Lt Colonel Robert Scott of Des Moines, Iowa: “I
broke the world's transcontinental flying record today"
Colonel Scott flew from Los Angeles to New York in 3 hours and 46 minutes. His was the fastest of the eight
F84F Thunderstreaks that took off from LAX as an Air Force test of how the
aircraft behave under various fuel conditions.
Two other planes arrived in New York in slightly slower times, and the
other five failed to complete the trip for various reasons (all landed safely). Today’s modern passenger aircraft routinely
beat Scott’s time, and the current transcontinental record is just under one
hour and eight minutes. The highly
decorated Colonel Scott flew combat missions during WWII and the Korean War,
and would later fly missions in Vietnam.
"Casey," a chicken: “I play baseball”
Casey, the
Baseball Playing Chicken, as well as a kissing rabbit and other animal novelty
acts are all trained by Keller Breland of Hot Springs, Arkansas, an animal psychologist who claims to be the
first to put that field to commercial use.
Casey (a hen) is trained to pull a rubber loop attached to a tiny bat on a tabletop
field. The bat would then swing and strike a small rubber ball. If she managed to get the ball
past toy figures representing the fielders, it would hit the outfield fence, automatically releasing a few grains of feed as her reward.
The act, sponsored by General Mills, was a hit at county fairs, feed
store openings and the like from 1947 until well into the sixties.
Special guest Andy Devine: “I carried the
first US flag with 48 stars on it (February 14, 1912 in Kingman, Arizona)”
Devine, a native of Kingman, was only
seven years old at the time. The number
of stars on the US flag officially went from 46 to 48 with the statehoods of
Arizona and New Mexico on July 4, 1912. (Devine’s prototype flag predates that
by a few months.) The 48-star flag would fly for 47 years. That's longer than any
other flag except the current 50-star variety.
Devine is a popular and prolific actor with dozens of films to his
credit, mostly westerns. He was probably
most identified as Roy Rogers’ sidekick in ten films of the 1940s.
This episode has not been reviewed. Details come from alternate sources, including thumbnail descriptions of the episodes from GSN documentation and Gil Fates' handwritten notes. Secrets here are based on the Gil Fates notes and are believed to be accurate.
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