Nate DiMeo’s The Memory Palace is a great show of short historical tales. In the past, he’s talked about everything from the creation of the Ferris wheel for the 1893 World’s Fair to attempts to use bat bombs in World War II. The stories are always both fascinating and brief, and it’s well-worth subscribing to the podcast.

This quote comes from the most recent episode, on Donald Hornig babysitting the first atomic bomb before it was tested.

And while he wondered…about how the office pool would turn out, the one where physicists placed bets on the outcome of the test, ranging from “total dud” to “an explosion that would ignite all of the nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere, destroying all life on the planet”.

Good luck collecting on that.

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