Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

May 27, 1956: Ed Sullivan gave a generation of youngsters atomic nightmares when he aired the animated short film "A Short Vision."

“I’m gonna tell you if you have youngsters in the living room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fantasy, the whole thing is animated…”

    -- Ed Sullivan introducing the apocalyptic short film A SHORT VISION on the May 27, 1956 broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show

    “Years later I met a man from Canada who had shoulder length dark hair, but in the center of his head was a small spot where his hair grew out a silvery white color. I asked him about it, and he told me that he was a medically documented case of a person whose hair had turned white from fright. As a child, he had seen A SHORT VISION while alone in a house, and he experienced extreme panic and terror for some time, and one result was that his hair began to grow out white from that one spot on his head.”

    -- Excerpt from a remembrance written for CONELRAD by Michael Mode, baby boomer, who also saw the end of the world on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956

INTRODUCTION: Sunday Night at the Apocalypse

From the vantage point of today’s media-saturated, 24/7, TV-in-every-room, on-demand world, the concept of a must-see, live, prime time television show starring an awkward newspaperman nicknamed “Old Stone Face” is hard to fathom. Throw in the fact that the show was a bona fide institution for over two decades and the premise begins to sound like science fiction. The closest current analog to The Ed Sullivan Show in terms of popularity is FOX’s American Idol, but Idol producers would sell what is left of their souls to get Sullivan’s audience share. The proudly untelegenic host dominated Sunday nights in an era well before TV fractured into 500 channels. But today Ed Sullivan’s significance to broadcasting is practically unknown to Americans born after the baby boom generation.

The primary purpose of this article then is to present the rich history of a remarkable film so that it is no longer shrouded in a haze of uncertain recollection. Another goal we hope to achieve by posting this comprehensive feature is that more people will come forward with their unique memories of seeing A SHORT VISION back in 1956. A sidebar to this article presents the testimony of several baby boomers who remember watching the film on Sullivan. Given The Ed Sullivan Show’s immense viewership, there must be many more people out there.

It is easy to see how even a black and white broadcast version of A SHORT VISION could traumatize a generation of children who were accustomed to the benign animated fare of Eisenhower-era kiddie shows: it depicts a phantom object from the sky decimating all life below with a giant fireball. And to be fair to the baby boomers, the melting faces sequence would probably freak out today’s most sophisticated five-year-old, too.

The Fifties kids were also at a psychological disadvantage because of the way Sullivan soft-pedaled his first parental advisory: “I’m gonna tell you if you have youngsters in the living room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fantasy, the whole thing is animated…” As we will quote in full later in this article, the host would strengthen his warning considerably when he ran the film a second time two weeks later.

Full detailed post at A SHORT VISION: Ed Sullivan’s Atomic Show Stopper

If you want to watch it: A Short Vision (1956) | Color copy from BFI National Archive. Note they sketched in a "black triangle bomber".





TIME, June 11, 1956


15% of PRC's power generation comes from hydroelectric.
Approx 50% of that comes from dams in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

Nearly all of the nation's hydroelectric water supply originates in the Tibetan Plateau, control of which is an ongoing source of tension with India.



Bomber Command No.617 Squadron - Known as "The Dambusters", for its actions during Operation Chastise against German dams during WWII. Motto: "Aprés moi, le deluge" ("After me, the flood").

The squadron was formed on 21 March 1943 under great secrecy for the specific task of attacking three major dams that contributed water and power to the Ruhr industrial region in Nazi Germany: the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe. The plan was given the codename Operation Chastise and carried out on 17 May 1943.
The squadron had to develop the tactics to deploy Barnes Wallis's "Bouncing bomb", and undertook some of its training over the dams of the Upper Derwent Valley in Derbyshire, as the towers on the dam walls were similar to those to be found on some of the target dams in Germany.




Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack the dams of the Ruhr Valley during World War II.



The Dambusters Raid (1990) by John Sweetman, reportedly gives the most accurate account.

In the 1955 film The Dam Busters, Wallis was portrayed by Michael Redgrave.



The last living Dam Buster pilot at the time, New Zealander Les Munro (1919–2015), offered his services as a technical adviser in "The Dambusters: 70 Years On" along with historian Dan Snow. "The Dambusters Raid" (2001) is reportedly the most accurate docu.

The Dambusters reformed on April 18, 2018, and was equipped at RAF Marham in June 2018 with the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning, becoming the first squadron to be based in the UK with this advanced vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) type. The unit is composed of both RAF and Royal Navy personnel, and operates from the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. The No. 617 Squadron was declared 'combat ready' on 10 January 2019.


Effects British attacks on German dams in World War 2

617 Squadron RAF Official Web Site & BATTLE HONOURS

UK Dambusters Website

Operation Chastise (Wiki)

The night of the 16th/17th. May 1943 - "Operation chastisement": The destruction of the Möhne Dam (German history site)


Barnes Wallis - Bouncing Bomb Tests, Dambusters



There is a few hundred Dambuster vids on Youtube.


May 27, 1977: Annapolis graduate and former Navy submarine officer President Jimmy Carter took a day-long spin on the nuclear sub USS Los Angeles (SSN 688). FLOTUS, Rosalynn Carter accompanied.



President Carter wrote about the submarine trip in his White House diary. The entry includes a description of a conversation Carter had with Hyman G. Rickover re: the legendary admiral's thoughts on atomic energy and nuclear weapons.






World’s longest-serving flight attendant dies aged 88


Please take billionaire friends with you...


Ohio billionaire plans to take $20M sub to Titanic site