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Hazardous History with Henry Winkler - Season 2 - Episode 01: Killer Crazes
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00:04Did you know that there was a time when cramming in college could be crushingly painful?
00:11Everybody was literally like, kids are jamming into a phone booth.
00:13You guys want to check this out?
00:15Let's go.
00:16They're able to cram in 25 students, which seems utterly insane.
00:21Do you remember when man's best friend was a skunk?
00:25Breeders start thinking, could people buy them as pets?
00:28Or how the roller rink was more like a combat zone?
00:33Good skaters, if they collide with somebody, it is like getting hit with a bowling ball.
00:38Some of these guys need helmets.
00:41Some of these gals need pads.
00:43No one has them.
00:44These are the things we used to do.
00:47For fun.
00:48For money.
00:49Or maybe out of boredom.
00:51That we'll never see again.
00:54Were they dangerous?
00:56Certainly.
00:57Deadly?
00:57Occasionally.
00:59But boy, wasn't it exciting.
01:12Of all the cultural crazes you can imagine, who would have thought that one of the most hazardous
01:19was sitting?
01:21In the 1920s, there's this thing that's called ballyhoo.
01:25And what it is, it's a way to attract people to your theater.
01:27So you would have some sort of act or something out front that would draw people to the theater.
01:31In the summer of 1924, people gather around a movie theater for what they think is just
01:35going to be a regular old ballyhoo.
01:37And when they look up, what they see is anything but regular.
01:42There, perched 100 feet above the roof of the theater, is a man sitting on a flagpole.
01:50No harness, no safety net.
01:53Just a man on a flagpole, 10 stories in the air.
01:56The man's name is Alvin Shipwreck Kelly.
02:00He's a former sailor and part-time stuntman.
02:03And he stays up there for 13 hours and 13 minutes.
02:07There's a little platform up there, and he's just sitting on the pole.
02:10They roll up food.
02:11He's living his life on top of that pole.
02:14The exciting stunt gives birth to one of the strangest crazes of the 1900s, flagpole sitting.
02:22And the public goes nuts for it.
02:25Somebody would be like, I'm going to go sit on that pole for as long as I can.
02:29And people would be like, honey, you want to go down to the town square and see people?
02:33And they went, and they would bring picnic baskets.
02:35And they would just watch a guy sit up there.
02:39Flagpole sitting becomes competitive.
02:41It's a race to the top to see who can climb the highest and stay up there the longest.
02:48In 1927, Shipwreck Kelly spends 22 days on top of a flagpole at Madison Square Garden.
02:55Two years later, he tops that by spending 49 days on top of a 225-foot pole.
03:02That's higher than Niagara Falls and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
03:08One Baltimore contest in 1929 pits multiple sitters against one another.
03:14And the crowd is taking bets who's going to last the longest.
03:18The victor holds out for 23 days.
03:23Looking to top them all is Betty Fox, the so-called beauty queen of flagpole city.
03:29Betty quickly draws a crowd, standing on a two-foot disc more than 200 feet off the ground.
03:34But she doesn't just hang out up there.
03:36She actually performs stunts.
03:39Betty skips rope and dances with her partner, as spectators watch these two balance precariously atop a two-foot-wide
03:47platform.
03:49But Shipwreck Kelly still leads the pack.
03:53He attempts his most audacious stunt ever, attaching a flagpole to the top of a biplane and flying around the
04:01city.
04:01If all this sounds extremely dangerous, that's because it is.
04:07One sitter, a guy named Joe Holden Powers, sits atop the flagpole for 16 days.
04:13And by the time he climbs down, he's actually got six fewer teeth because a storm smacked him headfirst into
04:19his own flagpole.
04:20People have suffered from sunburns, there's sleeplessness, people start hallucinating up there.
04:26And the man himself, Shipwreck Kelly, he has two heart attacks while on a pole.
04:32Of course, the biggest danger is from falling.
04:35You are spending days upon days, hundreds of feet in the air.
04:39You start to suffer from fatigue, sleepiness, dizziness, all while maintaining your balance.
04:45Sometimes something's going to go wrong.
04:48By the 1930s, gravity finally wins.
04:51And the draw of flagpole sitting comes crashing down.
04:56Eventually, people stop flagpole sitting, but not because it's grueling or dangerous.
05:01It's because it's typically a paid stunt.
05:04And with the Great Depression in full swing, nobody's getting paid.
05:08A big part of growing up is trying to fit in.
05:11And it's not always easy.
05:13But there was a craze from the 1950s where the problem was the exact opposite.
05:19Too many people fitting in.
05:22The 1950s are a golden age of college campus pranks and stunts.
05:27Think the cow in the dorm room or the dean's office put on the roof.
05:32It's bored kids having fun.
05:34It's basically like the movie Animal House.
05:38In 1959, college kids in South Africa are looking for a way to have fun.
05:43And what they land on, or should I say land in, is something totally unique.
05:50So there's this group of bored students.
05:52And they start thinking, what if we try to jam as many people as humanly possible into a phone booth?
06:00Legend has it that they're able to cram in 25 students.
06:04And that is nuts, considering that a phone booth is only like three feet wide and seven feet high.
06:10Next thing you know, their feet is reported around the world, and students in the U.S. see this and
06:15like, wait a second.
06:16We're not going to get beat out in the area of ridiculous stunts.
06:20This is America.
06:22Students at St. Mary's College in California decide they're going to try to beat the record themselves.
06:27And the school officials, they don't shut it down.
06:30They say, let's do it.
06:32They give Life Magazine a call.
06:35Life Magazine sends a photographer to document the attempt.
06:38And they don't break the record of the South Africans.
06:42But they do manage to pack 22 students into the phone booth.
06:47Everybody from Life Magazine, to the college administrators, to the kids going in that booth, everybody was down to clown.
06:53There was no wet blankets being like, I don't think you should do that.
06:56It was literally like, kids are jamming into a phone booth.
06:58You guys want to check this out?
06:59Let's go.
07:00Once the photo hits the newsstands, college students nationwide start chasing the record, cramming more and more kids into a
07:09single booth.
07:10The technique that people eventually find that's the best is to start from the bottom, and you have people sit
07:17with their legs interlocked.
07:19That way, you're not wasting space.
07:21And then you start stacking up people on top of those people.
07:26It's such a big deal now.
07:28They actually have captains, and there's a whole teamwork thing where they'll say, okay, closing the door.
07:32Ready? Everybody, exhale.
07:34And everybody gets as tiny as they can and thinks tiny thoughts, and they close that door.
07:38The records just keep getting made.
07:40There's 32 people that fit inside one in Modesto, California.
07:45There's 33 in Oklahoma City.
07:47Just because you can get 33 people into a phone booth doesn't mean you should.
07:54Phone booth cramming doesn't take into account that these are human beings.
07:57They can't bend every which way, and they need space for, like, their lungs to expand and contract when they
08:03breathe.
08:04One of the craziest parts of the danger of this is the fact that the phone booth is made of
08:08glass.
08:09And imagine if you're facing outward with your face against the glass, and the glass breaks.
08:14You can cut your face, cut your neck.
08:15It could be really bad.
08:18In Pennsylvania, high school girls cram themselves into a phone booth and got stuck, and they have to call the
08:23police to come and rescue them.
08:25And, ironically, you can't even pick up the phone to call 911 when you need help getting out of the
08:32phone booth.
08:33There is something to stupidity as a binding agent between you and your friends.
08:39And I think there is something beautiful about that.
08:41By the end of 1959, phone booth cramming finally hits the one limit it can't overcome.
08:48College kids' attention span.
08:50Phone booth cramming turns out to be a pretty limited fad.
08:54After all, there's only so many ways you can cram people into a phone booth.
08:59For college kids these days, it's hard to cram into a phone booth when you've never seen one.
09:08Now, if you were around in the early 1970s, you probably remember a craze that was everywhere from movies and
09:16TV to schoolyards and playgrounds.
09:18As the song said, everybody was kung fu fighting.
09:24By 1970, the U.S. is hit with a kung fu craze embodied in one man, Bruce Lee.
09:32Bruce Lee is a martial arts master turned actor and action star.
09:38Kung fu mania sweeps the nation.
09:41And soon, kids everywhere want to learn moves like the butterfly kick or the eagle's claw.
09:49You start seeing all these ads in comic books and magazines for martial arts schools that basically promise to give
09:56kids superhuman abilities.
09:58They promise that you can take out two attackers at once.
10:00You can turn your hands into an explosive defense mechanism.
10:04Or you can take out a 200-pound attacker with just one finger.
10:08They have names like the death touch.
10:10If I saw an ad today that said we could teach you to kill someone with a touch, I'd be
10:14like, yeah, I want to know that.
10:18After the death touch, the kung fu craze introduces America to another Bruce Lee staple.
10:25Nunchucks.
10:27Nunchucks are just two pieces of wood held together by a string or chain.
10:30They don't seem that dangerous.
10:32And so it's very easy to go out and get them.
10:35Nunchucks are used in hand-to-hand combat for centuries.
10:38And then suddenly in the 1970s, high school students are bringing them to school.
10:43And no one cares.
10:45The force and speed of nunchucks make them a devastating close combat weapon.
10:50You can fend off swords, crack knees and skulls.
10:53And if you're not trained, you can crack your own skull just as easy.
10:58Nunchucks are super dangerous.
10:59A swinging nunchuck can reach up to 150 miles per hour and have the impact force of a bullet coming
11:05out of a pistol.
11:06In some states today, you can get arrested just for carrying a set of nunchucks.
11:13And it doesn't stop with nunchucks.
11:16Any kid with an indulgent parent and a catalog can order up a razor-sharp wheel of death, commonly called
11:24the throwing star.
11:29If you don't know what a throwing star is, imagine like a buzzsaw blade that miniaturized with sharpened edges around
11:35it.
11:35You throw kind of like a frisbee, but instead of like a frisbee where you would catch it and everybody
11:40would have a good time,
11:40it sticks into wood or into your neighbor.
11:43It was $2.50 for a throwing star.
11:46I remember like people's garbage cans would have little holes in it because you'd walk by and just chuck them
11:51at it and it would stick in.
11:52And we'd bring them to school.
11:54We would just throw the throwing stars into trees and teachers would be like,
11:58all right, time to go back inside.
12:00We just carried them around.
12:02The teachers were fine with it.
12:04The injuries that come along with martial arts are crazy.
12:10Emergency rooms are now getting sprains.
12:12There are strains.
12:13There are things that are broken.
12:15Concussions.
12:15Even things as bad as liver lacerations.
12:18But for the true wannabe Bruce Lee, a liver laceration is just a warm-up for something even more extreme.
12:26In Chicago, there's this character who goes by Count Dante.
12:30His name is John Kian.
12:32He's retired military.
12:34He trains in kung fu.
12:35He opens a dojo.
12:37And he markets himself as the deadliest man alive.
12:41Think about the karate kid and the leader of Cobra Kai, Kreese.
12:45He was Count Dante.
12:47That's strike first, strike hard, no mercy, kill.
12:52That's Count Dante.
12:54Count Dante is known for these brutal initiations.
12:57Like, if you want to advance, he throws you into a dark room, and you have to fight.
13:02And then at certain point, sticks and knives come out.
13:05Count Dante would allegedly start bar fights to train his students by finding the biggest guy at the bar,
13:13knocking his drink out of his hand, and then blaming his trainee for it.
13:16And if the guy was with the group, his trainee would have to fight all of them.
13:21And if these initiation rituals sound unhinged, wait until you actually join the dojo.
13:28One night, Count Dante gets it in his head, and a rival dojo across town has insulted him.
13:35And the only thing he knows to do is to gather his troops, get over to that rival dojo, and
13:41call them out into a fight.
13:42I don't know what they thought was going to happen.
13:44As soon as the door opens up, it's chaos.
13:47Guys start yaking weapons off the walls.
13:49They're grabbing samurai swords, battle axes, mesas.
13:53It becomes like a medieval melee with karate.
13:58A 26-year-old student of Dante is first stabbed with a sword, second impaled with a spear.
14:07His carotid artery is punctured.
14:11And he stumbles outside and dies.
14:16Few dojos rack up a body count like Dante's.
14:20But the writing is on the wall for the kung fu craze.
14:24The kung fu craze is so out of hand that states start passing legislation.
14:30Nunchucks, throwing stars, they're banned.
14:33Nowadays, we really have all the protective gear that you would see in wrestling or fighting.
14:37You know, there's a mouth guard, there's a head protector.
14:40You have to wear gloves so that you don't rip people's faces off.
14:43When I was a kid in the 80s, you were talking to people who had lived through the 40s, 50s,
14:4860s, 70s.
14:49They didn't care if we were carrying throwing stars.
14:52That is not around today.
14:54We've gone from helicopter parents to a helicopter society.
14:57And I don't see how that's any better than a throwing star society.
15:02Now, decades before the kung fu craze, there was another fad that had people fighting to stay on their feet
15:09for up to five months straight.
15:12In the 1920s, dancing is really popular.
15:15And this woman, Alma Cummings, has an idea.
15:18She wants to see how long she can go dancing the most popular dances of the day.
15:24Alma dances for 27 hours straight.
15:26That attracts media coverage.
15:28Soon, everyone wants to see if they can outdo her record and dance longer than she did.
15:33Alma's 27-hour record is broken nine times in just three weeks.
15:39This leads to the birth of the craze of the dance marathon.
15:43And it sweeps the nation from coast to coast.
15:47Pretty soon, they go from hours to days to weeks.
15:50And there's even a thousand-hour marathon, which is actually a month and a half of straight dancing.
15:58Dance marathons soon become a full-fledged frenzy.
16:01And participants push their bodies to the limit.
16:06This is an endurance contest.
16:08It is physically very grueling.
16:10People will be dehydrated.
16:12The idea is to dance until you literally collapse.
16:15You have to dance for 45 minutes of every hour.
16:19When you take a break, in those 15 minutes, I guess you can pee.
16:24They eat.
16:25They wash their faces.
16:27They write letters.
16:28They even shave while dancing.
16:30But people have to move their legs constantly.
16:34Some of them even learn how to sleep standing up.
16:36You definitely don't want to sleep for too long, because if you do, the contest officials will wake you up
16:41with smelling salts or ice water.
16:44In 1928, a dance competition in Iowa goes on nearly three weeks.
16:50A young man got psychotic, punched his partner in the face.
16:53At least one person collapsed from exhaustion, and he died.
16:58For the contestants, victory is worth a lot more than bragging rights.
17:04If you win a dance marathon, you might draw a purse that is equivalent to a year's salary.
17:11And so people who are desperate see this as their one and only shot at making enough money to change
17:17the trajectory of their life.
17:19As the Depression takes hold, the promise of life-changing money pushes contestants and promoters to even more extreme limits.
17:29The most extreme dance marathon is in 1933 in Somerville, Massachusetts.
17:34A guy named Callum de Villiers and a woman named Bonnie Kuczynski.
17:38They just keep dancing and dancing.
17:40It goes on week after week, month after month, and the organizers are actually trying to get them to quit.
17:46They begin shortening the breaks and providing them less time for meals.
17:51They're speeding up the music, hoping that somebody's going to fall out and we can finally end this thing.
17:58By the time they call it quits, this one couple has been dancing for five months, dancing for 24 hours
18:07a day.
18:08No one else proves to have their staying power, and dance marathons seem to be on their last legs.
18:15The toll is immense.
18:17The exact number is not known, but people are dying.
18:21At least half a dozen have been recorded.
18:23By the 1930s, cities finally start banning dance marathons, but it is not because of the health hazards.
18:29It's mostly because cops hate the huge, unruly crowds that they attract.
18:33They danced until the music gave out, or their bodies did, whichever came first.
18:41Today, there are dozens of dangerous animals that are illegal to keep as pets in the U.S., but that's
18:48not how things used to be.
18:49At one time, it was fashionable to have a certain questionable creature as a pet without anybody making a big
18:57stink.
18:58Throughout the 1900s, having strange pets is definitely an American fascination.
19:03President Calvin Coolidge has a pet raccoon.
19:07Elvis Presley has a chimpanzee.
19:10Tippi Hedren, the actress, Melanie Griffith's mother, has a pet lion.
19:14I mean, this is something that's definitely a status symbol.
19:18But in the 1950s, an unconventional animal becomes America's latest obsession.
19:24One bizarre animal that became a pet for people to own is the skunk.
19:30Skunks are the smelliest animals out there.
19:34If you get one of these in your neighborhood, you can smell it from a mile or two away.
19:38But somehow, they become pets.
19:43Skunks have been a comic trope for decades.
19:45They're in Abbott and Costello.
19:47They're in Disney movies.
19:49They're in the Three Stooges.
19:50And of course, one of my favorites, Pepe Le Pew.
19:54Because cartoon skunks are so cute, people are starting to soften to them.
19:58So some enterprising breeders start thinking, hey, skunks are having a moment.
20:03Could people buy them as pets?
20:06Turns out, they will.
20:09So how do you market a skunk as a pet?
20:11Well, you tell people they're easily trainable.
20:13They're smart, cuddly, kind.
20:16People buy them at fairs and shops and even through the mail.
20:20Sears and Spiegel, two big mail order catalogs, sell them.
20:24The idea for a lot of people is that you could get a skunk and train it.
20:28You could put it on a leash and, like, take it for a walk around the neighborhood.
20:32Everyone's going to love it.
20:33They're going to want to come up and pet it.
20:34Oh, baby, baby.
20:36What am I going to do with you?
20:39Soon, skunks are so coveted.
20:41Pet shop owners can't keep them in stock.
20:44But what about the smell?
20:47Might sound insane, but these are skunks that have had their stink glands surgically removed.
20:53But while these skunks might lack their stink glands, they still have their teeth.
20:59You would think that a de-scented skunk is safe because it's basically had its ammunition taken away.
21:05But the thing is that it can still bite you and it can still scratch you.
21:09Skunks can become aggressive when threatened and they can pack a punch.
21:13I mean, their bite is strong enough to break your finger.
21:16They have nearly one-inch fangs that can cause deep puncture wounds.
21:20And they also have these long, curved claws for ripping through soil and roots
21:24that can also slice you open pretty easily, too.
21:28But scratches and bites might be the least of your concerns.
21:33Skunks are actually the most common carrier of rabies.
21:35And they're actually also the most common animal to transmit rabies to humans,
21:40which includes you, their owner.
21:43These bites happen fairly often.
21:45By the time the CDC starts tracking them in the 1970s, they find nearly 200 incidents.
21:52If there's a chance, you have to treat it seriously.
21:55And so for a person at that time, that means 20 shots of the vaccine in the stomach.
22:00Really painful.
22:01No fun at all.
22:03As rabies scares rise, the government steps in.
22:09Due to this concern over rabies, there are ordinances all over that don't permit them as pets.
22:14And right now, the vast majority of states still have those on the books.
22:17Today, we got all these snowflakey pets like cats and dogs that are hypoallergenic or bred not to bark.
22:24Don't you kind of miss the days when you could just pick up a catalog and order your children a
22:30rabid wild animal for just 25 bucks?
22:33Owning a dangerous animal is one thing, but in the 1930s, there was a craze that swept the U.S.
22:40that involved having your pet and eating it, too.
22:44It's March of 1939, and there was a freshman at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the name of Lothrop
22:52Withington.
22:52He tells his friends that he is going to swallow a live goldfish.
22:58His friends laugh.
22:59They don't believe him, and they plunked down a $10 bet, that's $200 in today's money, saying,
23:06No way, Lothrop.
23:08You're not going to do this.
23:09And so he picks up a goldfish and kind of wriggles it around in front of his face.
23:13He holds it over his mouth.
23:16It rides back and forth once or twice, and then he drops it in, swallows it.
23:25With that one gulp, the biggest craze since dance marathons is born.
23:30The craze spreads to other schools, but now it's not just, can you swallow a goldfish?
23:36It's, how many goldfish can you swallow?
23:38Just around the corner at MIT, one student reportedly swallows 29.
23:44At rival Ivy League Penn, they swallow 42.
23:48The record allegedly is 89 goldfish in one sitting.
23:55But as anyone who has rolled the dice on sketchy sushi can tell you, raw fish sometimes bites back.
24:03The safety issues around goldfish swallowing, I think are pretty clear.
24:08Trying to quickly swallow 89 of anything is really not a good idea, let alone a live goldfish that's flopping
24:15around.
24:15It could cause you to choke if it gets stuck in your throat or can cut off your airway if
24:20you accidentally inhale it.
24:22So goldfish are really not meant for mass consumption.
24:26Things get so bad, the U.S. Public Health Service steps in and warns everyone, goldfish have tapeworms.
24:34Tapeworms are going to give you anemia.
24:37The only people who don't seem concerned are the colleges themselves.
24:41What's crazier is that some of the goldfish swallowing events are actually campus sanctioned.
24:48It's news.
24:49They're in Life Magazine.
24:50Why wouldn't you swallow goldfish to get into Life Magazine?
24:54So no one's putting the brakes on this.
24:56In one particular case at MIT, a hundred kids come to watch it and three policemen not to break it
25:04up, but to actually enjoy the spectacle of goldfish eating.
25:08But once a craze draws big crowds in the comps, the next thing it draws is serious scrutiny.
25:15In April 1939, a member of the Massachusetts legislature introduces a bill to protect and preserve fish from cruel and
25:26wanton consumption.
25:28But what really kills goldfish swallowing is time.
25:32Like all fans, it simply runs its course.
25:36Years later, they tracked down Lothrop Withington, and now he's a successful businessman who apparently is not swallowing live animals
25:42anymore.
25:43And he said that it was a case of mind over matter.
25:46He didn't mind, and the fish didn't matter.
25:51Today, this kind of stunt doesn't go over very well.
25:54In 2019, a young man allegedly swallowed another student's goldfish.
26:00He was arrested.
26:03For young people in the 70s and 80s, the place to be on Friday night was the roller rink.
26:09It was part dance scene, part dating ritual, part blood sport.
26:15Roller rinks really boom in the 1970s, particularly in the suburbs.
26:18There's a lot of space, and parents want a place where you can drop off your kids for a semi
26:23-structured activity to have fun.
26:25The thing that really supercharges the roller rink is disco.
26:31Disco added just a little sexy je ne sais quoi to the whole movement of roller skates, and it made
26:40sense.
26:41Roller skating is definitely a non-controlled environment.
26:44I remember roller rink visits that were to the soundtrack of Xanadu.
26:48There were just older kids that could shred it.
26:50It's chaotic.
26:51It's a bit of a free-for-all.
26:53Pretty soon, over 25 million people are on roller skates.
26:58That's nearly 10% of the population.
27:00At this time, you had the introduction of polyurethane wheels,
27:04and that means that now you can go way faster than you could before.
27:09To skate to this new kind of music on fast new wheels,
27:13people start mixing flashing moves and high speed.
27:17The roller rink was way too intimidating with the advanced skill set people,
27:22and I was on the learner skill set, and they would skate circles around me
27:26and then do the thing that I could never do, which was the skate backwards,
27:30and then do that thing where you flip around.
27:32There's this thing called crack the whip.
27:35There's like a sort of leader, and then people hold on to that person's waist,
27:40and then there's a whole line of people holding on,
27:43and they're going in and out and zigzagging,
27:46and it kind of creates this whipping motion to literally crack the whip.
27:51I did crack the whip.
27:52I almost killed myself with crack the whip.
27:54I remember that.
27:57Some of these guys need helmets.
28:00Some of these gals need pads.
28:02No one has them.
28:03This is not an era where safety is among people's concerns for almost anything.
28:09And don't forget, these skates are rentals,
28:11which means they're probably not being well-maintained.
28:14They have loose axles, worn toe pads, so your wheels can come off while you're skating.
28:21Good skaters can definitely get some speed.
28:24I mean, they can go up to about 25 miles per hour.
28:27I saw the melee for myself, and the person frequently crashing and falling was also myself.
28:33It's not a matter of if you're going to collide with someone.
28:35It's a matter of when.
28:36Advanced skaters, if they collide with somebody, it is like getting hit with a bowling ball.
28:43Hospitals start seeing broken wrists, broken or sprained elbows,
28:48and sometimes when people really faceplant it, there are concussions as well.
28:52In 1979, one hospital in Seattle treats 35 fractures in just a few months,
28:59only from roller skating-related injuries.
29:02Eventually changing music tastes and lawsuits over defective equipment
29:06cause the wheels to come off the roller disco craze.
29:10The biggest difference of a roller rink today in the 70s and 80s heyday
29:14is the long waiver you sign when you come in, ensuring that you won't sue them.
29:18I mean, they're a lot less sketchy, but maybe you wish for just a hint more danger to it.
29:25Back before we worried about things like liability insurance,
29:29it was pretty easy to open a roller rink.
29:32But there was another earlier recreational craze that was even easier to break into.
29:39In the 1930s, a gymnast named George Nissen invents the modern trampoline,
29:44and people go nuts for it.
29:46There's just one problem.
29:48It's sort of a luxury item.
29:50It cost $200 back then, which is over $2,200 in today's money.
29:55A few years later, a former trampoline salesman actually has a genius
29:59and slightly crazy idea.
30:02What if you could make trampolines cheap and accessible?
30:05So for just a couple hundred dollars, he buys this vacant lot.
30:09He lines the vacant lot with trampolines.
30:11And for just a buck an hour, you can jump as much as you want.
30:23These trampoline parks start popping up all over the place, especially at gas stations.
30:31And they're there to sort of service families that are doing long road trips,
30:36and they need a little break, and the kids need a way to get their energy out.
30:40The kids are bored.
30:42They need something to do.
30:44The parents see an opportunity to allow them to burn off a little energy
30:47so that they can have a little bit of peace on the road trip.
30:50Why not?
30:52Sounds like a blast.
30:53And it was.
30:54Just don't look too closely.
30:56Here's the thing.
30:58These trampoline parks are being built by so-called entrepreneurs
31:01who don't know the first thing about trampolines.
31:06And so these trampoline pits are not constructed by engineers.
31:10It's a hole in the ground with a pseudo-trampoline stretched across it.
31:16Basically, sort of a springy tarp over a grave, over a grave.
31:23These days, there are all sorts of regulations and licenses
31:25if you want to build a trampoline park.
31:28But back then, it was all kind of DIY.
31:31All you really needed was a vacant lot, a shovel, and a dream.
31:34The kids love it.
31:36You can jump, flip, get competitive.
31:38I mean, everyone wins.
31:41But the real problem is the trampolines of the 1950s
31:45were much more powerful than the trampolines you find in people's backyards today,
31:49which meant that the jumper can go to some incredibly high heights.
31:54If you bounce on them just right, you could launch yourself a good 10 feet in the air.
32:01And if you'd fall down, it would be like being in a car accident.
32:06And what these parks lack in safety features, they also lack in oversight.
32:12With no one keeping an eye on anything, lots of injuries happen,
32:17and people start getting reckless, multiple jumpers on a trampoline.
32:21People are eating food, drinking soda.
32:24Just imagine jumping on a trampoline with a glass bottle in your hand.
32:29All sorts of things could go wrong.
32:31They were placed usually encircled by some sort of concrete.
32:35And on top of that, not only is there no padding in between these trampolines,
32:40but the trampoline itself has massive springs and bolts and metal pieces.
32:46Famously in Chicago, a little girl's bouncing around and sprains her ankle.
32:51Her dad is really upset about this and tries the trampoline out and breaks his back.
33:00By the late 1960s, injury lawsuits against tramp pits stack up,
33:05causing insurance rates to skyrocket.
33:08Pretty soon, operators start abandoning their pits.
33:12Even George Nissen, the inventor of the trampoline,
33:15who made millions off of these trampoline parks, turns against them.
33:18He thinks that their shoddy business practices have tarnished his invention.
33:24Trampolines eventually transform with safer designs.
33:27Now they're elevated off the ground and there's a safety net around them.
33:31And trampoline parks, those are all indoors.
33:34There's a ton of rules and foam padding and you have to sign a waiver.
33:38Now, a lot of you who were kids back in the 60s remember trampoline pits fondly.
33:43And gas stations have never been the same since.
33:49When you were a kid, did you ever accidentally let go of a helium balloon
33:54only to wish you could grab hold of that string and float away with it?
33:58Well, if so, you would have been daring enough to try one high-flying fad from the 1920s.
34:06Aviation in the 1920s is this really exciting space.
34:09It's unregulated.
34:10It's young.
34:11It's dangerous.
34:12And in 1927, Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic Ocean.
34:17America is completely captivated with aviation.
34:20But flight training and planes are really expensive.
34:23Innovators start to think, what if there was something that would allow you to enjoy the thrill of flight
34:27without having to buy a plane or take a bunch of lessons to learn how to fly it?
34:32Turns out there is a way and is about to become America's next craze.
34:36They call it balloon jumping.
34:40Jumping balloon or hopper balloon is invented by the lighter-than-air division of the U.S. Army
34:45based at McCookfield, Ohio.
34:48Here's how it works.
34:49First, you put on a harness and then strap yourself to a balloon that's nearly 20 feet in diameter.
34:54Next, you fill it with helium, but not all the way full.
34:57You want just enough lift that a jump becomes a long, floating bounce.
35:01Originally, balloon jumping is a practical tool for getting work done.
35:06If you're trying to inspect a blimp, it's a really easy way to get up there quickly and have a
35:10look.
35:10You can even do some maintenance with it.
35:12It's a little bit like a pogo stick bounce, except it's a lot slower and you go a lot higher.
35:18Ideally, the person jumps up, gets to a height, they stay up there for a little bit, and then they
35:24come safely back down.
35:27So suddenly, journalists start writing these pieces, and newspapers start publishing stories
35:31about how balloon jumping could really change modern life.
35:36Right now, when I go to work, there's all this traffic.
35:38If I'm balloon jumping, I can just jump over the traffic, right?
35:41It's easy.
35:42It sounds amazing, because you could jump across a beach, you can jump over a building, you can jump over
35:47trees.
35:48You can perform physical feats that the human body is incapable of performing.
35:53As it turns out, balloon jumping is a little more complicated than advertised.
35:58Balloon jumping has a lot of serious risks, though.
36:01One is just gusts of wind.
36:03You're completely at the whim of that to take you sideways into whatever field that you didn't intend to go
36:08to.
36:09There's no real training or licensing necessary, but there's also no steering mechanism or brakes.
36:15So you can hop, but you can't really aim.
36:18Another risk here is that you're strapped to a 20-foot helium balloon.
36:22What if it develops a leak and the gas inside of it begins escaping?
36:26We know how they behave when you let the air out of them.
36:28They kind of zip and move in different directions quickly.
36:31This can happen to you.
36:33So how do you get the public to literally jump onto this budding craze?
36:38You need a balloon-hopping Lindbergh.
36:40Enter Brainy Dobbs.
36:43Ernest Brainy Dobbs is one of the biggest proponents of balloon jumping.
36:48He's a parachutist by trade, but he's really a showman at heart.
36:52And he loves nothing more than showing off this new fad to the public.
36:56Dobbs is practicing jumps in North London, and this police officer is watching him.
37:00He realizes he's getting really close to some electrical wires.
37:04Dobbs isn't at all worried about this.
37:06He tries to leap over those wires, but his feet get tangled.
37:10And this is where things go south for Brainy.
37:13In order to untangle his feet, he reaches down and touches the wire and gets electrocuted.
37:19Brainy's death really just takes the wind out of everybody's sails.
37:23It's not fun anymore.
37:25It's way too dangerous.
37:26And so the whole sport is basically just dead.
37:29Later on, balloon jumping is still used by the military for things like repairs.
37:32But this dream we all had that we were going to all wear balloons and bounce around town and be
37:37able to fly,
37:38that just never really gets off the ground.
37:42Like air rushing out of a punctured balloon, that craze deflated fast.
37:49In the early 80s, American teens went wild for breakdancing.
37:54Everybody wanted to bust a move, including me.
37:57But moves weren't the only things we wound up busting.
38:02Hip-hop was born in the South Bronx in the 1970s,
38:05thanks to a bunch of underground parties with new types of music and dancing.
38:11DJs don't just play the records, they remix them live.
38:15And when they extend that part of the music that's that raw, drum-heavy part that we call the break,
38:20suddenly, dancers have a spotlight to show all their moves and make the crowd go wild.
38:28These moves become known as breakdancing, and pretty soon, kids can't get enough.
38:34Soon, Breaking Goes Mainstream, 1983's Flashdance features a couple scenes related to breaking.
38:41And then, the next year, you've got two breakdancing movies, Breaking and Beat Street.
38:48America really embraces it.
38:51Madonna puts it in her music videos.
38:53It becomes a stamp of youth authenticity.
38:58I'm a kid from Brooklyn.
38:59I had the parachute pants.
39:02I had this black and red nylon suit.
39:05And while the dancers on screen are professionally trained, the kids trying it are definitely not.
39:12You've got suburban kids with zero practice attempting to emulate windmills and one-handstands and turnarounds.
39:21This is hard stuff.
39:22I cannot breakdance.
39:24The best I could do is sit on my back and have one of my friends grab my foot and,
39:28like, turn me around and around,
39:29and I can end up doing one of these.
39:30All laws of physics seem to not exist.
39:33These people are spinning around on their heads.
39:35I don't even know how they do it.
39:37It's like a magic trick.
39:38Pretty soon, breakdancing becomes breaking everything else instead.
39:43Kids are spinning.
39:44They fall off balance, and all of their body weight comes down on their cervical spine.
39:50They end up snapping their spine, busting a vertebra, tweaking their spinal cord.
39:57I learned the word quadriplegic from my mom in relation to breakdancing.
40:04Doctors even coined the term breakdancing neck after the New England Journal of Medicine publishes a report about cervical spine
40:11injuries caused by headspin.
40:14But spine injuries might be the least of your concerns.
40:17One of the more serious complications is called testicular torsion, and it is as painful and horrible as it sounds.
40:27There are certain moves called the scramble, the blender, or the windmill, where basically one testicle would get twisted around
40:37itself, in essence strangling it and damaging it.
40:42Look, they called it breakdancing for a reason.
40:45They'd spin and they'd spin and they'd be doing all these moves, and suddenly there'd be an interior part of
40:50the man that just got twisted.
40:53As the gruesome injuries pile up, so does the negative coverage.
40:58Suddenly, news broadcasts are warning of the breaking epidemic, and municipalities start passing laws to make it difficult or even
41:08illegal to breakdance.
41:11Eventually, hip-hop music changes, and dances change with it.
41:15I wasn't good at it. I could get hurt doing it.
41:18But I am so grateful for my childhood with all its dangers and all its traps and bruises and cuts
41:25and breaks.
41:26These are the experiences, these are the scars that add up to a life well lived.
41:31Looking back on the fads that we got swept up in, from pet skunks, to ninja stars, to cramming ourselves
41:37into foam booths,
41:38sometimes, hey, everybody's doing it, wasn't always the best reason to join in.
41:44But these crazes are also what made our hazardous history such a sensation.
41:54We'll see you next time.
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