Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Jerry's here too, Dave's hear and spirit. This means it's
Speaker 1: short stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about the peace sign today. This was
Speaker 2: put together by a guy named Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: No, this is from Jesselyn Shields at how Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: That's right. I was just kidding around. Oh okay, or
Speaker 2: actually I was serious. But as I was saying it,
Speaker 2: I noticed I was wrong.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is try to play already, stop laughing.
Speaker 2: But we're talking. That's right. We're talking about the peace sign,
Speaker 2: the very familiar circle with the one vertical line straight
Speaker 2: down the center and then the two lines branching off
Speaker 2: at forty five degree angles.
Speaker 1: The peace sign. Everybody, come on, you never know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, It's been everywhere. And weirdly, Chuck, it's not
Speaker 1: that old, actually, which I guess isn't that we I
Speaker 1: think it's actually weird that it's older than I thought
Speaker 1: it was. How about that? Okay, all right, let's get
Speaker 1: into it.
Speaker 2: Let's get into it. Because it didn't start out when
Speaker 2: the gentleman who created it, one Gerald Holtom. He didn't say, hey,
Speaker 2: this is a peace sign everybody. He was a British artist,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have said it like that anyway, he would
Speaker 2: have had an accent. And he was an activist, and
Speaker 2: he was a conscientious objector of World War two. And
Speaker 2: it was a time in the nineteen fifties when he
Speaker 2: was doodling around when people were worried. This is post
Speaker 2: World War two, and the US dropped two atomic bombs
Speaker 2: on Japan, and the you know, sort of peace micks
Speaker 2: of the world where like, hey, this cannot stand man,
Speaker 2: we don't want anyone to do this ever again. And
Speaker 2: so some groups started forming to try and counter that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, specifically, there was a group called the Direct Action
Speaker 1: Committee against Nuclear War, a group of pacifists. At the time,
Speaker 1: this is the late fifties, this is pre hippie, but
Speaker 1: these people definitely prefigured the Hippies who were soon to come.
Speaker 1: But they were legitimately worried about a world where not
Speaker 1: just one but two and then now three at the
Speaker 1: time nations had nuclear weapons that they were stockpiling, and
Speaker 1: they ended up co founding with some other groups, the
Speaker 1: Campaigned for Nuclear Disarmament that just basically said let's just
Speaker 1: get rid of these things. It was. You thought it
Speaker 1: was a good idea, you tried it, it turned out
Speaker 1: to be a horrific idea. Let's stop doubling and tripling
Speaker 1: and quadrupling down on this and let's just get rid
Speaker 1: of them altogether.
Speaker 2: That's right. That's a group that's still around today, which
Speaker 2: is pretty great. And one of the first big things
Speaker 2: they did was organized in march in London from Trafalgar
Speaker 2: Square about fifty two miles or in this case eighty
Speaker 2: three clicks away to Aldermiston where they had a facility
Speaker 2: that was producing nuclear material, and Holtam said, you know what, everybody,
Speaker 2: we need a logo.
Speaker 1: They did. I guess he probably sounded a little bit
Speaker 1: like that, like the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's very kind of you.
Speaker 1: So he came up with this this peace sign for
Speaker 1: the event for that march, and I've seen two different
Speaker 1: competing explanations of that design, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was just coincidence or what. But he said later
Speaker 1: on in a letter to somebody the artists himself, David
Speaker 1: or Gerald Holton, said that it was meant to be
Speaker 1: a kind of stylized minimalist version of a person in despair,
Speaker 1: standing there with their arms out to their sides downward,
Speaker 1: in their palms facing out, and he says, like in
Speaker 1: the manner of a Spanish peasant being executed by a
Speaker 1: firing squad, and a Goya painting is a very famous
Speaker 1: Goya painting of a peasant being executed by a French
Speaker 1: firing squad. But he has his hands up in the air,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have them downward. So I don't know what
Speaker 1: Gerald Holton was talking about. The one that makes way
Speaker 1: more sense since he was creating this for the Campaign
Speaker 1: for Nuclear Disarmament. It was actually also called the CND
Speaker 1: logo that it was Actually it's it's a semaphore. It's
Speaker 1: a combination of semaphores. That' SAM for N and D.
Speaker 2: That's right, And a semaphore is a is basically an
Speaker 2: alphabet that you use flags. And this is before you
Speaker 2: could communicate via you know, short short distance radio. Like
Speaker 2: you see people out on the tarmac. They're waving those
Speaker 2: flags around and they're not just saying like over here,
Speaker 2: over there, you can actually spell things out.
Speaker 1: By over there. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, but that's what they're doing. It's it's a
Speaker 2: it's a way of communicating over a long range where
Speaker 2: you can't hear somebody.
Speaker 1: Yes, So the the N, which for nuclear is two
Speaker 1: lines that basically come apart at a forty five degree
Speaker 1: angle away from the guy holding or the person holding
Speaker 1: the semaphores right right, So they're standing there straight as
Speaker 1: an arrow with their arms out to their sides downward
Speaker 1: holding the flags. That's N. You're spelling an N if
Speaker 1: you do that right. If you want to do a D,
Speaker 1: you hold one flag straight up in the air, one
Speaker 1: flag down, maybe throw your head back all a flashdance
Speaker 1: just for a little extra touch, and you're spelling a
Speaker 1: D for disarmament. So if you put that in a circle,
Speaker 1: but you have friends, is the peace sign aka the
Speaker 1: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament logo.
Speaker 2: And that could be coincidence? Is that what we're saying here.
Speaker 1: It's not possible, it's coincidence.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what are you saying then? That Holt them
Speaker 2: was just.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was misquoted, if he'd forgotten.
Speaker 1: I just don't understand the Goya thing because it doesn't
Speaker 1: even show up in a Goya painting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just looked up the paint. He's definitely got
Speaker 2: his arms up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no mistaking it. I mean maybe if you
Speaker 1: turned him upside down, but no.
Speaker 2: So the they made these badges out of white clay
Speaker 2: that they had baked, and the message was basically, if
Speaker 2: there was a nuclear war, these badges would be one
Speaker 2: of the few things left behind that would survive. You know,
Speaker 2: that's fine, But the symbol I think was enough. It
Speaker 2: was very simple, it was very easy to reproduce, and
Speaker 2: very key. Before he take the break, we will mention
Speaker 2: that Holtam did not copyright this thing because he wanted
Speaker 2: it spread far and wide, and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to suggest we left it as
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger whether he copyrighted it or not, but I
Speaker 1: think you made the right decision.
Speaker 2: All right, then let's say this. Did he copyright it,
Speaker 2: Let's find out after the breakup.
Speaker 1: So we said that these pacifists that were into nuclear
Speaker 1: disarmament in the late fifties prefigured the hippies, and they
Speaker 1: definitely didn't. What's interesting is the peace symbol is a
Speaker 1: direct connection between those two groups. Because oh, we didn't
Speaker 1: say Gerald Wholsome did not copyright his creation. It was
Speaker 1: free for anybody to use, and he did that on purpose.
Speaker 1: That was a very deliberate thing for him to do,
Speaker 1: because at first he was spreading this message for nuclear disarmament,
Speaker 1: but as the hippies kind of adopted it and took
Speaker 1: on more and more other stuff that they wanted to
Speaker 1: see changed for the better, the peace I kind of
Speaker 1: morphed and evolved from a symbol that everybody recognize meaning
Speaker 1: nuclear it's or meant to one that meant just peace
Speaker 1: in general, a whole catch all is what it became expanded.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: And like we said many times already, he didn't copyright
Speaker 2: this thing, so it was very easy to distribute without
Speaker 2: having to worry about, you know, fear of legal repercussions
Speaker 2: or paying somebody for its for its use. So all
Speaker 2: of a sudden it was, you know, it was all
Speaker 2: over the place and just became ubiquitous and tied to
Speaker 2: this idea of peace, which you know, peace and anti
Speaker 2: nuclear war is not the biggest leap, but it was
Speaker 2: definitely not the peace sign until Vietnam came around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also kind of expanded to be a symbol
Speaker 1: for the struggle to be recognized and treated equally like
Speaker 1: women's rights movements, environmental movements, the apartheid anti apartheid movement
Speaker 1: all adopted the peace symbol. The ruling part of South
Speaker 1: Africa tried to ban it in fact, yeah, and that
Speaker 1: did not take And Gerald Holton, for his part, he
Speaker 1: wanted the peace symbol on his headstone and he didn't
Speaker 1: get it. I don't know why I just spoiled that,
Speaker 1: but it seems weird to me. Like if you say
Speaker 1: I want something on this on my headstone, there are
Speaker 1: very few cases where I think people should be like, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to put that headstone. But he wanted
Speaker 1: an inverted peace symbol in the in the manner of
Speaker 1: Agoya peasant being executed exactly.
Speaker 2: He was like, instead of hands down, it should be up,
Speaker 2: like symbolizing growth and like a you know, the tree
Speaker 2: of life where mankind lives. And I guess whoever was
Speaker 2: in charge of his funeral said.
Speaker 1: Nah, right, I'm sick of that stupid symbol.
Speaker 2: Very strange.
Speaker 1: There's one other thing we got to throw in, and
Speaker 1: that's the Mercedes Ben's logo.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you can't go to Atlanta Falk's football
Speaker 2: game without seeing that peace sign there on the stadium. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd kind of wondered about this, but obviously I didn't
Speaker 2: put too much thought into it because I knew that
Speaker 2: the Mercedes Benz company had been around long before the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, and that was the case.
Speaker 1: It was first, it was it was actually the Daimler
Speaker 1: brothers adopted it as a logo. They adapted it from
Speaker 1: a postcard their father had sent them, and their home
Speaker 1: had been marked on the postcard with a three pointed
Speaker 1: blue star. They're like, let's make that our logo, which
Speaker 1: is sweet and wholesome until you realize what the three
Speaker 1: points of the star stand for the company's dominance of
Speaker 1: products for use on land, see and air, which is
Speaker 1: not exactly peace symbolish, so it's not at all related.
Speaker 1: That's right, Chuck said, that's right. I'm out of stuff
Speaker 1: to talk about, so short stuff's out. Stuff you should
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