Another cold war memory: American newspapers used to publish outrageous quotes from the Russian newspaper Pravda. Like this one (paraphrased - it’s been a LONG time since I read this):
“American college football is a bloody sport that the government uses to harden and prepare the people for war. Players are routinely killed during the games.”
Educating kids on “Duck and Cover” was before my time:
Lots of good examples of duck-and-cover educational films on YouTube, many of which seem inexplicably cheery and upbeat.
Not sure what changed between the 50s/60s and 70s/80s, but I grew up during the latter period. We never received duck-and-cover training, but were still concerned about nuclear war. Maybe because the concept of mutually assured destruction meant that civilian areas would be targeted along with military areas, and duck-and-cover doesn’t much matter when you’re a mile from ground zero under a megaton detonation?
These days “duck and cover” training appears to have been superceded by “run/hide/fight” training, which kids from the 50s to the early 90s wouldn’t be familiar with.
midi files
Yeah, “0” for operator. . . I can’t remember the last time I used that or heard anybody say anything about it. It used to be a common thing.
Now I’m reminded of using your hat to protect yourself from “heat flash” in the event of a nuclear attack.
I grew up at the tail end of men routinely wearing hats, and another thing young un’s probably wouldn’t recognize were the hat clips on the backs of church pews.
Likewise. Now I’m wondering when it stopped working. I just tried it on my cellphone, and I got a recording giving me the numbers for various services, such as police, directory assistance, international calls, customer service, and a couple of others. Then it repeated in Spanish, gave some kind of identifier, and hung up.
I remember listening to Car Talk on NPR. And I remember that puzzler too.
Some kinds of wild foraging
So that’s what those are!
Lead tinsel. Yep kids, we’d decorate the Christmas tree with thin strips of lead, carefully one strand at a time. Then after Christmas, carefully remove them and place them back in the box for next year!
Oh…and when it was taken off the market, we continued to use our diminishing stash of the ‘good stuff’, mixing it with the new lighter stuff that didn’t hang as well.
I remember my Mom making us wash our hands after hanging tinsel because it turned our hands black. Ahhhh…the good old days!
Playing with mercury in grade school science class.
My Dad had small bottle of mercury and I played with it as toy, letting squish between my fingers. Yep…didn’t affect me at all! ;-p
Oh and the chemistry sets with real chemicals and the hobby shop where you could buy them!
I remeber those and am still wondering what did they thought when they started market them. I had one and made hydrogensulfide for my mothers delight. Made hydrogen and burned some of my hair. Made both sulphuric- and nitricacid and went to my mother asking some cotton and my father got curious. That experiment we did outside. My father couradged me and my mother accepted. Fun times. I was ten IIRC so it was -71. Seems right.
I still have this finnish book written by Ilmari Jäämaa: Kokeilijan ja keksijän kirja. Freely translated as Exprimentist’s and Inventor’s Handbook. You can think it as a precursor for the Anarchist Cookbook.
When I read it today I realise that most of the chemicals that are used there one cannot purchase easily nor can one purchase the precursors. I mean that making even nitric acid today at home is almost impossible. I mean legally. One legal way that comes to mind is by starting purifying air for nitron. All fertilizers are too impure to be usable.
My common complaint. I used to be able to get all kinds of interesting chemicals for experiments, like sodium silicate (good as a glue and for making “crystal gardens”) Ferric Ammonium Sulfate and Sodium Ferrocyanide (mix them in solution to make Prussian blue). magnesium strip (light it and it burns with a white flame you can’t even look at), Cobalt Chloride 9use for making "weather sensors), and the like. I could buy replacements at the local auto parts store.
Now all that is gone, I suspect because everyone’s afraid of lawsuits from injuries. So kids’ chemistry kits now tell you how to make different varieties of Slime, or how to make Bath Bombs, or something similarly uninteresting and harless.
When we were kids our volcanos weren’t made of baking soda and vinegar! We made mound of ammonium dichromate and lit it. It sent out plumes of smoke and burning jumping sparks and made its own “lava”. Who knew that it was carcinogenic?
If you want a taste of real chemistry hobby labs – and how you could learn science from it, have a look at the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, available in several places online
Build your own science lab out of kitchen implements and (then)easily available household chemicals. Create Chlorine in your lab, create plastic from sulfur and cast it. Make Orlon in your basement. Taste aids and bases!
OMG! 
I’m 60+ and I’ve never heard that!
IMHO, you win the thread.
Of course, there’s the (in)famous AC Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory offered in 1950. Among other things it contained
plus four unranium-bearing ore samples, autunite, torbernite, uraninite, and carnotite from the “Colorado plateau region”
It failed to sell well, most likely due to the high price, $530 in 2020 dollars.
LOAD “PACM*”,8,1
extra text for discourse
When I was your age we didn’t have streaming or DVDs. We had VCR and these places called video rental stores.
love the Blazing Saddles reference
Loved my Gilbert Chemistry Set as a kid. Never got into any trouble with it.
I did, however, cause a Big Rip in a few alternate universes with my Gilbert Astrophysics Set. My bad.
I grew up before VCRs. As previous posters wrote, if you missed this year’s showing of The Wizard of Oz, you had to wait for next year.
I remember buying a 15-minute black-and-white silent version of one of my favorite movies (Marooned (1969), with Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus and Gene Hackman) so that I could watch it on my family’s movie projector.
