Fire Crowded facts
While investigating facts about Fire Crowded, I found out little known, but curios details like:
When the Six Flags Over Texas theme park opened in 1961, it had a section dedicated to the Confederacy where actors would hunt through the crowd for Union "spies" and "execute" them by firing squad, and where boys and girls could sign up to defend the South as soldiers and nurses.
Chris Morris, from the IT Crowd, has been fired from many jobs due to the many pranks he has pulled during his radio career, including filling one of the radio booths with helium, causing the newsreader to report the news in an extremely high-pitched voice.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 41 of the best facts about Fire Crowded I managed to collect.
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A 50 year old woman, Violet Gibson, attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1927. She fired a gun once, but Mussolini moved his head and the shot hit his nose; she tried again, but the gun misfired. She was almost lynched by the crowd but was rescued by police and taken away for questioning.
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A satellite launched in 1978, and thought to be shutdown in 1997, was actually discovered in 2008 still be fully operational with plenty of fuel. Through efforts of crowd funding and approval from NASA, a group successfully established contact and fired the engines for the first time since 1987
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The Columbine Massacre (Not the Columbine you're thinking of). On this day in 1927, a fight between Colorado State Police and unarmed striking coal miners led to machine guns being fired into the crowd of miners. Six miners were killed and dozens were injured.
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I learned about the Greensboro massacre, where KKK and Nazi party members opened fire on on crowd protesting the Klan. The media filmed the massacre and aired it on national television however no one was ever convicted.
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Charles Nelson Reilly, actor/comedian best known as the long time panelist on the game show Match Game, was a survivor of the 1944 Hartford circus tent fire in which 169 people died. He never sat in an audience again for the remainder of life because large crowds reminded him of the event.
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In April 2003 the 82nd Airborne Division fired into a crowd of Iraqi civilians who were protesting their presence at a school within the city of Fallujah, killing 17 unarmed Iraqis.
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President Ford survived two assassination attempts in the same month. On Sept. 5, 1975, Lynette Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, fired a pistol at the president in a crowd in Sacramento, but Ford was unharmed. On Sept. 22, Sara Jane Moore pulled a revolver on Ford in San Francisco.
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The KLF, a British Acid House band, retired by planning to spray sheep blood all over the audience. They then fired blanks at the crowd and later, at the afterparty they dumped a sheep with "I died for ewe - bon appetit" written on it. Afterwards, they burned all their money: 1 million pounds.
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At the 1936 Olympics Germany released 25,000 pigeons, then fired a canon, resulting in the birds being startled while flying over the crowd.
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Just before the shooting began at the Boston Massacre, a British soldier struck a young boy with his rifle's butt for insulting a British officer. Captain Thomas Preston and eight British soldiers came to his aid. Private Montgomery was hit with a stick and fired into the crowd,
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In 1919 a British Bregadier General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a crowd of unarmed indian protestors including women and children killing atleast 400 people. Rudyard Kipling the Author of Jungle Book and Kim defended Dyer's actions stating "he did his duty as he saw it"
The Supreme Court case that popularized the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" as a metaphor for the limitations of free speech affirmed an espionage conviction for distributing leaflets urging men to resist the draft during WWI. - source
The 17th century Swedish warship "Vasa"; constructed with two firing decks and fitted with 64 cannons it was one of most powerful warships of its time - however sank after sailing just 1300 meters (just under 1 mile) on its maiden journey in full view of a crowd of thousands. - source
The example of shouting, "Fire!" in a crowded theater is perhaps the most well-known -- yet misquoted and misused -- phrase in Supreme Court history
The the last shot of the American Revolutionary War was reportedly fired by a departing British gunner, at jeering crowds gathered on the shore of Staten Island, as his ship passed through the mouth of New York Harbor. The shot fell well short of the shore - source
After several hundred died in the Iroquois Theater fire in 1903 due to the crowd crushing against the exits, building codes around the country mandated the use of panic bars and doors that swing outward.
The world's deadliest fireworks accident occurred in 1770 during Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI's marriage celebration. Partially unexploded rockets fell back into the crowd causing fire and panic, resulting in the deaths of at least 133 people.
The metaphor of falsely yelling "fire in a crowded theater" as a justification for censoring speech is misquoted and misused, and it comes from a Supreme Court case that was overturned in 1969.
The phrase "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is taken from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s opinion in the 1919 U.S. Supreme Court Case Schenck v. United States.
In the 1908, 172 students died in the Collinwood School fire. The crush of the crowd toward the exit made it impossible to open the inward-swinging doors.
