROMPT: Desert landscape near Bahrain with aircraft wreckage scattered across sand dunes, rescue workers with 1950s vehicles, somber officials examining crash site
DAVE: June 14th, 1950. An Air France DC-4 crashes near Bahrain, killing all 40 people aboard. This was back when flying was still legitimately dangerous, not just annoying.
LANE: My grandmother refused to fly until 1987 because of crashes like this. She said if God wanted us in the air, he'd have given us wings. I told her we invented wings, and she said, "Exactly. We stole them."
VIDEO PROMPT: Large computer room with massive UNIVAC I machine covering entire wall, men in suits and ties operating control panels, punch cards being fed into machines, 1950s office setting
DAVE: But here's where things get interesting again—1951, UNIVAC I, the first commercial electronic computer, is unveiled. This massive room-sized machine that could do calculations.
LANE: And now we carry computers in our pockets that are millions of times more powerful, which we use primarily to look at pictures of food and argue with strangers.
DAVE: The UNIVAC I weighed 29,000 pounds. Your phone weighs six ounces and can do things that would have seemed like literal magic to those engineers.
LANE: Although to be fair, those engineers probably imagined we'd use this incredible technology for something more productive than rating donuts on the internet. Which reminds me...
LANE: Time to recharge—back soon! But first, let's talk about Randy's Donuts again, because unlike historical disasters, Randy's has been consistently delivering since 1952.
DAVE: You know what I love about Randy's? In all the chaos we've been discussing—wars, crashes, space monkeys—there's something deeply comforting about knowing that somewhere in Inglewood, there's a giant donut on a roof that's become one of LA's most famous landmarks, and inside, people are making legitimately great donuts.
LANE: And they've expanded way beyond that original location—you can get Randy's in Vegas, Phoenix, even South Korea and Japan. But that original giant donut sign? Still there, still iconic, still probably visible from space.
DAVE: When you're contemplating the absurdity of human history, sometimes you need a donut from a place that's been featured in more movies than most actors. Check them out at randysdonuts.com. Now, back to the historical chaos...
VIDEO PROMPT: 1950s classroom with children standing beside desks, American flag in corner, teacher leading pledge recitation, Cold War-era patriotic decorations on walls
LANE: 1954—"Under God" gets added to the Pledge of Allegiance. Because apparently the original pledge wasn't controversial enough.
DAVE: This was peak Cold War paranoia. "How do we prove we're not communists? More God in government pledges!"
LANE: Written by a socialist, modified by Cold War conservatives to fight socialism. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a flag.
DAVE: Francis Bellamy, who wrote the original pledge, was probably rolling in his grave. Although he died in 1931, so he missed the whole "Under God" drama.
VIDEO PROMPT: Scientists in 1970s lab coats testing water samples, damaged bird eggs in laboratory setting, EPA officials at press conference with environmental charts, concerned farmers spraying crops
LANE: 1972—the EPA bans domestic DDT use. Finally admitting that maybe the chemical that was making bird eggshells paper-thin wasn't great for the environment.
DAVE: You know what's fascinating about this? It took Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in 1962 to start the conversation, but ten years to actually do something about it.
LANE: That's actually a pretty fast response time for government action on environmental issues. By modern standards, that's lightning speed.
DAVE: Fair point. Today it would take thirty years and three congressional investigations just to admit DDT might be problematic.
VIDEO PROMPT: British military ships near Falkland Islands, Argentine soldiers surrendering with white flags, diplomatic officials signing documents, remote South Atlantic landscape
LANE: And finally, 1982—the Falklands War ends as Argentine forces surrender. A war that lasted 74 days over islands most people couldn't find on a map.
DAVE: Margaret Thatcher's approval ratings went from terrible to excellent because of this war. There's something deeply British about fighting a war 8,000 miles away over sheep farming rights.
LANE: Although to be fair to both sides, strategic islands in the South Atlantic aren't nothing. But yeah, it was a very 1980s conflict—high stakes, questionable motivations, and everyone involved acting like it was the most important thing ever.
VIDEO PROMPT: NASA mission control room with scientists tracking asteroid trajectory on large screens, telescope images of space rock, dramatic simulation of asteroid passing near Earth
DAVE: But let's end with 2002, because this is my favorite "humanity almost died and nobody noticed" story. Asteroid 2002 MN missed Earth by about 75,000 miles.
LANE: Which sounds like a lot until you realize that in space terms, that's basically a fender-bender that didn't happen.
DAVE: If that asteroid had hit Earth, we wouldn't be here talking about flag controversies and space monkeys. We'd be... well, we'd be dead.
LANE: And the thing is, we only discovered it three days after it passed by. So we came close to extinction and didn't even know it until after the fact.
DAVE: That's very human, isn't it? "Oh, by the way, we almost all died on Tuesday. Anyway, here's what happened on Wednesday..."
LANE: So that's June 14th—flags, space monkeys, near-death asteroids, and the eternal human capacity to make questionable decisions and somehow survive them.
DAVE: If there's a theme here, it's that humans are remarkably good at creating problems and then eventually, sometimes, solving them. Or at least surviving them through sheer dumb luck.
LANE: Thanks again to Randy's Donuts for sponsoring today's episode. When the next asteroid comes, at least we'll have good donuts to eat while we contemplate our mortality.
DAVE: Visit randysdonuts.com, and remember—history is just a series of "seemed like a good idea at the time" decisions that somehow led to us talking into microphones about the past.
LANE: I'm Lane—
DAVE: I'm Dave—
BOTH: And we'll see you next time on Touring History, where we make the past sound slightly less boring than it actually was.
LANE: Probably.
[END OF EPISODE - Runtime: Approximately 11 minutes]
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