A Misguided Brainstorm
In its second major test, the Great Panjandrum hurtled toward the beach, only to veer away and turn back to sea towards the launching craft. In the meantime, some rockets detached from the device’s wheels to launch themselves at observers on the beach, to whistle over their heads or explode underwater nearby. So designers returned to the drawing board, to work out the bugs. When they figured that they finally had it under control, they conducted a final demonstration in front of assembled admirals and generals. As described in a BBC documentary: “At first all went well. Panjandrum rolled into the sea and began to head for the shore, the Brass Hats watching through binoculars from the top of a pebble ridge […] Then a clamp gave: first one, then two more rockets broke free:
Panjandrum began to lurch ominously. It hit a line of small craters in the sand and began to turn to starboard, careering towards Klemantaski, who, viewing events through a telescopic lens, misjudged the distance and continued filming. Hearing the approaching roar he looked up from his viewfinder to see Panjandrum, shedding live rockets in all directions, heading straight for him. As he ran for his life, he glimpsed the assembled admirals and generals diving for cover behind the pebble ridge into barbed-wire entanglements. Panjandrum was now heading back to the sea but crashed on to the sand where it disintegrated in violent explosions, rockets tearing across the beach at great speed.“ Unsurprisingly, the misguided project was immediately scrapped over safety concerns.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:
Amusing Planet – The Shoe Fitting Machines That Blasted You With Radiation
Arab America – Al Mutanabbi: The Greatest Arab Poet
Bill Moyers – Exxon-Mobil: More Than 50 Proud Years of Melting Glaciers!
Cracked – 5 Attempts to Save the World that Went Disastrously Wrong
D-Day Overlord – No. 74 Sticky Bomb
Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Mutanabbi
Encyclopedia Britannica – Great Leap Forward
French Colonial History, Volume 4, 2003 – Of Rats, Rice, and Race: The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre
Hein Online – Self Defeating Regulation
Imperial War Museum – Grenade, Anti-Tank, No. 74 Mk I (‘Sticky Bomb’)
Lapham’s Quarterly, April 16th, 2020 – ‘A Simulated Plague’: Watching Panic Spread in Italy in 1630
Oregon Encyclopedia – Florence Whale Explosion
Oregon Public Broadcasting – Why Oregon Blew Up a Whale in 1970
Pennsylvania Gazette, November 1st, 1998 – The Flu of 1918
Scullard, Howard Hayes – The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (1974)
Snopes – Did a 1960s Oil Company Ad Boast How Much Glacier It Could Melt?
Thaxton, Ralph – Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao’s Great Leap Forward Famine (2008)
Times, The, June 5th, 2009 – Replica of the Great Panjandrum, 1944 Super Weapon, to be Tested
Wired – Vintage Shoe-Fitting X-Ray Machines Will Zap Your Feet
