Chicken Gun. It seems that one of the things people test for when they test planes is if a plane can handle a bird strike in the windows. So it was a small surprise that when a letter was received it seemed that the windows kept getting smashed. Apparently after a small investigation, it was found that the testers were using frozen chickens instead of thawed chickens to test. Did it make a difference?
May 11th, 2006 Archives
Mythbusters Recap: Chicken Gun, Octopus Egg Pregnancy, Killer Laundry
Mythbusters · Season 1 · Episode 9 · Aired January 18, 2004
Mythbusters Recap: Salsa Escape
Mythbusters · Season 3 · Episode 2 · Aired February 23, 2005
Salsa Escape. The title myth of this episode refers to an apparent actual story whereby a prisoner in a Mexican jail used the salsa from his meals to corrode the bars of his cell enough so that he could remove them, thus escaping. Unfortunately, it took six years. This part of the myth can’t be tested, but Adam and Jamie set up a number of tests, as well as perform their own head-to-head salsa escape-off.
The Twilight Zone Recap: Once Upon a Time
The Twilight Zone · Season 3 · Episode 13 · Aired December 15, 1961
Buster Keaton stars in this unusual episode that mixes silent film with standard film, and uses it to illustrate time travel. Keaton is a janitor in 1890, who while cleaning one day finds a time helmet and uses it to travel forward 72 years, to 1962, where he meets a scientist who helps him repair the helmet, to travel back to 1890, and the scientist wants to come too.
Only when he gets back to 1890 and the “simple life”, he decides he doesn’t like it quite so simple. We decide to remember what we want to remember. The things like no income tax and the easier way of life, but we forget things like electricity and the conveniences that it brings. So Buster sends him back to 1962 with the helmet and returns to his way of life.
The Twilight Zone Recap: Death’s Head Revisited
The Twilight Zone · Season 3 · Episode 9 · Aired November 10, 1961
Captain Lutze (Oscar Beregi Jr., also in The Rip Van Winkle Caper) has returned to Dachau, the site of many horrors. As a Captain for the SS he put to death many people and tortured many more. Now the site is a ghost town, and those ghosts have decided to put him on trial.
He scarcely believes it when he sees the old forms in the buildings, and believes it less as they exert their will on him, but in the end they leave his mind a tortured soul, burdened with the horrors that they inflicted upon them in their lives, that now he will have to live out in the rest of his life. Not bad, though a bit dark. Would have been better if he had been transported back to the operating camp to live it out from the other side of the fence. This is The Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone Recap: The Passersby
The Twilight Zone · Season 3 · Episode 4 · Aired October 6, 1961
Lavinia waits on her porch for her beloved to return from the war, and it seems like he will return any minute, as all sorts of soliders come by. A segeant even stops by to help her wait. But not her beloved. Then she starts to wonder about all the wounded and why they won’t stop to talk, but it seems they have somewhere else to go, something else more important.
In the end, they are passing her by because they are already dead and have another destination in mind. It’s then that the sergeant tells her that they too are dead and it’s time for them to move along. The story isn’t bad, but it’s pretty slow-moving.
The Twilight Zone Recap: The Thirty Fathom Grave
The Twilight Zone · Season 4 · Episode 2 · Aired January 10, 1963
This is, to my recollection, the first one-hour episode of this series I’ve ever watched. It involves a destroyer on patrol that suddenly picks up a sonar signal from beneath them, only to discover a submarine. The only problem is that no one can find a submarine that’s been sunk, so they set about to find out more about it, and it turns out that it’s 20 years old! That in itself is pretty amazing, but even more so when they find that there’s a sound coming from within the sub!
And even worse is the chief bosun’s mate who suddenly can’t seem to think straight. As it turns out, about twenty years ago when he started in the navy, he was rescued as his ship went down from enemy fire, and it was from a sub. Now his mates are calling him back to go down with them. He’s been trying to overcome the guilt ever since, and while no one else thinks he should go down with the ship, he does, and dives off the side of his ship and can’t be found.
Keep your eyes out for a brief appearance by Bill Bixby in a small cameo.
