On one slow news day on April 18, 1930, a BBC radio announcer blatantly said, “There is no news.”
100 Mind-Blowing Radio Facts
The radio took 38 years to reach a market audience of 50 million. The television took 13 years, and the iPod only took 3 years to reach a market audience of 50 million.
In the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, the individual dancers kick nearly 200 times per show.
You can visit or stay in the “Scandal Room” (originally room 214) at The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., where E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy communicated with burglars via radio during the 1972 Watergate break-in.
The KKK was taken down with help from Superman. A 16-episode series titled’ The Adventures of Superman’ was aired on the radio during the 1940s. This series incorporated the findings that activist Stetson Kennedy had been able to get while undercover in the KKK.
Pointing your car keys to your head helps you find your car faster. This is because your head works like a radio transmitter. This then increases the range of the car remote’s signal, thus allowing your car to respond faster.
A BBC radio announcer once stated that they did not have any news. This occurred on April 18, 1930, when no major events took place that day. The announcer blatantly said that there was no news.
Potatoes can reflect your wi-fi signal. In a 2012 experiment to test the wireless signals on new planes, potatoes were used and placed on the seats. The results found that because of the high water content of the potatoes, they can reflect and absorb radio and wireless signals. Human beings are also able to do the same thing.
A sound engineer once got accidentally high on LSD while cleaning an old radio. When Eliot Curtis tried to restore an old Buchla Model 100 synthesizer, he ended up tripping on 50-year-old LSD. He only noticed a crystalline substance that had gathered on the radio, which he wiped off. Since he found it in a dark closet at a university, the psychedelic components were preserved. The LSD residue dissolved in his hands and got him into a 9-hour trip. How’s that for wild funny facts?
Since the beginning of newscasting, there has only been one day with no news. April 18, 1930, was such an uneventful day, that the BBC’s radio announcer said, “There is no news,” by 6:30 PM.
Scientists detected a radio signal in space from 5 billion light-years away. 5 billion light-years mean the Earth did not exist at the time the source transmitted it! How strange.
The remote control was invented earlier than the television. 30 years before the first digital television, Nikola Tesla invented a “teleautomaton” that could control certain devices at a distance through radio waves. His first remote-controlled device was a remote-controlled boat in 1898. Since then, people adapted the wired remote for television. However, due to injuries, they developed it further to be a wireless remote.
After the murders, List turned off the lights, turned on the radio to a religious station, and left the house.
The person who proved the existence of radio waves thought they were completely pointless. Between 1886 and 1889, Heinrich Hertz did a series of intricate tests that proved the existence of a previously theoretical form of wave – electromagnetic waves. When asked about the practical uses, he responded, “It’s of no use whatsoever[…] this is just an experiment that proves Maestro Maxwell was right—we just have these mysterious electromagnetic waves that we cannot see with the naked eye. But they are there.” Hertz’s name is now used to indicate the various degrees of electromagnetic frequency despite calling them pointless.
The Eiffel Tower was initially considered to be an eyesore. Its usefulness as a radio tower saved it from being dismantled in 1909.
The First Computer ever (ENIAC). The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) made history as the first computer in the world (which was electronic programmable). Development of the computer was completed in 1945, and the computer entered service in December of that year. ENIAC could displace the computational power of 2,400 human beings for $500,000. ENIC relied on octal-base radio tubes to function. However, these tubes constantly burned out daily and required replacement. This means that ENIAC ran about 50% of the time and experienced downtime for tube replacements otherwise. More specialised and durable tubes eventually became available, leading to failures every one to two days.
The Radio took 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million. You would think the invention of the radio would be a big deal, but it took 38 years for the radio to reach an audience of 50 million. Meanwhile, the iPod only took 3 years to reach the same milestone!
The Churchill myth. Of Winston Churchill’s most famous 1940 speeches: ‘Blood, toil, tears and Sweat,’ ‘Fight Them on the beaches’, ‘Finest Hour,’ and ‘The Few,’ only one, ‘Finest Hour’ was broadcast on the radio at the time. All of them were delivered to the House of Commons, but only after his ‘Finest Hour’ speech did Churchill record a version later for the BBC. The other speeches he only recorded in 1949.
Accidental invention. The microwave oven, invented in 1945, came about accidentally, after engineer Percy Spencer found radio waves emitted by a radar set he was working on melted a chocolate bar.
London has the world’s longest-running show: At St. Martins Theatre in the West End in London, the world’s longest-running show is being played. Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has been running since 1952, which means that the show has been running for more than 70 years now. The show started as a radio play, called Three Blind Mice, and follows the story of seven strangers snowed in at a home in the countryside.
The Longest-Running Show in the World Is in London: The longest-running performance in the world is being performed at St. Martins Theatre in London’s West End. Considering that Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap debuted in 1952, the show has been airing for over 70 years to this day. The plot of the show, which began as a radio play named Three Blind Mice, centres on seven strangers who become stuck at a rural house due to snowfall.
‘’…according to artificial intelligence expert Dr. David Levy, in a few generations, we won’t just be having sex with robots, we’ll be marrying them.” He predicted that human-robot marriages will be legal by the year 2050. – CBC Radio