Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Dave is here in spirit. He wanted to let us know that he's thinking of each and every one of you individually, and this is short stuff, that's right. I was raised in the church choir, my friends, so this one hits really close to home. Actually not at all, right, but I did sing in the church choir. I've seen church choir's performed before, so it really hits home for me too. This is a really fun story, I think. Is this Were you familiar with the story before? You know where I first heard of it a time life books? Ad? Are you really? Is there anything those things haven't taught us? I don't know. I wish I had a upset of those. Those are fun me too. We'll have to go on eBay and look for him together. I'm sure they're all there. So, um, what we're talking about is not necessarily just a church choir. It's almost tangential to it. Or we're really talking about is one of the most astounding coincidences in a history of documented history, Like, there's no coincidence that really holds a candle to this. In my book and there's plenty of coincidences. I remember we did an entire episode on one. Remember the poor guy who was in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and survived them both. Um, there's been some amazing coincidences before. This one, to me takes the cake. It's a pretty good one. And we're talking about a terrible incident that happened, but it could have been a lot worse. On the evening of March first, nineteen fifty and Beatrice in Nebraska, when a church blew up, I mean blew up, like the walls blew out, the roof came down, windows got knocked out of houses in the vicinity, a radio station got knocked off the air by the blast. However that works. It was. It was a big time explosion that just destroyed this church. Uh. And I guess we should go ahead and say how this happened. Uh. The ideas that there was probably a gas leak, and that gas leak just you know, did what gas leaks do and filled a space with gas. And Uh, there was a gentleman there who would show up. What was his name? Was it the reverend himself? It was the reverend. Yeah, Walter Clempole. Yeah, what a great reverend name, Reverend Clinpole in nineteen fifties, Nebraska reverend name too. So he shows up at his West Side Baptist church, uh, like he always does ahead of time, to light the furnace to get it nice and warm for choir practice, because in early March in that part of Nebraska can be a little chilly. Uh. And then he went back home to go to dinner. And so the idea is that this gas fills up, it eventually reaches the flame of that furnace and church explodes. Okay, so a church exploding from a natural gas explosion lit by a reverend. This is not all about making reverend Climpole look back. Now, he didn't like that furnace because he wanted to blow up the church. Like you said, he was lighting it for choir practice. What makes this astounding is that that explosion took place at seven pm on March one, like you said, which was a Wednesday, and every Wednesday was choir practice, and every Wednesday at seven twenty pm choir practice started. So this explosion that destroyed the entire church took place five minutes after choir practice officially started. And The thing that makes this the most astounding coincidence of all time is that not one single member of that fifteen person choir was in the church at the time. Every single one happened to be late. That's right, Uh, And I think we should save the reasons for everyone being late till after the break with a little cliffhanger, but before the break. Uh. If you're trying to figure out the odds of something like this happening, there's no exact scientific way to do that, obviously, But what they can do, and what they have done, is look back and said, well, how often were people generally late at choir practice at this church, and what are the odds of that happening to everybody? And they kind of went back and look at past um choir practices and saw that each person would be late about of the time one and every four choir practices. So everyone being gone for this specific night ended up being a you guessed it, one in a million chance. Yeah. I think all of them had either an equal chance or twice the chance of being struck by lightning that year, as this actually happening is all of them being late for choir practice at the same time Okay. I think that's a great setup. We'll come back after our short break and we'll talk about why these folks were late right after this. So before we get going on the reasons, I think one important thing we didn't point out is it's not like everyone got on a bus somewhere to go to choir practice and the bus broke down. Like everyone was late for their independent reasons. Some had a little bit of overlap, as we'll see, but that's sort of the remarkable part of all this. Yeah, yeah, it is amazing. So um, Reverend clempole Uh, he usually got there as early as anybody. Um, he usually got there about seven ten um. And it turns out that his daughter, who was going to come with a Marylyn Ruth, the dress she had put on it was was dirty. So his wife, the Mrs Reverend Walter clempole Um, had to put a new dress on the irony board get it ready, and that made the family late. That's pretty okay. I like that one. That's a good one. It just keeps going from there, though, And we should mention we could not find Reverend Walter Clemple's wife's name. We are not just doing the antiquated thing of calling a woman Mrs so and so so and so husband's name, right, thank you for that. So let's go over some of these all right. So, Um, like I said, it just keeps going from Reverend Clemple and his family's reason for being late. Next up, we've got Ladona vander Grifft, which sounds like a made up name. She was struggling with the geometry problem. She was a sophomore in high school, and um, she she was like, I'm not letting this problem beat me. I have to finish this before I leave for choir practice. Best part of this whole story, I think, I think so too. So she not only did that make her late, but it also ended up making the sd s sisters Royena and um what was her name? Sadie Rona and Sadie st S were late because of La Donna indirectly as well, right, because I think they were supposed to Uh were they supposed to ride together? Yeah? Well no, they had car trouble. The sts sisters had car, so they called La Donna. Vander Griffin said, hey, can you come pick us up? She said, just after I figure out this Pythagorean theorem thing. Oh yeah, yeah, so they were supposed to ride together, I got you. Yeah, Yeah, but they weren't supposed to they they they only called her. They would have arrived had their car not been um in trouble. And then even furthermore, had La Donna not been doing geometry, all three of them might have made it on time. Yeah, they were double blessed. Yes, amazing stuff. Uh. And of course the reason I say double blest is obviously with a situation like this in a church, the entire church believes that this was God's hand leading them away from that explosion. Naturally, I would too, indubitably, indubitably what else do we have here? We have Mrs Leonard Schuster. Uh And and Schuster went to her mom's house to get her ready for a missionary meeting. Apparently, so that's what made Schuster late, Right, had to untirer mom's shoes, each to their own shoe. What about Herbert Kith? He was a late operator, which is that's the late operator in Nebraska's name. In sure, he supposedly had a letter that he had been putting off writing, and he finally sat down to write it, and the letter itself made him late. Um, And that's apparently unusual for him. He wasn't necessarily the most prolific letter writer, but that was the one for him. Do you know what it sounds like to me? What sounds like chary practice wasn't much of a priority for anyone there. It kind of sounds like, I got a math problem. I really need to write this letter. Yeah. Or Joyce Black really demonstrates that too. She was a stenographer, she said. Um. And by the way she was saying all this, they were all saying all this stuff to Life magazine, which did an article on this couple of weeks after it happened, called why the choir was late? Um. She said, I was feeling just playing lazy. It was very cold out my my house was cozy and toasty, and I was just hanging out there, all right, That's why I was late. But she was the most forthright of all the very honest, very honest. Uh. The piano player herself, Marylyn Paul. Uh. Usually the piano players there pretty early, and I think Marylyn had a knack for arriving about a half hour early. But Marylyn must have eaten some turkey for dinner, because she fell asleep and her mom woke her up at seven fifteen and she said, all right, and well, I gotta get out of here. I'm kind of already late. And it says here she only had time to tidy up and then leave. Let me clean up a bit first. So her mom was actually the choir director, and she was late because Marylyn and was late. So I I like in all this stuff too. I wonder if like she was mad at Maryland or was like, why are you not waking up at seven in the evening? Who who naps like that? Um? Or if if everybody was very patient. I like to think they're all very patient and polite waiting for one another. You know. Well, it says that that mom tried unsuccessfully to awaken her earlier, right, That's what I'm saying. There was a ghastly at church in a carbon monoxide leak in the Paul's will you wake Up? And then Lucille Jones and Dorothy would um. They were neighbors and they were both in the choir, so they would naturally ride together. And one of them, oh I think it was Lucille, was listening to a radio program from seven to seven third, probably Mannix or co Jack and um and uh again. Dorothy was just sitting there patiently waiting for her friend to finish listening to this radio program. Unbelieved bole. We also left out Harvey all the last one. What did Harvey do? He had the worst excuse of all of them. He was taking care of his kids, his wife was out of town, and he started talking, and I guess talking makes Harvey loose track of time. But he lost track of time and ended up being like, I guess as kids, I'm not sure. I could not, for the life of me find that Life magazine article directly. Um, we have to thank our friends at Snopes for helping us out a big time with this one. Yeah, it's probably the kids were like, Dad's finally talking to us, right, He's paying attention to us. Yeah, but I can tell he doesn't know what time it is. Yeah, this is one of the stories. I'm glad there wasn't some gross dark thing underneath. No, it was all above the boards and uh amazing. So all of those people, for all those different reasons, were late to choir practice, and had they all made it on time, they would have perished in that explosion. I love it. Thanks Time, Life Books, Thanks Snopes, Thanks to you, Chuck, thanks to Dave for producing this, thanks to you guys for listening to it, and short Stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Dave is here in spirit. He wanted to let us know that he's thinking of each and every one of you individually, and this is short stuff, that's right. I was raised in the church choir, my friends, so this one hits really close to home. Actually not at all, right, but I did sing in the church choir. I've seen church choir's performed before, so it really hits home for me too. This is a really fun story, I think. Is this Were you familiar with the story before? You know where I first heard of it a time life books? Ad? Are you really? Is there anything those things haven't taught us? I don't know. I wish I had a upset of those. Those are fun me too. We'll have to go on eBay and look for him together. I'm sure they're all there. So, um, what we're talking about is not necessarily just a church choir. It's almost tangential to it. Or we're really talking about is one of the most astounding coincidences in a history of documented history, Like, there's no coincidence that really holds a candle to this. In my book and there's plenty of coincidences. I remember we did an entire episode on one. Remember the poor guy who was in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and survived them both. Um, there's been some amazing coincidences before. This one, to me takes the cake. It's a pretty good one. And we're talking about a terrible incident that happened, but it could have been a lot worse. On the evening of March first, nineteen fifty and Beatrice in Nebraska, when a church blew up, I mean blew up, like the walls blew out, the roof came down, windows got knocked out of houses in the vicinity, a radio station got knocked off the air by the blast. However that works. It was. It was a big time explosion that just destroyed this church. Uh. And I guess we should go ahead and say how this happened. Uh. The ideas that there was probably a gas leak, and that gas leak just you know, did what gas leaks do and filled a space with gas. And Uh, there was a gentleman there who would show up. What was his name? Was it the reverend himself? It was the reverend. Yeah, Walter Clempole. Yeah, what a great reverend name, Reverend Clinpole in nineteen fifties, Nebraska reverend name too. So he shows up at his West Side Baptist church, uh, like he always does ahead of time, to light the furnace to get it nice and warm for choir practice, because in early March in that part of Nebraska can be a little chilly. Uh. And then he went back home to go to dinner. And so the idea is that this gas fills up, it eventually reaches the flame of that furnace and church explodes. Okay, so a church exploding from a natural gas explosion lit by a reverend. This is not all about making reverend Climpole look back. Now, he didn't like that furnace because he wanted to blow up the church. Like you said, he was lighting it for choir practice. What makes this astounding is that that explosion took place at seven pm on March one, like you said, which was a Wednesday, and every Wednesday was choir practice, and every Wednesday at seven twenty pm choir practice started. So this explosion that destroyed the entire church took place five minutes after choir practice officially started. And The thing that makes this the most astounding coincidence of all time is that not one single member of that fifteen person choir was in the church at the time. Every single one happened to be late. That's right, Uh, And I think we should save the reasons for everyone being late till after the break with a little cliffhanger, but before the break. Uh. If you're trying to figure out the odds of something like this happening, there's no exact scientific way to do that, obviously, But what they can do, and what they have done, is look back and said, well, how often were people generally late at choir practice at this church, and what are the odds of that happening to everybody? And they kind of went back and look at past um choir practices and saw that each person would be late about of the time one and every four choir practices. So everyone being gone for this specific night ended up being a you guessed it, one in a million chance. Yeah. I think all of them had either an equal chance or twice the chance of being struck by lightning that year, as this actually happening is all of them being late for choir practice at the same time Okay. I think that's a great setup. We'll come back after our short break and we'll talk about why these folks were late right after this. So before we get going on the reasons, I think one important thing we didn't point out is it's not like everyone got on a bus somewhere to go to choir practice and the bus broke down. Like everyone was late for their independent reasons. Some had a little bit of overlap, as we'll see, but that's sort of the remarkable part of all this. Yeah, yeah, it is amazing. So um, Reverend clempole Uh, he usually got there as early as anybody. Um, he usually got there about seven ten um. And it turns out that his daughter, who was going to come with a Marylyn Ruth, the dress she had put on it was was dirty. So his wife, the Mrs Reverend Walter clempole Um, had to put a new dress on the irony board get it ready, and that made the family late. That's pretty okay. I like that one. That's a good one. It just keeps going from there, though, And we should mention we could not find Reverend Walter Clemple's wife's name. We are not just doing the antiquated thing of calling a woman Mrs so and so so and so husband's name, right, thank you for that. So let's go over some of these all right. So, Um, like I said, it just keeps going from Reverend Clemple and his family's reason for being late. Next up, we've got Ladona vander Grifft, which sounds like a made up name. She was struggling with the geometry problem. She was a sophomore in high school, and um, she she was like, I'm not letting this problem beat me. I have to finish this before I leave for choir practice. Best part of this whole story, I think, I think so too. So she not only did that make her late, but it also ended up making the sd s sisters Royena and um what was her name? Sadie Rona and Sadie st S were late because of La Donna indirectly as well, right, because I think they were supposed to Uh were they supposed to ride together? Yeah? Well no, they had car trouble. The sts sisters had car, so they called La Donna. Vander Griffin said, hey, can you come pick us up? She said, just after I figure out this Pythagorean theorem thing. Oh yeah, yeah, so they were supposed to ride together, I got you. Yeah, Yeah, but they weren't supposed to they they they only called her. They would have arrived had their car not been um in trouble. And then even furthermore, had La Donna not been doing geometry, all three of them might have made it on time. Yeah, they were double blessed. Yes, amazing stuff. Uh. And of course the reason I say double blest is obviously with a situation like this in a church, the entire church believes that this was God's hand leading them away from that explosion. Naturally, I would too, indubitably, indubitably what else do we have here? We have Mrs Leonard Schuster. Uh And and Schuster went to her mom's house to get her ready for a missionary meeting. Apparently, so that's what made Schuster late, Right, had to untirer mom's shoes, each to their own shoe. What about Herbert Kith? He was a late operator, which is that's the late operator in Nebraska's name. In sure, he supposedly had a letter that he had been putting off writing, and he finally sat down to write it, and the letter itself made him late. Um, And that's apparently unusual for him. He wasn't necessarily the most prolific letter writer, but that was the one for him. Do you know what it sounds like to me? What sounds like chary practice wasn't much of a priority for anyone there. It kind of sounds like, I got a math problem. I really need to write this letter. Yeah. Or Joyce Black really demonstrates that too. She was a stenographer, she said. Um. And by the way she was saying all this, they were all saying all this stuff to Life magazine, which did an article on this couple of weeks after it happened, called why the choir was late? Um. She said, I was feeling just playing lazy. It was very cold out my my house was cozy and toasty, and I was just hanging out there, all right, That's why I was late. But she was the most forthright of all the very honest, very honest. Uh. The piano player herself, Marylyn Paul. Uh. Usually the piano players there pretty early, and I think Marylyn had a knack for arriving about a half hour early. But Marylyn must have eaten some turkey for dinner, because she fell asleep and her mom woke her up at seven fifteen and she said, all right, and well, I gotta get out of here. I'm kind of already late. And it says here she only had time to tidy up and then leave. Let me clean up a bit first. So her mom was actually the choir director, and she was late because Marylyn and was late. So I I like in all this stuff too. I wonder if like she was mad at Maryland or was like, why are you not waking up at seven in the evening? Who who naps like that? Um? Or if if everybody was very patient. I like to think they're all very patient and polite waiting for one another. You know. Well, it says that that mom tried unsuccessfully to awaken her earlier, right, That's what I'm saying. There was a ghastly at church in a carbon monoxide leak in the Paul's will you wake Up? And then Lucille Jones and Dorothy would um. They were neighbors and they were both in the choir, so they would naturally ride together. And one of them, oh I think it was Lucille, was listening to a radio program from seven to seven third, probably Mannix or co Jack and um and uh again. Dorothy was just sitting there patiently waiting for her friend to finish listening to this radio program. Unbelieved bole. We also left out Harvey all the last one. What did Harvey do? He had the worst excuse of all of them. He was taking care of his kids, his wife was out of town, and he started talking, and I guess talking makes Harvey loose track of time. But he lost track of time and ended up being like, I guess as kids, I'm not sure. I could not, for the life of me find that Life magazine article directly. Um, we have to thank our friends at Snopes for helping us out a big time with this one. Yeah, it's probably the kids were like, Dad's finally talking to us, right, He's paying attention to us. Yeah, but I can tell he doesn't know what time it is. Yeah, this is one of the stories. I'm glad there wasn't some gross dark thing underneath. No, it was all above the boards and uh amazing. So all of those people, for all those different reasons, were late to choir practice, and had they all made it on time, they would have perished in that explosion. I love it. Thanks Time, Life Books, Thanks Snopes, Thanks to you, Chuck, thanks to Dave for producing this, thanks to you guys for listening to it, and short Stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H