I was watching the low-speed chase at work, which was a restaurant. There were several people there who were yelling “Go OJ!” at the TV. I was yelling “Kill yourself!” He was already threatening to, and I knew that if they actually caught him it would be a very bad thing, for reasons which at this point must be all too obvious.
As Frank Zappa said, “There’s nothing worse than a suicide chump.”
There have been a couple of live broadcasts of car chases in Los Angeles that ended in death/suicide. One guy ended a long stand-off by setting his car on fire. Then, with the TV cameras still trained on him, he pulled out a gun and blew his brains out.
Another chase ended when the driver abandoned his car and tried to escape. He had some sort of weapon in his hand and was shot down in a parking lot. You could hear the director saying “pull back!”, but it was too late. The fugitive was obviously hit by multiple gunshots–he hit the ground and twitched once or twice. The reporters didn’t say it for a few minutes, but it was pretty clear that he had died right there.
I’m surprised this has gone three pages without a mention of Battle of the Bitches: '68 when William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal debated on live television. What was supposed to be a witty and pity and pointed exchange on the election devolved into Vidal calling Buckley a “pro crypto Nazi” and Buckley calling Vidal “a goodam queer” and threatening to “punch you in your mouth and you’ll stay plah-stad!” One half expected to see one of them toss a laced embroidered glove at the other or at very least go after each other in a mud puddle while dressed in Versace. (Buckley’s one of those “if he’s straight I’ll dance on one leg and sing the Marsellaise” fellows to me; every channel on my gaydar dings.)
Meant to include this link to the above.
The morning of the big Northridge quake, I was watching tv coverage, which was showing the damaged freeway overpass (the 10?). A cop car was slowly driving along, and from the copter, it was easy to see that a section had broken away and slipped down a few feet at one joint.
However, the cop was approaching from the intact side, which meant that to his perspective, the road must have looked continuous.
I was thinking, “Ok, he’ll stop. He has to see it. STOP NOW! Too late.” The car drove over the break and hit the front bumper on the broken section, with the rear wheels off the ground, unable to apply power to the ground. You could hear the studio crew laughing. I’ve never met anyone else who saw that.
Has anyone else seen the Honeymooners episode in which Jackie discovers in the middle of a scene that his fly is down? He’s been wondering why his entrance was so funny, and why he’s getting laughs on the straight lines, and then he finds it out, turns around while continuing his lines, does a quick zip, and continues on. Although he was fighting laughing himself.
Hee! I’ve never seen that before, awesome.
The morning of September 11th someone came in saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center very matter of factly. We turned on the tv and watched wondering what was up until the secone plane hit. At that point, the live broadcasts started to go to shit. Bryant Gumble began yelling that he could see multiple jets headed into New York(which got a person in my office freaked out to where she sort of screamed). Turns out they were news helicopters he was looking at. Not long after, the Pentagon shows up burning with the broadcasters saying basically, “The Pentagon is on fire, we have no idea why”. Multiple announcements come out about a car bomb being blown up in front of the State Department, Camp David being attacked and that Air Force One could not find a safe place to land. 5 years later and it still amazes me how much bad information was being pumped out on live broadcasts.
I would imagine. You really have to feel for the guy. Gets a cancerous tumor in his pitching arm, has it removed (along with 50% of his deltoid muscle), comes back ten months later, standing ovations. Throws in his second game back, his arm shatters, and he has to have it amputated. I remember watching that game, too. Only time I remember crying watching sports on TV.
Well, until Steve Bartman.
One live event that I haven’t seen anyone mention is Christine Chubbuck, a news anchor for WXLT in Sarasota, Florida, who shot herself during a newscast. She died 14 hours later in the hospital. She was, I believe, the first person to commit suicide on live television.
That happened in 1974, and I was born in 1973. So, if I saw it, I don’t remember it.
A similar thing happened on the Bay Bridge after Loma Prieta (1989). I dunno how widespread it is outside of the Bay Area, but anyone who lived here will recognize the video, taken from behind, of this guy driving along the bridge and abruptly taking a nose dive.
The player was Alvin Garrett of the Redskins. From this page:
Not mentioned yet is the Bob Knight chair toss of Feb. 23, 1985. I was watching the telecast of that Indiana-Purdue game and vividly remember the moment.
As funny as the Orson Welles peas bit is, that wasn’t live - it was being taped as voiceovers for TV commercials.
Here’s a Clip (#3) of Al Sharpton getting “bowled over” by Roy Innes on the Morton Downey Jr show.
A few that I don’t think have been mentioned:
Neal Armstrong saying “one small step for man”
Diana Spencer getting Charles’ name wrong during the wedding
Dan Rathers walking off the set during a news broadcast
John Belushi slashing Buck Henry’s head with a samurai sword during a SNL sketch
Candice Bergen forgetting her lines during a SNL sketch and Gilda Radner ad-libbing
Frank Zappa deciding to go “off script” while hosting SNL
Alabama had a governor named James Elisha "Big Jim" Folsom , a surprisingly liberal man for his time and a mentor of George Wallace. He was a colorful character- a physically huge man who was a notorious womanizer (he had paternity suits while governor- one was dropped when the girl’s father said publicly “I’d rather have a little bastard for a grandson than a big bastard for a son-in-law”) and his support for integration pretty much did him in; even his protege Wallace (himself far more liberal privately than this public persona would imply) turned against him and the 1962 gubernatorial election was between Folsom & Wallace.
Folsom and Wallace appeared on television in a live debate. Folsom was, by all accounts, drunk off his big butt. Among other things he started imitating a cuckoo clock when Wallace said something he disagreed with (and continued for a while after Wallace stopped talking) and later introduced his family to the TV audience, which wouldn’t have been so bad perhaps if he hadn’t forgotten the names of two of his children.
Wallace won in a landslide and Big Jim slid into obscurity, broke and forgotten by the end of his life. The son whose name he forgot later became governor- the hard to remember name was ‘Jim Folsom, Jr.’.
Wow, no mentions for the Columbia?
Or “Houston, we have a problem…”
Couple years back a strong earthquake hit Taipei as the City government was holding some kind of meeting, and various reactions were caught on tape. (Everything from ducking under tables, hysterical running, to calm ennui).
My grandmother was actually in Beijing visiting family on “6-4”. The place where she was staying was close enough for her to hear gunfire. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: (We were all massively freaked out when the news hit the States.)
There was a Monday Night Football game in DC in September 2001 where some of the players on the bench started hacking and coughing and choking up, and everyone thought terrorists had released a biological weapon in the stadium–especially harrowing because the game was in DC and the wounds of 9/11 were still fresh. The game was paused while the whole world freaked out for a few minutes, until word came up that it was just pepper spray that the stadium security had used on a rowdy fan, which got blown down to the benches by the wind.
What on earth are you talking about?
June 4 was the day the Tiananmen Square demonstrations were disrupted by the government.
That’s the first thing that came to mind, but I wasn’t sure…
