Falling Down

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Every country has its heroes, people who, for better or worse, embody a sense of national pride and spirit.

These sorts of figures, whether they're heads of state or just powerful public speakers, are put on pedestals by history books, almost mythologized while they're still alive.

It becomes easy to believe that if they succeed, their country will as well.

And if they fail, so will their country.

And of course, it becomes difficult to contend with the fact that these people, like every other politician, are just as human as you or I, prone to the same flaws, the same failures, and the same mundane vulnerabilities.

Despite the pedestal we've put them on, they aren't figures out of Greek myth.

And for a particularly beloved head of state, an immense amount of public effort would be put toward making sure that his eventual death was properly commemorated.

This was the case with Sir Winston Churchill, who came out of the Second World War with a reputation as a war hero, someone who had led his country to victory against the evil of the Nazis, and had prioritized protecting the pride of England even during the worst of the Blitz.

No prime minister before or since has held the same stature in culture.

However, Churchill was not a healthy man.

He drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney, and battled illnesses regularly over the course of his career.

Everyone close to him was keenly aware that he was not invulnerable.

In 1953, he had a major stroke at his home.

While his family worked tirelessly to keep the incident secret, Queen Elizabeth II insisted that they needed to draw up funeral plans for Churchill to be prepared for when the time came.

It would be known as Operation Hope Not, the plan for an extravagant state funeral that would honor Churchill's service to queen and country.

Now, allegedly, the man himself was not overly keen on the plan, but at the insistence of the queen, he allowed a committee to be formed to plan his own funeral.

The eventual plan was intensely specific, time down to the second.

How long he would lie in state at the houses of parliament, what route the car would take him through London, past various locations that were significant to Churchill's life.

The roles of the others were also specified, from who would serve as pallbearers to where the Queen would be during the ceremony, also time down to the second.

Two supplemental booklets, one 47 pages long and the other 59, included instructions for the London Metropolitan Police and how they would time the raising and lowering of bridges, manage traffic, and generally just control the flow of the city during the day of the funeral.

And the plan was completed in 1953, but it wound up undergoing several major revisions because Churchill just, well, he wouldn't die.

He would suffer additional strokes and eventually resign the prime minister role for health reasons, but he lived well into the 1960s, and the committee had to revisit Operation Hope Not regularly.

As one lord put it, Churchill kept living and the pallbearers kept dying.

It should be noted that state funerals in Britain have rarely been given for someone outside of the royal family.

But as I've mentioned, Churchill's position in British popular culture was a special one.

Ultimately, Churchill would die in January of 1965, almost 12 years after the plan was first drawn up.

Estimates say that as many as 350 million people watched the funeral worldwide.

As of 2025, his funeral will be the last British state funeral held for someone not from the royal family.

Afterward, the initial documents remained a state secret for 30 years, not seeing the light of day until 1995.

Some of these documents have been since auctioned off to private collectors, others are held by museums, or the British government itself.

Although he would not be the last non-royal to get such a treatment, Operation Hope Not was not the only funeral plan that was on the books in the 1960s.

At around the same time they were working on the plans for how to honor Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II had her own funeral plans drawn up as well, just in case.

The code name for that plan would be different though.

They called it Operation London Bridge.

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Sometimes things have a second life beyond what we first imagined.

Like how the Shawshank Redemption grossed less than $30,000 at the box office, but is now considered one of the best films of all time.

The Big Lebowski also flopped in theaters, but is now so popular that it spawned its own religion, Dudism, with 600,000 ordained ministers.

And the subject of this story, a man named Roy, dreamed that his creations would tear up the American highways, and he did leave his mark, just not in the way that he expected.

In the 1950s, the American auto industry was experiencing a boom.

After two decades marked by a Great Depression and World War II, the economy recovered and Americans could afford cars again.

Demand for American-made cars was sky-high, and the market was dominated by three Detroit-based automakers, General Motors, Chrysler, and the Ford Motor Company.

Every year, these companies fought to one-up each other at auto shows around the country.

They debuted concept cars that introduced flashy new designs and futuristic features, some of which would be adopted into existing car models and are still around today.

In 1955, Ford Motor presented a real stunner, the Lincoln Futura.

It was a sleek, state-of-the-art convertible inspired by outer space and the deep sea.

The car's hooded headlamps and lifted tailfins resembled a reef shark, but its roof and windshield looked like something more out of the Jetsons than real life.

The Lincoln Futura was a bold design, and the crowd at the Chicago Auto Show loved it, which reflected well on the mastermind behind the concept car, an up-and-coming designer named Roy.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, He started his car designing career at Cadillac before landing at Ford in 1953.

The Futura was one of his first projects there, and given his success, Ford executives decided to entrust Roy with a bigger, more ambitious project, the design of Ford's first mid-ranged car.

You see, at the time, Ford mostly sold two kinds of vehicles, flashy, upscale models like the Mercury and boxy, dependable rides that would get you from point A to point B.

They wanted to compete in the mid-range car market and debut something that would rival the Chrysler Dodge and GM's Pontiac.

So, Roy got to work designing a smart but reliable sedan that would appeal to young business professionals and fashion-forward families.

For the next two years, he tuned and tweaked 18 different models of the car.

His designs were guided by countless focus groups that helped develop the car's personality.

Ford executives also enlisted the help of poet Marina Moore to name the new model.

She proposed some outlandish suggestions like the Utopian turtle top and the Pluma Paluma, but finally one executive stepped in and decided to simply name the car after Henry Ford's late son, Edsel.

By 1957, Ford Motor had spent $250 million on researching, tooling, and expanding production facilities for the Ford Edsel.

That's about $2 billion today.

In exchange, Roy Brown delivered a car that was truly unique.

The Edsel was large and colorful, with four headlights and vertical tail lamps, which set it apart from the other Ford models.

And Roy also included some luxury touches like a push-button transmission on the steering wheel and a warning light system that would alert drivers when they were low on oil or gas.

When it was released in September of 1957, eager buyers flooded Ford dealerships across the country.

The first weekend, thousands of Edsels were driven off the lot, which was great news because Ford had spent so much developing the car that they needed to sell 200,000 units before they would turn a profit.

But in the coming weeks, that outpouring of interest slowed to a trickle.

The following month, to try and drum up business, Ford sponsored a TV special called the Edsel Show, a variety show starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Rosemary Clooney.

50 million Americans tuned in to watch it.

But none of those viewers stepped foot on a Ford lot.

By November, Edsel sales had plummeted.

Ford executives were dumbfounded.

They had expected the Edsel to make a splash, but instead, it stunk.

Unfortunately for all their focus groups and market research, there was something Ford had overlooked.

Compact cars were surging in popularity, in part because a month before the Edsel debuted, the U.S.

dipped into a recession and unemployment rates doubled.

Compact cars were simply more fuel efficient, which people saw as a wiser investment given the economic downturn.

Ford discontinued the Edsel two years later in November of 1959 after selling only 100,000 units, half of what they needed to break even on the car.

Afterwards, Roy was transferred to Ford London, where he went on to design the enormously successful Ford Cortina, and he also worked on the Thunderbird, Ford's best-known luxury car.

But none of Roy Brown Jr.'s designs would be as famous as that first one, the Lincoln Futura.

In fact, you've probably seen pictures of it your entire life.

Because 10 years after it debuted in Chicago, Ford sold the Futura to a Hollywood producer who gave the car some serious upgrades and a new paint job.

He used the Futura in his newest television project, and soon it became the most iconic car to ever drive its way through the screen.

Because that producer was Chuck Barris, creator of a TV series based on a legendary comic book character.

The Futura, you see, was transformed into the Batmobile.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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