Summary
Overview
This episode of Lateral features host Tom Scott with guests Jay Foreman, Mark Cooper-Jones (the Map Men duo), and Mithuna Yoganathan from Looking Glass Universe. The team tackles fascinating trivia questions about everything from the Brooklyn Bridge and P.T. Barnum's elephants to hot shot furnaces, retronyms, ska music technical issues, and temperature confusion on scratch cards. The conversational banter showcases both impressive knowledge and hilarious wrong turns as they work through each puzzle.
Brooklyn Bridge Elephant Parade and P.T. Barnum
The first question explores why the Brooklyn Bridge trustees enlisted P.T. Barnum's help in 1884, just a year after the bridge opened. After some confusion about who P.T. Barnum was (with references to The Greatest Showman), the team works out that a fatal stampede caused by rumors of the bridge collapsing led authorities to prove its safety. Barnum paraded 21 elephants and 17 camels across the bridge to demonstrate its structural integrity, leading to Jay's delightful observation that it's rare when the answer to a stampede is elephants.
- The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, and just six days later a rumor of collapse caused a fatal stampede
- P.T. Barnum was hired on May 17, 1884 to parade 21 elephants and 17 camels across the bridge
- The parade was meant to prove the bridge's safety to the public after the stampede tragedy
" It's quite rare that the answer to a stampede is elephants. "
Hot Shot Furnaces and Heated Cannonballs
Jay presents a question about Fort Knox (not the famous gold repository, but a coastal fort) that had sloping rails over a furnace leading to the sea. The team discovers this was a hot shot furnace designed to heat cannonballs before firing them at wooden ships to set them ablaze. However, the technology became obsolete almost immediately as ships transitioned from wood to metal construction in the 1860s, making the fort's specialized equipment useless before it ever saw combat.
- The fort had two sloping metal rails over a very hot furnace leading toward the ocean
- Hot shot furnaces were designed to heat cannonballs that would set wooden enemy ships on fire
- The technology became obsolete by the 1860s when warships began being made from metal instead of wood
- This Fort Knox was built on anti-British sentiment but never saw actual warfare
" You get a load of lead and you heat it up at the top of a tower and then you just use gravity to drop it down and it cools into a sphere in midair hits water at the bottom and you've got your lead shot "
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