Speaker 1: This is Jason Kosla, and you are listening to the Surely, Surely,
Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome
back to the Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcast Special
Edition five Minutes of Fire. We are here talking about
the lyrics of We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.
We're covering only five minutes at a time, which is
about to link with the song, so it works out
kind of nicely. So please join us as we dive
into some new lyrics today.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
going to be covering today. California baseball, stark weather, homicide,
children of thlidamide. All right, date, tell me about California baseball.
Speaker 1: Okay, So before the nineteen fifties, Major League Baseball was
just in the eastern part of the country. There were
professional teams West of Saint Louis. Several cities had two teams.
New York had three. They had the Giants, they had
the Yankees, they had the Dodgers, but the Dodgers stadium,
Ebbitts Field, was deteriorating. People had moved to the suburbs
and they didn't want to travel back into Brooklyn to
watch night games, and so he was trying to get
a new stadium built in Brooklyn, but public building and
developments are named Robert Moses was preventing him from doing that, guess,
and there was a little money that wasn't being exchanged
the way mister Moses wanted it to be exchanged. And so,
in an effort to bring Major League Baseball to the West,
a Chamber of Converse member from Los Angeles named Roslind
Wyman was talking to multiple clubs to see if they
would move out to California. So Wyman decided to meet
with the owner of the Washington Centers named Calvin Griffith
at the nineteen fifty six World Series. Well, Walter O'Malley,
owner of the Dodgers at the time, who who wasn't
able to get a location for his new stadium, heard
that she was meeting with him, and so he said, Hey,
how about you talk to me, And he said it
was really important to him that he have a new stadium,
and Wyman, without any talking to anybody, said sure, no problem,
we can get that done. He was just going to
use this as a negotiation tactic to get what he
wanted in Brooklyn, but Robert Moses wouldn't bend, and so
finally he realized, the only way I'm going to get
a new stadium is if I move out to la
and so that is what they did. Was very successful
for them. They the very next year won the nineteen
fifty nine World Series. And he had a poor little
buddy named Horace Stoneham, who owned the New York Giants,
a team that was probably third in the lineup as
far as New York teams were concerned, who was suffering
the same problem, had a dilapidated field, nobody was coming
to the games. So Walter O'Malley met the governor of
San Francisco and said, hey, you know what, I got
a buddy who I think you should talk to. And
then a short time after that, Giants moved from New
York to San Francisco, California. Baseball love it. Jason wo
Can you tell me about stark Weather homicide? All right?
Speaker 2: So, Charles Starkweather was an American spree killer who murdered
eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between get this, November
of nineteen fifty seven. In January of nineteen fifty eight,
very short amount of time. He was nineteen years old
when he was doing this. By the way, he was
accompanied by his girlfriend, Carol Ann Fugate, who was fourteen
years old.
Speaker 1: Oh the gosh.
Speaker 2: He was known initially to be bullied in high school
in elementary school before he actually said forget this. I'll
tell what I'm going to be the bully now. He
was known for walking around town being very angry, very bitter,
very tough. If you were kind of a big shot
football player, whatever, and you had it going good, he'd
just beat up just because. His first murder occurred on
November the thirtieth, nineteen fifty seven, when he killed a
gas station attendant for almost no reason. January twenty first,
nineteen fifty eight, he showed up at the few Gates
home and was told to leave by her mother and stepfather,
so he then killed them and her two year old sister.
From there, he went on an interstate killing spree with
Carol Anne Fugate. Now then, was she kidnap? Does she
go voluntarily? Was she part of the killing spree? He
was captured in a high speed chase January twenty ninth,
nineteen fifty eight. He was executed on June twenty fifth,
nineteen fifty nine, Caroline Fugate was actually sentenced to life
in prison. These two are mentioned or referenced in Bruce
Springsteen's Nebraska true romance Natural Born Killers and I would
say even pulp fiction.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: During that high speed chase, Charles stark Weather was shot
and he thought he was going to bleed to death,
and that's why he stopped. And the officer on duty said,
that's the kind of yellow son of a bitch that
he is. Do you tell me about children of the Litamide?
Speaker 1: Okay, Jason, have you ever been a pregnant woman before?
Not yet. I'm hopeful though. Well, as it turns out,
when you're pregnant, you have nausea that they call a
morning sickness, and you have trouble sleeping. Yeah. Well, the
company that made the litamide said, hey, we've got the
solution for you pregnant women. We have this new drug
called the litamide that helps you with your morning sickness
and helps you be able to sleep. Unfortunately, this company
did not adequately test the drug before they released it
to the masses, and then between nineteen fifty seven and
nineteen sixty two, children of the Women who took thlidamide
during pregnancy were born with severe deformities, including only stubs
for arms. Some people referred to them as the flipper babies.
Because of this tragedy, the drug was taken off the
market in nineteen sixty two. Of the ten thousand children
born with birth defects, only half of them lived beyond childhood. Okay, guys,
that does it for today's episode. Join us next time
for five minutes of fire.