Month: November 2021

Mel Blanc (the voice actor who voiced every male character on Looney Tunes, as well as characters like Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons) was in a head-on collision driving his sports car in a dangerous intersection known as “Dead Man’s Curve” in Los Angeles in 1961 (the same “Dead Man’s Curve” from the Jan and Dean song). His legs and pelvis were fractured, and he was left in a coma.

For weeks, doctors tried everything to get Blanc to wake up. Eventually, when things were looking bleak, one of his neurologists decided to address one of Blanc’s characters instead of Blanc himself, asking him “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a slight pause, the previously-comatose Blanc answered, “Eh… just fine, Doc. How are you?” Mel Blanc made a full recovery. When he got out of the hospital, he sued the city of Los Angeles for $500,000, leading to the city reconstructing the curve.

During the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a man by the name of Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed, in a feat of massive misfortune (or good fortune), to be present at both atomic bomb detonations. He was working in Hiroshima for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the first atom bomb was dropped on August 6th. He dove into a ditch in the handful of seconds it took for the blast to reach him, which is probably what saved his life (although he was badly burned and his eardrums ruptured).

He took a train to Nagasaki, woke up and went into work the morning of August 9th, where he reported to his boss, who didn’t believe him when he mentioned the strange new bomb that had evaporated parts of Hiroshima. “You’re an engineer,” he barked. “Calculate it. How could one bomb…destroy a whole city?” Famous last words. At that moment, the second atomic bomb hit the city. “I thought the mushroom cloud followed me from Hiroshima,” Yamaguchi later recalled. Despite everything, Yamaguchi would live to the ripe old age of 93 and have 9 children.