Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, Fellow Ridiculous his historians. Thank you as always
Speaker 1: so so much for how are you doing this? Monster?
Speaker 2: We got to give a shout out to our super producer,
Speaker 2: hurting my heart.
Speaker 1: Last last one was hurting everything.
Speaker 3: I do want to point out that beforehand, I had
Speaker 3: like five mental typos before we start here.
Speaker 2: As an I.
Speaker 3: Even clapped and when I kind of three in my
Speaker 3: own head and clapped for her, realizing at the count
Speaker 3: out loud.
Speaker 2: For that to work, we got to fun. It's a ritual.
Speaker 2: It's technically a technical thing, but it's also fun to do.
Speaker 1: It just gets us on board. It's a fun activity.
Speaker 3: And just to confirm so no one has to be worried,
Speaker 3: I can confirm that we are in fact actually recording.
Speaker 1: This right now. Tight tight, Hey, you're no me. I'm
Speaker 1: Ben Bullen you. A while back, Noel, we had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, uh you. Max and I were recorded
Speaker 1: in the studio about a series on famous mistranslations.
Speaker 2: That's true, Remember that I remember nothing about it. No,
Speaker 2: that's not true. One of them was about Coca Cola
Speaker 2: being a ghosts.
Speaker 3: You're the ghost of your ancestors back Jimmy Carter wanted
Speaker 3: to have sex with Eastern European country. Can't remember which
Speaker 3: one specifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it may have been Germany, or that
Speaker 1: may have been the old the old tale about Kennedy
Speaker 1: and the alleged donuts. I just want to make love
Speaker 1: to the world. Yeah, we've all been there to do.
Speaker 2: We're talking about a sort of I guess, adjacent topic
Speaker 2: today to mistranslations. We're talking about typos, which is, I
Speaker 2: don't know, mistranslations is sort of its own ball of axe,
Speaker 2: and that it requires sort of good intentions and then
Speaker 2: just kind of missing the boat.
Speaker 1: Typos are just.
Speaker 2: Kind of about willy nilly, you know, making mistakes. Usually
Speaker 2: it just involves a couple of extra letters, like you said, Bet,
Speaker 2: But sometimes a typo can become a mistranslation, can't it,
Speaker 2: or a very least an unintended word that has hilarious
Speaker 2: It's an often controversial meaning and fallout.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can change the nature of what is being communicated.
Speaker 1: We're grateful for Research Associate Jeff factor g helping us
Speaker 1: out with this. I was trying to do some typo
Speaker 1: jokes as we were recording so much more when you speak,
Speaker 1: it's more of a but I tried to. I tried
Speaker 1: to misspell ridiculous history, and it was tough to make
Speaker 1: my fingers do it.
Speaker 2: Oh Okay, I got as you were doing verbal typos
Speaker 2: and typographical typos. Okay, good to know you were you were,
Speaker 2: You were committing to the bit, Ben, I respect the hustle. Uh.
Speaker 2: Today we're talking about major typos that cause some whipsies,
Speaker 2: some chaos.
Speaker 1: A little boobies, yeah, and typos are Look, there is
Speaker 1: no organization, there is no authority that is immune to typos,
Speaker 1: because they're very easy to mess up. If you read
Speaker 1: a lot, then you'll notice some typos occur more often
Speaker 1: than others. A famous example in graphic novels in particular,
Speaker 1: is actually Soldier spelled solidaire.
Speaker 2: Interesting a little inversion, perhaps right transposition rather or maybe
Speaker 2: it's neither of those things. But you know, I guess
Speaker 2: in this day and age, when most of our typing
Speaker 2: or our text based communication happens on devices, we've got
Speaker 2: a lot of auto correct typos that are kind of fun, yeah,
Speaker 2: and can be really hilarious. I don't know this has
Speaker 2: ever happened to you, Ben, but has your phone ever
Speaker 2: accidentally gone into voice to text mode when you didn't
Speaker 2: know it, and it was just listening in on a
Speaker 2: whole conversation, and you look down and there's this absurdist
Speaker 2: composed poem there waiting. Sometimes I just send them to
Speaker 2: whoever it was composed to. Its fun, you know, for
Speaker 2: posterity and for art.
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned that I think on stuff that
Speaker 1: I want you to know. But my most infamous and most
Speaker 1: embarrassing typo from Auto correct. I was texting with my
Speaker 1: mother when she was around, and I told her we
Speaker 1: were just shooting the breeze, and I said what I
Speaker 1: meant to say was yeah, mom, I'm thinking of growing
Speaker 1: a mustache. And what Auto It's infinite wisdom decided I
Speaker 1: meant to say was yeah, mom, I think I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of growing a moist ache. Oh you've mentioned that before,
Speaker 1: been a moist ache. It sounds so, oh my goodness, scandalous.
Speaker 1: You said that to your mother, I know, but luckily, luckily,
Speaker 1: she was a very forgiving woman. And it wasn't like
Speaker 1: I was making typos over at NASA, though NASA itself
Speaker 1: is not immune to typos. Maybe we start with a title.
Speaker 1: I know, we both love the Wicked Bible. What have
Speaker 1: you done? Then I'll tell you what you've done is
Speaker 1: a brilliant segue.
Speaker 2: Oh sucks the Wicked Bible.
Speaker 1: The King James version.
Speaker 2: Of the Bible one of the most ubiquitous versions of
Speaker 2: said holy text, spearheaded by Yes, you guessed it, King James. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 2: King Jane, which one from earlier?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all I need to know.
Speaker 2: And there is, if you can museum for just about everything,
Speaker 2: a Museum of the Bible, and they have a dot
Speaker 2: org and they had this to say about a very
Speaker 2: infamous typo that took place in printing of the Bible.
Speaker 1: Of course, the King.
Speaker 2: James was one of the most widely circulated versions, and
Speaker 2: that's what led to it being so ubiquitous even today
Speaker 2: from collections, not Museum of the Bible dot org. Printing
Speaker 2: the Bible with movable type on an early modern press
Speaker 2: was a remarkably difficult task. As the King's printer, Robert
Speaker 2: Barker held the exclusive right to print all English Bibles,
Speaker 2: including the King James Bible, but his early editions were
Speaker 2: marred by poor quality. And you guessed the typographical errors. Yes,
Speaker 2: in the beginning, God said, let there be I yeah,
Speaker 2: and everything was I.
Speaker 3: So if I can jump in here really quick, Noel
Speaker 3: posed this onto the universe. So I wanted to follow
Speaker 3: up with the King James of Bible fame is King
Speaker 3: James one of England, King James sixth of Scotland. We've
Speaker 3: talked about this in the past, but basically those lines
Speaker 3: were merged together after the whole King Henry eighth and
Speaker 3: all that and all the fallout.
Speaker 1: He exactly good.
Speaker 2: Note King James One, his buddy Robert Barker was making
Speaker 2: a mess of the English language and Bible form.
Speaker 1: The dangers of monopoly then as now, look for the
Speaker 1: majority of typos. If you're reading in a language that
Speaker 1: you're already fluent in, you'll usually be able to get
Speaker 1: the gist right because your brain will kind of pre
Speaker 1: arrange the pattern, but it'll transpose it into the right
Speaker 1: direction right. Yeah, yeah, including entire words right and sections
Speaker 1: of phrases. But this is one of the most hilarious
Speaker 1: history rocket typos in all of Europe.
Speaker 2: It's a typo biomission. Yes, it still is still a
Speaker 2: type oftheless. In sixteen thirty one there was this reprint
Speaker 2: of the King James Bible Robert Barker that we just mentioned,
Speaker 2: teamed up with a guy named Marca Martin Lewis to
Speaker 2: publish this. But they they whipped on one big important thing,
Speaker 2: the seventh Commandment. The seventh Commandment in English translation reads
Speaker 2: thou shaltst not commit adultery. Clear got already explicit, not
Speaker 2: open to interpretation unless you miss the word not. That's right,
Speaker 2: and well, not all the commandments are things you're not
Speaker 2: supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Some of them are things you're supposed to do. So
Speaker 1: if you didn't know.
Speaker 2: Better, you might think, here, wait a minute, I missed
Speaker 2: the memo on this one.
Speaker 1: They totally missed the word not. And so this Bible
Speaker 1: had the seventh Commandment printed as thou shalts commit adultery
Speaker 1: and it appeared in like a thousand copies of this text.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, which isn't a lot. And you got
Speaker 2: to imagine those would be worth a pretty penny. And
Speaker 2: that is in fact the case. I found an article
Speaker 2: from The Guardian from back in twenty fifteen where one
Speaker 2: of these wick rare as heck wicked Bibles went on sale,
Speaker 2: one of only ten remaining copies of sixteen thirty one
Speaker 2: Sinners or wicked Bible with the as the Guardian puts it,
Speaker 2: infamous dipo imploring readers to commit adultery. And it went
Speaker 2: on auction for actually the asking price was between ten
Speaker 2: and fifteen thousand pounds. Not sure what it's sold for.
Speaker 2: I bet we could figure it out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but speaking of.
Speaker 2: Pounds, yeah, this was They were pounded a little bit
Speaker 2: for this mistake.
Speaker 1: There was a bit of a fee involved, a bit
Speaker 1: of a fine. Yeah, hold up to the court of
Speaker 1: the current king at the time, keeting Charles the First
Speaker 1: and Charles the First is just rightly upset. He said,
Speaker 1: you guys are making us look bad. We don't support
Speaker 1: adultery on paper. As the king, I just commit adultery.
Speaker 1: And this is like totally my thing. You know, you're
Speaker 1: messing up. You're jacking up my spot. Man blowing up
Speaker 1: the spot. So they lose their printing license, that all
Speaker 1: important royal approval. They get up a three hundred pound
Speaker 1: fine held over their heads. This Eventually the fine gets
Speaker 1: dismissed and three hundred pounds is an egregious amount of
Speaker 1: money at this point, and most of the texts are
Speaker 1: you know, astute listeners. You heard us say a thousand
Speaker 1: copies were printed, only ten known copies remain. It's because
Speaker 1: the government of the time actively sought to take these
Speaker 1: take these naughty Bibles out of commission.
Speaker 2: And pretty seriously yeah yeah, because I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: in these days, you couldn't just depend on people to
Speaker 2: kind of fill in the blanks. You know, this could
Speaker 2: have led to some you know, societal upheaval in the
Speaker 2: wrong hands. Exactly what happened to the sanctity of marriage
Speaker 2: is out the window because of the wicked Bible.
Speaker 1: Could have led to a lot of really weird, uh,
Speaker 1: domestic disagreements, you know, like, honey, I'm doing this as
Speaker 1: a Christian.
Speaker 2: Totally, and I'm sure there are many folks that truly
Speaker 2: believe that that's what they're doing. This, unfortunately, did lead
Speaker 2: to the sad, unwinding decline of Barker and his you
Speaker 2: know life.
Speaker 1: Really, I mean, it's.
Speaker 2: Hard to walk that one back your whole You had
Speaker 2: one job and you did a bad job, and you
Speaker 2: got fined. You were the King's right hand printing man,
Speaker 2: and now you're out in the cold. And his reputation
Speaker 2: was shot. He was in and out of prison and
Speaker 2: ultimately died in prison the King's Bench prison in sixteen
Speaker 2: forty five, A bummer because.
Speaker 1: It's it's not the end though. That's true because there.
Speaker 2: There is a conspiracy theory at play on purpose. We still, yeah,
Speaker 2: we still don't know exactly how the misprint happened. The
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory is that there may have been an act
Speaker 2: of in dust real sabotage. A rival printer knew just
Speaker 2: had You know, this is a very small industry at
Speaker 2: this time. It reminds me of that's seen an Anchorman,
Speaker 2: where they like mess with Ron Bergundy's teleprompter and make
Speaker 2: him tell san Diego to go f itself. I guess
Speaker 2: he'll You know, that's an act that was an act
Speaker 2: of sabotage, of character assassination, and perhaps, yeah, maybe somebody
Speaker 2: had it out for the guy. I mean, they thought
Speaker 2: he was a little too cozy with the king and
Speaker 2: they wanted to cut him down a peg, and cut
Speaker 2: him down a peg they did.
Speaker 1: Good story, but maybe not entirely accurate if we go
Speaker 1: to medieval studies expert Chris Jones, speaking with the Guardian
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, he says, look, that sabotage thing,
Speaker 1: it's a juicy story. But it's probably just a rumor.
Speaker 1: Chris knows a lot about printing at this time in
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, and he says it's way more likely
Speaker 1: that these printers were in a cutthroat, competitive industry and
Speaker 1: they were trying to cut costs and they flew too far.
Speaker 1: They were they committed a sin of like a budget
Speaker 1: line Icarus. They flew too close to the typographical sun. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were. They were cutting costs on copy editors, says Chris.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened. So other people, devout Christians of
Speaker 1: the time would have also burned their copies. That happened
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: This this is a cool story, one man, if you
Speaker 2: can get one.
Speaker 1: You think they're still surprised by how affordable they are. No, really,
Speaker 1: there's only ten h I mean. Max points out that
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen a copy sold for around forty four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in twenty twenty three money, which is way
Speaker 1: cheaper than I thought it would be.
Speaker 2: For sure, when you said affordable, that is not a
Speaker 2: fable affordable content in terms of like historical artifacts, in
Speaker 2: terms of ancient Bibles.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely you can get reprints. However, Yeah, and reprints,
Speaker 1: historical curios or always fun for us bibliophiles. There's another
Speaker 1: one here that our pal Jeff found, which I had
Speaker 1: not actually heard of. And this is neither. This is
Speaker 1: massively offensive, but it's also now in retrospect, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: It happened in twenty ten, is very recent. The Pasta
Speaker 1: Bible by Lee Blaylock had to be reprinted in Australia
Speaker 1: because one recipe was supposed to call for salt and
Speaker 1: freshly ground black people lest.
Speaker 2: They cause a hulla balloo and another breaking down of
Speaker 2: civilization as we know it. We're cooking and eating our
Speaker 2: brethren because of this damnable pasta Bible. I love the idea,
Speaker 2: and it's funny that this is follow you know, there's
Speaker 2: the Bible, Bible, the Wicked Bible, and then we got
Speaker 2: the pasta Bible. And in my mind, it's a Bible
Speaker 2: that's made of pasta. But that's I like it. I
Speaker 2: like that it's that's salt and freshly ground black people.
Speaker 1: Oh I was just reading. That's that's even worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they meant black pepper, yes, of course, but then
Speaker 2: I didn't even catch that they could have left out
Speaker 2: black and it just would have been funny.
Speaker 1: Now it's now they're gonna cause a race war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's it's an egregious misstep and it shows us
Speaker 1: you can't trust automated uh spell check all the time.
Speaker 1: You need someone to read line by line. Here's what
Speaker 1: happened that we're gonna we're gonna explore this with again
Speaker 1: some help from the Guardian. There's a recipe for tag
Speaker 1: lit deli with sardines and Prosciutto's beautiful. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh it scandalized Penguin Australia, the publisher, because this
Speaker 1: is the recipe that said you need salt and freshly
Speaker 1: ground black, not pepper. Uh so this they didn't know
Speaker 1: about this until someone bought the book and read it
Speaker 1: and wrote to them and said, hey, you guys, quick
Speaker 1: check in quick circle up, let's have a chat. At
Speaker 1: this time, they had already printed seven thousand copies of
Speaker 1: the Pasta Bible and they said, okay, well, we got
Speaker 1: to take the l we got to destroy these because
Speaker 1: we cannot be seeing, you know, advocating cannibalism. And the
Speaker 1: head of the publishing in Penguin Australia at the time,
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert Sessions later spoke to the Sydney
Speaker 1: Morning Herald and said this is going to cost about
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars, which, again surprisingly I thought it would
Speaker 1: have cost more. But you can't really put a price
Speaker 1: on the public embarrassment, right.
Speaker 2: It does appear to still be in print or something
Speaker 2: called the Pasta Bible. It looks like kind of like
Speaker 2: a coffee table type, you know, big color photograph type
Speaker 2: recipe book.
Speaker 1: Hmm, interesting coffee table cookbook. I hope it has a
Speaker 1: big a big like bang a pal sticker on the
Speaker 1: front that says now without cannibalism exactly. Now.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing multiple covers of it, which leads me to
Speaker 2: believe that it was printed in multiple additions. And I
Speaker 2: do see a reprint or an image of the page
Speaker 2: in question. Spelt Taglili with sardines and proscutto. You got
Speaker 2: your spelt pasta, do your extra virgin olive oil, tablespoon
Speaker 2: two and at tablespoons of butter, clothes of garlic, fresh
Speaker 2: red chilis, chibata bread torn into small Interesting, Okay, I'd
Speaker 2: like some more carbs with my carbs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like the British with the toast sandwich,
Speaker 1: which is still a phenomenal thing.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Yeah, we've got dice preshudo twelve fresh sardine filets,
Speaker 2: as the Brits might say. And then we've got salt
Speaker 2: and freshly ground black people. Someone has circled it and
Speaker 2: it says oops.
Speaker 1: And then we've got.
Speaker 2: Some parsley roughly chopped and a quarter cup red wine vinegar.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a delight except for them, oopsy.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you why this is such a big deal, folks.
Speaker 1: Outside of religious texts, the number one selling book format
Speaker 1: is the cookbook.
Speaker 2: Oh of course, so they often are reprinted many, many,
Speaker 2: many many times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so as of this time twenty ten, when
Speaker 1: Sessions is speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald, he says, look,
Speaker 1: we don't know how to recall copies that are already
Speaker 1: out in the wild. To be very difficult. He said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm mortified that this has become an issue. He's saying,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much it's clearly an accident. We obviously don't
Speaker 1: advocate for this, and he said it was probably automated
Speaker 1: spell check, not our proofreaders. We think this error is forgivable.
Speaker 1: It's a silly mistake. There's no implication. And if you
Speaker 1: are uncomfortable with your copy of the pasta Bible, just
Speaker 1: give it back to us and we will give you
Speaker 1: a new book.
Speaker 2: Stop being offended the public, right, yeah, go luck with that.
Speaker 2: Don't be a bunch of doords. Oh man, you and
Speaker 2: your you and your segues.
Speaker 1: I don't know if doord is going to work as
Speaker 1: an insult.
Speaker 2: I think it does. It kind of sounds like adults
Speaker 2: or you know, or dork. You know is great. What's
Speaker 2: the deal with doord?
Speaker 1: What's the deal with door? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That's good. The very sign of feld in of you. Well,
Speaker 2: what is the deal with dord? I don't know this one?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. It is often called arguably the most famous
Speaker 1: dictionary typo of all time. Travel back with us to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four. The new edition of Webster's New International
Speaker 1: Dictionary has published, and the editors say, okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: put it. We're going to institute a different system. We're
Speaker 1: listing abbreviations and words separately. And you know, these are
Speaker 1: the kind of improvements you always see with reference works
Speaker 1: year over year or textbooks. You know, just a little
Speaker 1: bit of clarification that's right.
Speaker 2: And also, like you know, sometimes new words do get
Speaker 2: get admitted. You know, that's sort of a thing, right,
Speaker 2: isn't There usually like a way we always talk about
Speaker 2: it like this, Yeah, the word ghosted got you know,
Speaker 2: admitted to the Webster's Miriam Webster Dictionary. And also what
Speaker 2: the Oxford English that's maybe the one that we typically
Speaker 2: talk to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the oed right right, Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2: They make a bit of a to do about it.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a newsmaker whenever there's new words.
Speaker 2: But doored unfortunately not a real word, not a new word.
Speaker 2: It had no place or business in the zeitgeist whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you look at this edition from nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: you'll see one entry for dor soapsis or door coppice,
Speaker 1: which is the type of small kangaroo, and dori golden
Speaker 1: in color. Between those two there is a word called
Speaker 1: doored and it is described as a noun meaning density.
Speaker 1: In the fields of physics and chemistry, that.
Speaker 2: I believe that, I would absolutely believe that dude cork
Speaker 2: the word rsule what are some other action the action
Speaker 2: from a distance? Even, Yeah, chemistry words are already wild,
Speaker 2: so we would believe this if we were not experts
Speaker 2: in physics or chemistry, which we are not in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties or in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: But it was not a word. It had not been
Speaker 1: accepted into canonical English. It wasn't it wasn't a misprint
Speaker 1: of a word with a different definition. It just happened.
Speaker 1: And Webster's can later go on to confirm this. But
Speaker 1: it's also interesting if you look at the definition, there's
Speaker 1: none of the usual bells and whistles of a dictionary entry.
Speaker 1: There's no etymology, there's no sentence or example of use.
Speaker 1: So we don't really we kind of know how this
Speaker 1: how this ghost word came to be? Right? Who called
Speaker 1: it a ghost? Credit?
Speaker 2: Where credits due? That's clever, that's from snoops. Good on
Speaker 2: you Snopes. So in the first edition of Websters, we
Speaker 2: started to see abbreviations making the making the cut, things
Speaker 2: like LB for pounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and they were uh, they were combined with words,
Speaker 1: so they were all in the same list. You know
Speaker 1: about that? Then? How do you feel about that? That
Speaker 1: seems I think that's I think it was smarter them
Speaker 1: to divide the two. They didn't eventually do that. Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the edition was.
Speaker 2: I think it's a convoluting element that perhaps led to
Speaker 2: our kerfuffle here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you would be looking at the entry for
Speaker 1: the word lazy. Everybody knows that word if you're speaking English,
Speaker 1: and right after it would be LB four pound and
Speaker 1: LB is already, frankly a very weird abbreviation, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's no L and there's no B in the
Speaker 1: actual word pound. Oh wait a minute.
Speaker 2: So even in this first edition they were supposed to
Speaker 2: be kind of in their own little section.
Speaker 1: They didn't think it through.
Speaker 2: They were intermingled, that's right, Ben intermingled in edition one,
Speaker 2: and then they thought better of it, and by edition
Speaker 2: two it was almost more of like glossary type material, right,
Speaker 2: like a little section about an appendix let's call on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in nineteen thirty one, the Boffins
Speaker 1: had prepared this card that had notation on it, the
Speaker 1: notation D or D cont forward slash density big D
Speaker 1: or little D. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of energy.
Speaker 1: This card, from what we could tell, was meant to
Speaker 1: indicate that the next edition of the dictionary that they
Speaker 1: printed would have listings for capital D and little D
Speaker 1: as abbreviations for the word density I get it now,
Speaker 1: and instead D or DC came doored and got a
Speaker 1: definition that was density related in science, So the word
Speaker 1: was already out of place. Yeah you know, and yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah I you ever thought about ben the logistics of
Speaker 1: we were giving them a hard time, But the logistics
Speaker 1: of manually printing absolutely dense reference type material like this
Speaker 1: It makes your head spin.
Speaker 2: Absolutely the level of organization to not have it all
Speaker 2: be totally jacked up, it really boggles the mind. So
Speaker 2: good on you printers of the past.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me of that crazy, ridiculous, somewhat inspiring
Speaker 1: but somewhat disturbing story of the creation of the Oxford
Speaker 1: English Dictionary. You probably heard the ODA novel, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: novel about the Professor and the mad Man. When he
Speaker 1: became a film. I'm where we must have talked about this, Okay.
Speaker 1: There's a book called The Professor and the mad Man.
Speaker 1: It's nonfiction. It's by a guy named Simon Winchester, and
Speaker 1: it explores this bizarre and real relationship between the chief
Speaker 1: editor of the OED, a guy named James Murray, and
Speaker 1: one of the most prolific contributors to the first edition
Speaker 1: a guy named William Chester Minor. So what what James
Speaker 1: Murray did you know? To your point about this being
Speaker 1: a herculean effort, James Murray asked interested members of the
Speaker 1: public to help contribute definition. He crowdsourced it. He crowdsourced
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, and it worked really well. The one
Speaker 1: of the most frequent contributors. This guy was just always
Speaker 1: mailing new entries. It turned out that he was mailing
Speaker 1: all of these so frequently. He had because he had
Speaker 1: a lot of time on his hands. He was a
Speaker 1: patient and a mental asylum. Oh fun, Yeah, I'll give
Speaker 1: you something to do. It'll give you something to do
Speaker 1: with your hands. I guess right. What was that guy
Speaker 1: that the guy that drew lots of weird cats? Lewis Wayne.
Speaker 1: That's a fun one too, y'all check that one out.
Speaker 2: Sad at the end of the day, but really cool
Speaker 2: psychedelic drawings of cats and the somewhat misnomer of it,
Speaker 2: like documenting his dissent into madness or whatever, right, like
Speaker 2: it was a little bit overstating the case.
Speaker 1: We've got a series on it and the art is
Speaker 1: just super cool. I would love that as a coffee
Speaker 1: table book. Right. Oh that's a good call. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd love it as an inexplicable cookbook. I want to
Speaker 1: make a fake cookbook psychedelic. Yeah, it just says add
Speaker 1: like a little bit of periwinkle. No, wait, that's really
Speaker 1: add a shade of blue. Isn't a periwinkle? Also like
Speaker 1: a tiny mollusk? Yeah? Yeah, so that's too real. You
Speaker 1: could eat a periwinkle ridiculous, Yeah I have. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not bad, not bad. What about a barnicle? You
Speaker 1: ever eating a barnacle? I have not.
Speaker 2: People are screaming at their podcast device right now, I'll
Speaker 2: get on with it. All right. Let's move on to
Speaker 2: Philip Babcock Grove, editor in chief of That's Right, the
Speaker 2: third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, who wrote an
Speaker 2: article about this whole fiasco in nineteen fifty four. He said,
Speaker 2: as soon as someone also entered the pronunciation, doord was
Speaker 2: given the slap on the back that sent breath into
Speaker 2: its being.
Speaker 1: Well, you gotta read this one, Ben, this next part
Speaker 1: about the etymologists. Yeah, yeah, it continues. Whether the etymologist
Speaker 1: ever got a chance to stifle it, there's no evidence
Speaker 1: it simply had no etymology. Therefore, only a proofreader had
Speaker 1: the final opportunity at the word. But as the proof
Speaker 1: passed under his scrutiny, he was at the moment not
Speaker 1: so alert and not.
Speaker 2: As suspicious as Khel. Yeah, the proofreader the last line
Speaker 2: of defense. So similar to similar to that weird report
Speaker 2: about the catibalistic cookbook, this edition of the New International
Speaker 2: Dictionary went out with doord, an entirely made up word,
Speaker 2: and nobody noticed. For five years a bunch of people
Speaker 2: were reading it, and just like us, they went, oh,
Speaker 2: door door door is also it's it would be spelled differently,
Speaker 2: but it's when you run into a door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got door, just got door? Uh huh yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I had a high school. Uh this, I don't know
Speaker 2: if I've talked about this guy before. His name was
Speaker 2: mister Dowd's and it's not the same as door, but
Speaker 2: he felt like he could have been in mister dor
Speaker 2: He was the computer teacher. But he was this really tight,
Speaker 2: little built bodybuilder of a man and uh he uh
Speaker 2: but like Megan, he looked like the guy that played
Speaker 2: Darth Vader.
Speaker 1: And if you'll remember him in a clockwork Orange.
Speaker 2: He's the big dude that carries around the writer and
Speaker 2: this is what mister Dowd's look like. He even wore
Speaker 2: these big, thick grim glasses. But he and his bodybuilding
Speaker 2: buddies for fun in college. He said they would like
Speaker 2: pick up people's Mini coopers and like move them to
Speaker 2: a different parking.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I've heard of that, brink. Yeah. Also, dord
Speaker 1: Uh could possibly be a sub community of Nords in Skyrim.
Speaker 2: Arrow and the Knee and as its own etymological hilarity.
Speaker 2: Didn't we talk about how it meant to like propose
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 3: You guys married, Yeah, but jumping to the Doors would
Speaker 3: live in Uh, would live in There'd be Nords living
Speaker 3: on the Morrow.
Speaker 1: Wind Nor the Doors would live on the fjords of
Speaker 1: Nords in dagger Fell, to be called Dords.
Speaker 2: Nors.
Speaker 1: Come on, guys, that's good. No, No, that makes sense. What
Speaker 1: makes sense too.
Speaker 3: But Daggerfall is not a providence. But it's just people
Speaker 3: who live in the city.
Speaker 1: Of Daggerfall, right, is that in DLC. I don't know that.
Speaker 3: Daggerfall is the largest city in High Rock, which is
Speaker 3: also the name of the second game, Daggerfall, which takes
Speaker 3: place in the providences of high Rock and uh hammer Fall,
Speaker 3: which is where which is where the Dunmer I forget
Speaker 3: it wasn't cog correct, but he threw pretty much the
Speaker 3: dark n his hammer, and that's where atlanted hammer Fall
Speaker 3: as actually the hammer you can get from Malacath in Skyrim.
Speaker 3: By the way, the rumor is that Elder Scroll six
Speaker 3: is believed to be in high Rock, but then other
Speaker 3: people believe it's going to be in Hammerfall's confused with
Speaker 3: dagger Fall, because this is always the most confusing way
Speaker 3: to phrase these things, but no one actually knows. Moving on,
Speaker 3: I intentionally do that as in a filibuster every single time
Speaker 3: because I watched Noel's pain.
Speaker 1: Whenever I do that, yeah, it's yeah, it's real. Potentially
Speaker 1: Elder Scrolls will come out with its next iteration. Will
Speaker 1: podcast still be a thing? Will World War three happen? First?
Speaker 1: We don't know, but we do know five years after
Speaker 1: this dictionary and thence the word doored. An editor is
Speaker 1: a guy who works literally with Webster's dictionary is reading
Speaker 1: this and he goes, hang on a tick doored. And
Speaker 1: this person is brave enough to be the individual that
Speaker 1: raises their hands and says yeah. Hey, maybe I'm the
Speaker 1: dumb one here, but I've never heard of door? Why
Speaker 1: does it have no etymology? Why does it have no
Speaker 1: sample case? And guys, I think there may be a
Speaker 1: mistake or mystery here. So they banish doored from previous
Speaker 1: editions and almost no one noticed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's pronounced diord right rights, pronounced however you
Speaker 2: want to, because it's not a real word. But as
Speaker 2: you like to say, ben, English is a living language
Speaker 2: and we're still learning it ourselves. So who's to say,
Speaker 2: maybe doord will actually come around and finally get its due. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Because people would compile this dictionary back in the day,
Speaker 2: a bunch of dictionaries were ripping each other off. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of like how one Greco Roman historian would
Speaker 2: make one error and everybody else would just quote that
Speaker 2: error as gospel. So the word doored, despite being outed
Speaker 2: as a ghost word of phantom phrase, it keeps showing
Speaker 2: up in future dictionaries. And I love it. I love
Speaker 2: faith like a real ghost. Yeah, and get rid of
Speaker 2: weird books.
Speaker 1: Let's make a let's make a nonsensical, ridiculous history cookbook. One.
Speaker 2: People will buy it because it's a cookbook. Sure, and
Speaker 2: we're definitely gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Two we could throw in all yeah, we're definitely gonna
Speaker 1: get to it. Yeah, we're gonna throw in all sorts
Speaker 1: of surreal like real Kodek Seraphinanius kind of stuff. I
Speaker 1: would love that, Yeah, absolutely, But until then, there's actually more.
Speaker 1: We have a bit more.
Speaker 2: But I think we're gonna deserve it for one of
Speaker 2: our future Like it's gonna be its own kind of
Speaker 2: psychedelic stew since where we just you know, throw in
Speaker 2: a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
Speaker 2: but no fresh ground people.
Speaker 1: No, No, that's a guarantee for throwing green. However, is people.
Speaker 2: We are going to get to more prestigious crazy typos
Speaker 2: like the Lincoln Memorial and of course we tease NASA.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna tell you this. It's sometimes considered a
Speaker 1: million dollar typo. You'll have to tune into a future episode.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, see what we're.
Speaker 2: Talking The Cannibal one was only a twenty thousand dollars typo.
Speaker 2: What could a million dollars? Maybe we got to talk
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's pretty short, all right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll play these radio games. Okay, let's play the ring here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I just it's too good not to give a little
Speaker 2: quick rundown on and I think the people deserve it.
Speaker 2: On July twenty second, nineteen sixty two, Mariner one, the spacecraft,
Speaker 2: you know, the one, the Mariner one, was being prepared
Speaker 2: for a mission to Venus and was set to launch
Speaker 2: from Cape Canaver, which you may have heard of there
Speaker 2: in Florida. Just a few minutes after liftoff, however, they
Speaker 2: shuttle did have to be destroyed due to a course correction.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, The official account still dispute what caused this
Speaker 1: probe to veer dangerously off course just seconds after launch.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people will tell you there was
Speaker 1: a missing hyphen in the guidance code. Other people will
Speaker 1: tell you there was a missing decimal and that's what
Speaker 1: that's what created this domino effect of miss steering.
Speaker 2: Now, this is an unmanned spacecraft. Let's just be clear, think, no,
Speaker 2: no lives were lost due to this type of graphical error.
Speaker 1: But that's right.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're dealing with like code and coordinates
Speaker 2: and things like that, every little character matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this poor guy the Mariner won because I do
Speaker 1: anthropomorphized robots fame. It lost control, it lost contact, and
Speaker 1: NASA made the call just two hundred and ninety three
Speaker 1: seconds after launch to blow the thing up. We know
Speaker 1: that it was a simple coding mistake. Like you said, Noel,
Speaker 1: it's not This computer code is not the same as
Speaker 1: writing poetry or fiction. It's not supposed to be open
Speaker 1: to soft interpretation. You're not supposed to get the gist.
Speaker 2: You gotta get it right overall, when we say a
Speaker 2: million dollar typo, we're talking more than a single million
Speaker 2: all in right, NASA lost around eighteen to five milk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they they say that despite the rumors about
Speaker 1: missing hyphens or decimals, the real culprit here was the
Speaker 1: omission of something called an overbar for the symbol R
Speaker 1: for radius. So just a regular capital R instead of
Speaker 1: an R with a line over it. So an error
Speaker 1: a typo of not even a full letter, just a
Speaker 1: little like a big little D situation. Yeah, just over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the big R was missing. It's a little it's happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Arthur C. Clark had some snark to dish out.
Speaker 2: You may know him from two thousand and one a
Speaker 2: Space Odyssey fame. He called it with his rape here
Speaker 2: with the most expensive hyphen in history, which is you know,
Speaker 2: it was an under par Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clark. He is the hat the hyphen that you're oversimplifying
Speaker 1: it a little bit.
Speaker 2: Well, well, well yeah, you know he's got away with words.
Speaker 1: There's a poetry to the man. No idea what that
Speaker 1: book is about, though, which book? Two thousand and one
Speaker 1: Space Odyssey? You know what that's about.
Speaker 2: It's about the existence in the universe. What is the
Speaker 2: star Child? There's a sequel to the movie.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be terrible. Boy Scher is in it.
Speaker 1: It's not great. It's an airplane watch. But I love
Speaker 1: that you're pointing out this is a multi million dollar
Speaker 1: mistake because even when it occurred, they were already set
Speaker 1: back eighteen point five million. That is over one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty million dollars today. That's exactly right, and that
Speaker 1: is where we will leave you, fine, ridiculous historians. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks to our super producer, Max.
Speaker 2: The Giant skyrim nerd Williams, who I love dearly with
Speaker 2: all of my heart.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know. I I just know Skyrim.
Speaker 2: I have a map of the thing in my guest
Speaker 2: room that was gifted to me by the lovely Matthew Frederick,
Speaker 2: who we will also think and who will be joining
Speaker 2: us on this very program. That's Matthew two hands Frederick
Speaker 2: from stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: What are we talking about? Coconut Yeah, lovely bunch of
Speaker 1: coconuts taking it to the extreme. This also we wanted
Speaker 1: him with some good news. Mariner Too did launch just
Speaker 1: thirty six days later. It flew by Venus. It was
Speaker 1: the first successful scientific planetary mission. So NASA was able
Speaker 1: to to power through this misstep, and we can't wait
Speaker 1: for you to power through some ridiculous history with us
Speaker 1: in the future. We've already teased some guests. Please check
Speaker 1: out our upcoming exploration with the legendary Jorge cham check
Speaker 1: out our Rude Dudes a Ridiculous Crime. You like our show,
Speaker 1: you'll love them, Ay j Bahamas, Jacobs, the Living Type himself,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickler aka the Quister, more of a semi colon really.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, Oh, Colin's I have some hot takes
Speaker 2: on those What about an Oxford comma?
Speaker 1: I don't even get me started. Oh Man, the Oxford
Speaker 1: comment We've got some stuff to break down off air.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear your favorite ridiculous type is.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time before.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.