That Escalated Quickly

[00:00] Coalson, is it time for another Undegoogleables?
[00:15] Oh, we doing Undegoogleables?
[00:17] That was the play of it.
[00:18] I'm super excited.
[00:19] You told us we had to, sir.
[00:22] He said we signed up for it.
[00:27] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:33] Look, kids, Big Ben.
[00:36] That wasn't in any accent at all.
[00:41] No, because uh...
[00:42] Clark W.
[00:43] Yeah, Griswolds don't have accents.
[00:47] So, yeah, of course it's time.
[00:50] And because the Pacers are in London right now,
[00:54] I felt like it would be useful to do some London-related trivia.
[01:00] And so, my first question is,
[01:04] what do we know about Jack London?
[01:07] Call of the Wild.
[01:08] Call of the Wild.
[01:09] Isn't he from San Francisco?
[01:11] Yeah, he's not from London, I'm pretty sure about that.
[01:15] The author we're talking about?
[01:17] Yeah, the author, Jack London.
[01:21] So, okay, from San Francisco,
[01:24] he wrote Call of the Wild, which is not...
[01:26] So you don't have a specific question,
[01:27] we're just listing the things that we know about Jack London?
[01:29] Yes, yes, pretty much.
[01:30] He was fascinated with the Yukon territory and the Gold Rush.
[01:37] The Alaska Gold Rush.
[01:38] Okay.
[01:40] And wrote some books about it.
[01:43] He's from San Francisco, though, I didn't know that.
[01:47] I think, I don't...
[01:48] If he's not from San Francisco,
[01:50] he at least lived much of his life in San Francisco.
[01:53] There's like Jack London Park and a few other
[01:56] like historical Jack London-y things
[01:58] in the San Francisco Bay Area.
[02:00] Okay.
[02:02] He did read some maritime books, didn't he?
[02:05] Did you say maritime?
[02:09] Maritime?
[02:10] Maritime.
[02:11] That's what, the maritime.
[02:12] Like on the boats?
[02:13] Yeah, on the boats.
[02:14] Or you mean like maritime, like a party or something.
[02:19] Little bit of both.
[02:20] Boat party.
[02:21] With yacht music and yacht rock and everything.
[02:23] Yacht rock!
[02:25] That's right.
[02:26] Is that enough for you?
[02:29] Did we answer your...
[02:31] Sure, I don't...
[02:32] Yeah, when did he live?
[02:33] I don't know.
[02:35] End of the 1800s, right?
[02:37] Yeah.
[02:38] Turn of the century?
[02:39] Yeah.
[02:40] I'm gonna say maybe he was born in the East Coast
[02:43] but moved out west in the Gold Rush, you know,
[02:47] in the 1840s, 1850s.
[02:50] Okay.
[02:51] And then lived out there and rode out there.
[02:54] Okay.
[02:55] Was he a troubled dude?
[02:56] Did he have issues?
[02:59] I think all authors do, like by definition.
[03:01] That's my assumption.
[03:02] Sure.
[03:03] He probably drank too much
[03:05] and did too many drugs, probably.
[03:08] Sure.
[03:09] A lot of meth during the Gold Rush.
[03:12] Did not know that.
[03:17] See, we learned stuff on the end of Google Earth.
[03:19] Jack London, January 12th, 1876,
[03:25] and died in 1916.
[03:27] Oh.
[03:28] Oh, wow.
[03:29] I was young.
[03:30] Okay.
[03:31] So 40 years old.
[03:32] That's not very old.
[03:34] American novelist, journalist, and social activist.
[03:40] He became one of the first fiction writers
[03:42] to obtain worldwide celebrity
[03:44] and a large fortune from his fiction alone.
[03:50] Call the Wild and The White Fang were both set
[03:52] in the Klondike Gold Rush,
[03:54] and he also wrote a novel called The Seawolf
[03:59] from the San Francisco Bay Area.
[04:02] There you go.
[04:03] And he was actually born in San Francisco.
[04:06] Mm-hmm.
[04:07] Okay.
[04:08] Third in Brandon Streets.
[04:11] That's a good corner.
[04:14] Passionate advocate of unionization,
[04:19] socialism, and the rights of workers.
[04:21] Nice.
[04:23] What's up, Jack London?
[04:26] All right.
[04:27] I've got another London-related question.
[04:29] This one, actually, I think will be closer to London.
[04:34] I'm not sure.
[04:35] London Bridge is falling down.
[04:38] Mm-hmm.
[04:39] Okay.
[04:40] Do we know this nursery rhyme?
[04:43] Does anybody know that it's London Bridge
[04:45] is falling down, falling down, falling down?
[04:50] My fair lady.
[04:51] Right?
[04:52] And that how it goes?
[04:53] Mm-hmm.
[04:54] Sure.
[04:55] Mm-hmm.
[04:56] And there's some sort of dance
[04:58] that goes along with it.
[05:00] Kids go under arches and things.
[05:06] I vaguely remember that.
[05:07] You guys remember playing this game?
[05:09] Didn't you just, like, dance in a circle
[05:11] and then fall down?
[05:12] Then you fall down?
[05:13] Yeah.
[05:14] Yeah.
[05:15] Okay.
[05:17] Yeah.
[05:18] And so what is your question about this?
[05:20] My question is, what does it mean?
[05:22] What's it about?
[05:23] Do we know?
[05:24] Yeah.
[05:25] Why is this a nursery rhyme?
[05:26] From what I remember, like, most nursery rhymes
[05:29] and, like, children's stories are actually, like,
[05:33] some really awful story from the past that involved,
[05:37] like, death.
[05:38] Right.
[05:39] Last death.
[05:40] Yeah.
[05:41] I mean, they're all, like, yeah, really terrible.
[05:44] They're like, you know, if it was a movie,
[05:46] you would not be able to show it to children.
[05:50] But if you put a cute little song behind it
[05:53] and you apparently put your hands up
[05:55] and you dance on an arch or something,
[05:57] that's no problem.
[05:59] Like, Ring Around the Road to you was, like,
[06:01] about the plague or something like that.
[06:02] Yeah, exactly.
[06:03] Yeah, yeah.
[06:04] No, and that's the one where you dance in a circle
[06:07] and then fall down.
[06:08] Right.
[06:09] Because you all fall down at the end.
[06:11] Right.
[06:12] Because I think the Love and Rindges falling down
[06:15] is where you go under an arch
[06:17] and then when the song's over,
[06:18] you pull your arms down and catch a kid.
[06:21] Do you guys remember this?
[06:22] And then you were out?
[06:23] I don't remember a game.
[06:26] Do you remember that?
[06:27] I think this is just something you do
[06:28] with your creepy camp camp.
[06:33] I'm going to say it has something to do.
[06:34] So, what happened in London?
[06:35] London Bridge is where they sent people
[06:37] to get executed, right?
[06:39] So, it's probably got to be something to do with,
[06:42] you know, can'tines and stuff.
[06:45] Yeah.
[06:46] I think London Bridge is falling down, right?
[06:48] Like the bridge itself.
[06:50] Either that or there was a huge fire in London
[06:53] at some point.
[06:54] Oh yeah, the great fire of London.
[06:56] I'm thinking of the Tower of London.
[06:58] That's where you get executed.
[06:59] Yeah.
[07:00] I think the bridge...
[07:01] But it's like right by the bridge.
[07:02] Yeah.
[07:04] I'm sure they hung plenty of people
[07:06] from that bridge itself.
[07:07] I think that's how you hang everybody.
[07:09] That's where they showed off all their dead people
[07:11] for sure on the bridge.
[07:13] Exactly.
[07:14] Heads on pikes.
[07:15] Yeah, yeah.
[07:16] That's what actually happened.
[07:17] Or heads on pikes.
[07:19] Heads on pikes, mate.
[07:21] That sounds fine.
[07:23] Can you say it like that?
[07:25] Can you say it like that?
[07:26] Sure.
[07:27] Okay.
[07:28] So, either it was a massive infrastructure failure,
[07:32] like the bridge just collapsed.
[07:34] And millions of people died.
[07:36] Because it used to be that like there was
[07:38] lots of business on London Bridge, I think, right?
[07:41] Like the London Bridge itself was like
[07:44] covered in houses and shops.
[07:47] Yeah, it was like a mall, right?
[07:48] Stuff like that, yeah.
[07:49] Maybe not a mall, but like...
[07:50] So maybe that whole thing collapsed.
[07:52] You think like some people died.
[07:54] So now the children sing about it.
[07:56] Okay.
[07:57] So...
[07:58] And maybe it was the fire they did.
[08:00] Well, if the fire...
[08:01] The fire was in like the 1600s, right?
[08:05] It was like right around the Black Plague.
[08:08] They were having a rough go back then.
[08:11] Not a good time to be.
[08:12] It was not...
[08:13] I feel like that...
[08:15] So, I guess they probably had a bridge then.
[08:19] And it might have burned down.
[08:20] No, definitely.
[08:21] Otherwise they would have no city.
[08:22] Right.
[08:23] Okay.
[08:24] Okay.
[08:25] So, okay.
[08:26] How old's the bridge then?
[08:27] This is a good question.
[08:28] So, Rome comes over and builds a bridge
[08:30] and then creates London, right?
[08:33] Yeah.
[08:34] Isn't that...
[08:35] That's how it went down, yeah.
[08:36] I'm pretty sure.
[08:37] Okay.
[08:38] So they've had a bridge for a long time
[08:40] and it fell down at some point.
[08:41] I'm guessing the original bridge was built like in
[08:44] a thousand or something like that.
[08:46] Okay.
[08:47] Right?
[08:48] Okay.
[08:49] I'm with you.
[08:50] I like that.
[08:51] 1200s maybe?
[08:52] When did the Romans take over?
[08:53] It would be even earlier than that for the Romans.
[08:55] 900 or a thousand?
[08:57] Two hundred.
[08:58] So, the history of the bridge is probably originally
[09:01] a Roman pontoon bridge.
[09:03] In 55 AD they built a permanent timber piled bridge.
[09:09] 55.
[09:10] That's like 0055 you mean.
[09:12] We were a little off on that one.
[09:15] I mean, yeah, 150 years, but, you know, that's old stuff.
[09:21] We bring up old stuff.
[09:23] So, did anything happen around a thousand?
[09:26] Because that was our guess.
[09:28] I mean, they rebuilt the bridge a bunch of times, right?
[09:31] Okay.
[09:32] Let's see.
[09:33] Building work began on old medieval London bridge in 1176.
[09:37] There you go.
[09:38] But, I mean, essentially, so you got this really old bridge that was built in 55 AD
[09:42] and they just kept building on top of it, right?
[09:45] And expanding it essentially is my takeaway here.
[09:50] Okay.
[09:51] All right.
[09:54] Did it ever actually fall down is the question.
[09:56] Right.
[09:58] Oh, geez.
[09:59] Oh, here we go.
[10:00] Child sacrifice theory.
[10:02] Wait.
[10:03] Whoa.
[10:04] All right.
[10:05] That escalated.
[10:06] The pairing perhaps alive of children in the foundation of the bridge was first
[10:11] advanced, blah, blah, blah in the 1890s.
[10:18] Wow.
[10:19] This is based around the idea that a bridge would collapse unless the body of a
[10:23] human sacrifice were buried in its foundations and that the watchman is
[10:27] actually a human sacrifice who will then watch over the bridge.
[10:33] However, there is no archaeological evidence for that.
[10:35] Oh, good.
[10:37] That's what I'm talking about with the nursery rhymes.
[10:40] It turns into like child sacrifice.
[10:42] Yeah, exactly.
[10:44] Okay.
[10:45] So the old medieval London bridge, yeah, 1176.
[10:51] And in exchange for loans to the royal purse, the city of London acquired the
[10:57] maintenance for the bridge in 1284.
[11:04] And apparently, Henry II's wife spent all the money, and maybe she's the fair
[11:10] lady because the bridge was going into disrepair.
[11:14] There's also a Viking attack theory for some of the lyrics.
[11:20] So this is a song that covers a lot of ground, so it probably refers to a
[11:27] little bit of everything.
[11:30] The Great London Fire, by the way, was in 1666 and certainly damaged, if not
[11:37] destroyed, the bridge.
[11:40] The head of William Wallace appeared on the bridge in 1305.
[11:45] Well, we hit a lot of points.
[11:46] Yeah.
[11:47] Nice.
[11:48] I don't know if we were right about anything, but we hit a lot of stuff.
[11:49] Other famous heads on pikes, Thomas Moore, Bishop John Fisher, and Thomas
[11:56] Cromwell.
[11:57] Sure.
[11:58] So Thomas Cromwell.
[11:59] Good old Tommy.
[12:00] Yeah.
[12:01] He got his head on the bridge.
[12:03] And you seem to be correct in your memory of how the game associated with the
[12:10] nursery rhyme was played.
[12:12] The most common is that two players hold hands and make an arch with their
[12:17] arms while the others pass through single file.
[12:20] And then the arch is then lowered at the songs in to catch a player.
[12:24] Yeah.
[12:25] And then you got out, and then the last person left one.
[12:28] That's how we used to play.
[12:31] And as a footnote here, the new London Bridge was opened in 1831 and survived
[12:36] until it was replaced in 72.
[12:38] It was then transported and reconstructed in Lake Havasu, Arizona.
[12:42] So that is where the London Bridge now resides.
[12:44] What?
[12:45] The London Bridge isn't even in London.
[12:48] It's in Arizona?
[12:49] No, it was replaced long ago.
[12:50] It's in Arizona, yeah.
[12:52] I mean, they have a bridge though, right?
[12:54] Road trip.
[12:55] I'm assuming they built another bridge.
[13:01] There is a bridge.
[13:03] In 1831, they built a bridge, then the modern one was built in 72.
[13:08] Okay.
[13:09] All right.
[13:10] The old bridge retook.
[13:12] They probably bought it.
[13:13] Took off their hands for them.
[13:15] They were compensated for their bridge.
[13:18] I like it.
[13:19] I did not see it going that the London Bridge is not in London anymore.
[13:22] I feel like maybe I didn't ask any questions that were about London.
[13:27] Yeah, all you're talking about is Arizona.
[13:30] Arizona Bridge is in San Francisco authors.
[13:35] It's pretty standard.
[13:36] Shout out London.
[13:37] Look kids, Big Ben.