Skunk oil and the butcher girl

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Hi, it's Sam Hawley from ABC News Daily, the podcast that brings you one big story affecting your world each weekday in just 15 minutes.

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G'day, Matt Bevan here.

I hope you enjoyed our episode about the history of fluoride and skepticism of fluoridation.

As you might be able to tell, we had quite a lot of fun making it.

But the most fun thing we discovered was actually cut out of the story because, look, it, to be honest, had nothing to do with fluoride.

But me and my producer, Cara, are extremely excited about this thing, and I'm sure you're going to love it too.

G'day, Cara.

Hello.

Okay, so I think to understand why this story is so special to us, you kind of need a bit of background on how the show is made.

So, Matt and I are working in different areas.

So, Matt's in Newcastle, I'm in Sydney, and we do most of our correspondence over WhatsApp, which amounts to him kind of sending me links throughout the day at various times of things that he's found.

And I know when something is very exciting, I'll look down at my vibrating phone and there'll be like 57 WhatsApp notifications from Matt with just exclamation marks.

And this is one of those things.

Like it was a basically a series of articles.

It was a thing called Modern Weekly News Magazine.

So what can you tell me about this modern magazine?

So modern weekly news magazine.

It was published in the late 1940s.

And what it is, is it's kind of like a thing that they would insert into regional newspapers in Australia to fatten up the paper a bit.

So the list of papers that they were going to, it's towns that many of which I've never even heard of, like the Bridgetown Advocate, the North Midland Times, the Northern Times, Kool Gardy Minor, the Avon Argus, the Northeastern Courier, Preston Mail.

These are pretty small towns in Australia.

And obviously, there wasn't a huge amount of news news happening in these towns, and yet they still had to put out a paper.

And so this service was offered to them whereby they would be sent a pre-organized thing to print into the middle of their newspaper, which was called this modern weekly news magazine.

And

I mean, whoever was organizing this

thing, they were very clearly a very interesting person because the stories that they included in this insert were wild.

And the thing was, I came across it because, you know, we were looking for stuff about fluoride and, you know, how news about fluoride arrived in Australia about fluoridation.

And one of the first news articles about it was in this modern weekly news magazine.

The story was pretty straight.

And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't know.

And then I'm reading down the paper, and then I look to the right, and there's this photo

and a caption for the photo and the caption is in all caps girl runs butcher shop.

Yes.

And the story is 18 year old Barbara Robinson cutting meat in her father's butcher shop.

When her father went to hospital, Barbara took over management, helped only by her mother.

Now, we don't know where Barbara is or anything else about her apart from the whole story is that an 18-year-old was running a butcher shop.

It's accompanied by a photo of like a young kind of 1950s style woman with a large hacksaw hacking at like what appears to be the ribs of a large animal.

Yes, she's, you know, doing the thing that you do in a butcher shop.

And I was like, okay, so they're choosing interesting stories here.

And so you and I have spent some time over the last week selecting more mad stories from this brief, very obscure modern weekly news magazine.

And we're going to be sending them to each other to read cold with absolutely no context.

Yes, I have one here.

I'm just wondering if I were to say the title of the story is Fowl Yard Fashion.

I wonder what you think that might be about.

I'm guessing that it's

something to do with chickens.

Maybe it's clothes

made out of feathers?

Maybe?

Okay.

Okay, give it a read.

Fowl Yard fashions mr e merrifull poultry breeder of forest road hurstville n south wales is fitting his fowls with metal spectacles specially imported from the united states what

they clip it onto the beak of the fowl giving it an austere rather pedagogic appearance unlike glamour girls chickens lose their aggressiveness when they wear spectacles i love also that glamour girls become more aggressive when you put glasses on them like do they

What?

Mr.

Merrifill points with pride to an amiable Australorp.

That's a breed of chicken.

That's one of the few things I know about chickens.

Who, before being fitted with fancy eyepieces, used to savage his owner and his fowl yard colleagues.

Now he's wearing specs.

There is peace and harmony in the fowl yard, says Mr.

Merriful.

Spectacles for chooks are widely used by American poultry farmers.

Sorry, widely?

I have never heard of chickens wearing spectacles outside of like the movie Chicken Farm.

Exactly.

It's like that was the last and first time I saw a chicken with glasses on.

I just love the idea that they're bringing in all the exciting new developments from America.

Yes.

And one of them is fluoride in the water that's going to

solve a huge amount of dental problems.

And another one is putting glasses on chickens.

Tiny chicken glasses.

Tiny chicken spectacles.

Okay.

Okay.

What else have you got?

Oh, I've got so many good ones.

Look, you know, we were talking obviously about dentures and, you know,

how many people

in the first half of the 20th century had all of their teeth removed and replaced with dentures because teeth were such a problem.

Well, you can imagine that losing your dentures would be something that people would worry a lot about.

So have a look at this.

Okay, title.

Strip Teeth River Dive.

John Caron of New York City lost his upper denture over the side of a Hudson River ferry, dived after it, and caught it halfway down, but lost his glasses, hat and overcoat en route.

So what I want to know, when it says caught it halfway down, did he somehow defeat the laws of physics and catch the

denture like halfway to the water or are we talking about halfway to the bottom of the river?

I'm imagining some sort of like Looney Turns cartoon dog whose teeth fall out when he sees like another hot lady dog.

And then he kind of bites them back into his mouth as he's.

That's kind of what I'm imagining here.

Yeah,

except the top half didn't go back in.

They went over the side.

He's dived over the side of the ferry.

And lost all his clothes on the way.

And lost all his clothes, glasses, his chicken spectacles.

And presumably they're talking about he dived to the bottom of the river.

Yeah.

And halfway to the bottom of the river he managed to catch his denture, which like that is mission impossible stuff.

Like that's incredible.

That's that's that's great stuff.

It also doesn't say if he survived.

I assume he's okay.

Well I think that they would probably note that he was dead

rather than say that he lost his glasses, hat and overcoat.

Okay, here's the question I have to you.

Actually, I can't even think of a question that kind of presents this as a normal thing to do.

If say you were to have a crocodile egg,

where

would be an unexpected place for that egg to hatch?

Perhaps while you were on horseback.

I mean, I don't know.

See, that's the sort of thing you would expect in this sort of publication, but hatched crocodile, I've just sent you an article, have a look at it.

Oh!

Hatched crocodile in office.

Some people think that a crocodile which lives in Johannesburg chose a particularly appropriate place to get born in.

It hatched out in a lawyer's office.

Having shot a crocodile near Kissimu, Captain J.

Bagley of the South African Airways searched round and found its nest, which contained 73 eggs.

He took three and gave one of them to a Johannesburg attorney.

The attorney, Mr.

Neville Watson, wrapped the egg in some old socks and kept it on the shelf among his law books.

After nearly three weeks, he broke the egg and out came a seven and a half-inch baby crocodile.

It is now growing rapidly on a diet of minced meat and water.

Presumably still in the office.

Yeah, I mean, like a little office mascot, the rapidly increasing size, very confused, probably upset crocodile.

What's the plan there, Mr.

Neville Watson?

I mean, wow, that's that's, I mean, everything about that story is so upsetting.

You've also set the bar so high if unhatched crocodile egg in an old sock is something that you're presenting to your attorney as a gift?

Is it a gift?

Yeah.

Like, is that a present?

Yeah.

Okay, have you got another one?

I've got this one.

It's an unfortunate story about an industry that

was closing down.

So it's a bit of a sad one.

Oh, no.

The skunk business is smelling.

The skunk business wasn't what it used to be, sadly reported 80-year-old John Silver of New York.

The demand for skunk oil, he said, was on the downgrade.

John should know his business was killing skunks, rendering the oil from their carcasses, and selling it to mothers, who he said were smart enough to know it could cure a croupy baby.

Okay.

Enthused John Skunk Oil is the greatest known remedy for croup.

It cures aches, pains, and muscular stiffness, too.

In addition, it would clear a sick room of anyone whose duty did not require him to remain.

But skunk oilman silver didn't mention that.

It's sad that, like, skunk oilman used to be a vocation, you know?

And now it no longer is.

Yeah.

Well, think of all these ailments.

You know, creepy babies are going unskunk oiled.

It's like print journalism, but for the 40s, you know?

Print journalism, skunk oil.

Okay, I've got one here.

It's a big front-page spread story.

303 Australian bees pierce Iron Curtain.

Okay.

With their 300 worker escorts, three Australian-bred Italian Golden Queen bees are now fraternising with Russian bees near Moscow.

They were flown by Qantas from Sydney to London and thence by another airline to the Russian Scientific Research Bureau at Bertovo.

To ensure that the bees reached Moscow safely, these extraordinary precautions were taken.

They travelled as diplomatic mail.

The plane captain was personally responsible for them, and they could not be disturbed by inspections.

Accompanied by 100 working bee escorts, each queen travelled in a honeycomb-lined box.

Bees were removed from the plane in tropical countries before the aircraft was sprayed with insecticide to kill malarial mosquitoes.

They were scheduled to arrive in summer so that they can be acclimatized before the severe Russian winter.

Yes, that will be a surprise for them.

The bees were from Hawkesbury Agricultural College.

They will be crossed experimentally with Russian bees.

I have many things to say about this.

One is, yes, those will be for some very confused bees.

They're in Western Sydney

enjoying the summer of Western Sydney.

And then suddenly they are in Moscow.

They are not going to like Moscow very much, I don't think.

But also, what an incredible way to smuggle things in and out of the

of the Soviet Union.

Yes.

If you just put them in the honeycomb,

you can send it without it being inspected.

But also, when it says the plane captain was personally responsible for them, does that mean that the bees were in the cockpit?

With him?

Just under his feet.

Just pop them under there.

Really hope they don't get out.

Yeah.

In the glove box.

That's fantastic.

I feel like it also feels like traveling to Europe in a honeycomb-lined box is so continental as well.

It does feel.

It feels very fancy.

I've got this one that's a bit, feels like it's a bit of a humble brag story.

Can't catch the flu, offers himself as a human guinea pig.

A man in Sydney can't get the flu.

He's so sure of himself that he's offered himself as a guinea pig to doctors for medical research.

Mr.

John Lynch, 52, says he has a natural immunity to colds and flu and is able to shake off attacks of the illness within four minutes.

Okay.

Nice.

By experimenting on me, scientists may be able to affect a cure for colds and flu, Mr.

Lynch said this month.

I developed my immunity after a severe bout of flu 20 years ago.

Since then I have caught colds each winter, but have always recovered within four minutes of showing the first signs of illness.

In the interest of science, I'm willing to allow doctors to inject stuff into me which will give me a dose of flu or cold, but they would have to test it first.

I'm not a fool.

I wouldn't let them give me any of that virulent stuff which the doctors don't understand themselves.

That would be like fooling around with atoms.

It's weird that you would put yourself forward for medical testing but be like, but I don't want any of that strange stuff.

It's like, bro, you're the one that's going in the newspaper to say this is something you want to do.

You didn't have to do that.

It's the calling up the newspaper to offer yourself as things, which is great.

Okay, my second last one is from Chicago.

And this, I think, is interesting because it seems to be indicative of the sort of thing that people used to do to entertain themselves before there was streaming services.

Okay.

Played game with death.

On Chicago's southbound rail tracks this month, two boys pressed themselves flat between the ties as 20 carriage expresses thundered over them at 70 miles per hour.

Undercarriages of the trains missed the boys by inches.

To horrified police, who dragged them from the tracks, the boys, Raul Salman, 16, and Thomas Collins, 15, explained, We were doing it just for the kick.

We like excitement.

They said the quote-unquote game was best between 5pm and 6pm when the suburban trains rattled over them nearly every minute.

The boys, who admitted they blinked a little when the trains passed over, blinked harder at the dressing down handed to them by Chicago's chief juvenile officer.

We were bored!

We were bored!

We went down to the train tracks for the kick.

You know, we needed a bit of excitement in our lives, so we lay down on the train tracks and let the trains roll over us.

70 miles an hour.

I feel like it's crazy how many lives Game Boys saved when they were invented.

The fact that it's just like, hey, why don't you go outside and play the ball?

And it was, you know, back in those days, it was like the life expectancy gap between

men and women was massive.

And it wasn't just because of the war, it was because they were like, we're going down to the train tracks.

Okay, this is my favorite one.

The people of the town of Naura, which we were talking about, of course, in our episode about Fluoride,

the people of Nowrah are very angry because the town can't get a public hospital.

And so they've put up signs along the roadway

that's beside the local cemetery, right, to try and protest the lack of a public hospital in Naura.

I'll send you a photograph of the sign that they've put up.

Okay, so it's a big sign on the side of the street that says,

drive carefully.

You are now entering Naura, the largest country town in New South Wales.

Without a public hospital, death is so permanent.

All capitals, death is so permanent.

Full stop.

Death is permanent.

I mean, it really is permanent.

It's almost poetic.

I mean, that is so incredibly 21st century.

It is.

And to say so permanent,

as opposed to just permanent is so passive-aggressive.

I know.

It's so permanent.

It's actually really permanent.

Death is like so permanent.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that NARA managed to get a public hospital

in the 1950s.

And by the 1980s, it was quite a large one.

And so, thankfully,

potentially thanks to these signs saying that death is so permanent,

NARA did manage to get themselves a public hospital.

Well done to NARA.

Death has become less permanent in NARA.

Death is less permanent.

So,

Cara, thank you very much.

The really unfortunate thing about making this podcast is there are so many funny documents like this, which we can't represent in the podcast.

Sometimes we're able to sort of show them on the YouTube show, but obviously, sitting down and describing a funny sign doesn't quite sit into the fast-paced flow of the pod.

So, we usually cut these things out.

So, if you are keen to hear Cara and I riff more on strange documents we find, send us an email and Cara will read them.

That's Cara's problem.

That's my problem.

If you're listening at ABC.net.au.

Thanks, Cara.

Thanks so much for having me.

Bye.

Catch you next week.

Oh, and one more thing.

Donald Trump and his former first buddy Elon Musk have started posting some very mean stuff about each other on the social media platforms they own.

It seems like the most predictable breakup of all time has now happened, and I think there's a very strong chance of a popcorn shortage over the next few days.

We're going to be taking a look at what went so wrong with their bromance.

That's next on if you're listening.