Sign of the times - funnies * Remember this is a family friendly forum and inappropriate postings will be removed without warning.

[Masher]

Ken Dodd: I went into the Army and Navy stores, said where's your camouflage jackets? He said "they're good aren't they "

 

[Shaun Walsh]

3 hours ago, Peter Miller said:

One day I was sitting on the wing of an Avro Anson refuelling it. Now you gauged the fuel level by peering into the filler cap.  The problem was that as the fuel level rose the curvature of the wing made the top of the tank area reduce in size.

I looked in and it was some distance down.  I looked away and 100 octane petrol fountained out and drenched my lower regions.

100 Octane petrol stings!!  Then I  walked into the crewroom just as someone lit a cigarette.  Needless to say I departed and waiting until the fuel had evaporated outside.

Health and Safety? Whats that.

I recently had a hearing test as I have a little tinnitus. The hearing specialist asked had I had been near loud noises. I told him about Rolls Royce Merlins and Griffons being run up at full power while we did started crew and jet engines running on the flight line. 

"Why didn't I use ear defenders?"

Ear defenders in the 50s and 60s? You must be joking.

Tinnitus, hmm, that's rings a bell.

Edited May 21, 2023 by Shaun Walsh

[cymaz]

Lifted from Facebook.....

 

 

[Don Fry]

You been on the cider Cymaz, or not reading the thread

[cymaz]

Cider🤪

and not reading it proper 🤓

 

[Geoff S]

On 19/05/2023 at 16:31, Peter Christy said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That last picture reminds of the time when I was about 13/14 and carefully fitted a mains plug to a length of mains lead then plugged it in before starting to strip the wire at the other end!  My dad was really annoyed as the flash spoilt the edges of his best pair of side-cutters.  It didn't seem to bother him that his first-born could have killed himself!

[Shaun Walsh]

10 hours ago, Don Fry said:

As a strapping young buck, I used to work as a chemist in ICI research laboratories. Dangerous places, not covered by Health and Safety. ICI cared for us, and we used to have horrified H/S people watching us work. I remember I was wet spinning a novel fibre I had synthesised into fibre, I coagulated it into a bath of 75% sulphuric acid, that’s about 2.5 times stronger that what is in a lead/acid battery, using a pair of standard latex gloves to protect hands as I fished in the bath for the start of the thread. Long conversations on how to do it another way. Bottom line, we were careful, all the time. 
In the corner of out lab was a emergency shower, for douching if needed, very powerful, water coming from everywhere. 
Now we all know, wash your hands after going to the toilet. Mother drums it in. We washed hands before. One day, a screaming came from 3 or 4 labs down. Some one had contaminated their wedding tackle with caustic soda. In the shower he went, with his boss, a very attractive lady, who sorted out a rapid strip and wash down of the bits,  to a constant invective to to poor creature as he whimpered away. 
 

In the 1920s my late father in law was starting his chemistry degree and one of the modules was "laboratory techniques" he remembers the lecturer explaining that the art of pipetting by mouth was all about concentration and correct technique.  He demonstrated by mouth pipetting a concentrated solution of potassium cyanide.🤯

[Geoff S]

2 hours ago, Shaun Walsh said:

In the 1920s my late father in law was starting his chemistry degree and one of the modules was "laboratory techniques" he remembers the lecturer explaining that the art of pipetting by mouth was all about concentration and correct technique.  He demonstrated by mouth pipetting a concentrated solution of potassium cyanide.🤯

 

At my school someone got a mouthful of mercury with a pipette.  Luckily there was a hospital across the road.  I think modern schools would be horrified that there were bottles of goodness knows what on open shelves all round the Chemistry lab as well as Bunsen burners along all the benches.

[Ian Wilson 10]

5 hours ago, Geoff S said:

 

At my school someone got a mouthful of mercury with a pipette.  Luckily there was a hospital across the road.  I think modern schools would be horrified that there were bottles of goodness knows what on open shelves all round the Chemistry lab as well as Bunsen burners along all the benches.

I don't know why I remembered this, but here goes ... At school in Edinburgh in the 60s I was in the CCF  shooting team. One day we were shooting our .303 SMLEs on the open ranges  at  Dreghorn. I had finished my shooting and was sent to the butts to operate the targets. After  an hour or so it was time to pack up and go back to school. For some stupid reason which I've never been able to explain, I unplugged the two-pin plug  which connected the hand-cranked field telephone with the firing point. I put the plug in my mouth, tapped a friend on the shoulder and said: "Watch this ..." I  then wound up the crank. I'll never forget the blue flashes in front of my eyes, the smell of singed flesh and sheer look of horror on the faces of my schoolmates. My actions may have had something to do with the quarter bottle of whisky we had smuggled into the butts earlier. Thank god the officer IC never found out. I had the burn marks on my lips for weeks ...

In the chemistry  labs one day we forced an unpopular fellow pupil into a fume chamber, closed the sliding glass front, and watched him stare in horror at the flask which was happily bubbling chlorine gas (if I remember correctly) into the chamber. We let him out eventually ... happy days!

[EvilC57]

6 hours ago, Geoff S said:

 

At my school someone got a mouthful of mercury with a pipette.  Luckily there was a hospital across the road.  I think modern schools would be horrified that there were bottles of goodness knows what on open shelves all round the Chemistry lab as well as Bunsen burners along all the benches.

When I was at school in the early’70s I remember the chemistry teacher passing around an open glass beaker about half full of mercury, getting us to notice the weight, then allowing us to float steel ball bearings in it and pick them out with our bare fingers. Different times…

[Denis Watkins]

1 hour ago, EvilC57 said:

When I was at school in the early’70s I remember the chemistry teacher passing around an open glass beaker about half full of mercury, getting us to notice the weight, then allowing us to float steel ball bearings in it and pick them out with our bare fingers. Different times…

 

I do, and remember, as a child, getting a Chemistry Set for Christmas or Birthday, full of toxic substances.

[Andy Stephenson]

How about the U239 chemistry set that had real radioactive substances, a great toy for any aspiring nuclear physicist of the 1950s.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Andy Stephenson

[Peter Christy]

I remember us chucking lumps of sodium into dishes of water in chemistry classes. We were meant to cut them into small pieces first, without actually touching them. This isn't particularly easy, so guess who chucked an oversized lump in, and the size of the resulting explosion...!

 

I also recall being given lectures on radioactivity in physics. We were all sent to the back of the lab, whilst the lecturer carefully opened flasks of different radioactive materials and scanned them with a geiger counter. After he finished the demo and carefully re-sealed the dangerous stuff away, we all returned to our seats - at which point the geiger counter went crazy! Someone in the front row was wearing a luminous watch - which was far more radioactive than any of the lab samples!

 

And of course we travelled around in cars without seatbelts or crumple-zones. Makes you wonder how we ever managed to survive to adulthood! 🤣

 

--

Pete

[Peter Miller]

We were on the butts at square bashing firing the Bren gun.  For some reason this lad pulled trigger and held it as he laid the butt on the ground.  The bullets climbed the earth bank,the bricks at the top and the last rounds headed off into the distance.

The instructors words would get this post removed before I even finished it

[Peter Miller]

2 minutes ago, Peter Christy said:

I remember us chucking lumps of sodium into dishes of water in chemistry classes. We were meant to cut them into small pieces first, without actually touching them. This isn't particularly easy, so guess who chucked an oversized lump in, and the size of the resulting explosion...!

 

I also recall being given lectures on radioactivity in physics. We were all sent to the back of the lab, whilst the lecturer carefully opened flasks of different radioactive materials and scanned them with a geiger counter. After he finished the demo and carefully re-sealed the dangerous stuff away, we all returned to our seats - at which point the geiger counter went crazy! Someone in the front row was wearing a luminous watch - which was far more radioactive than any of the lab samples!

 

And of course we travelled around in cars without seatbelts or crumple-zones. Makes you wonder how we ever managed to survive to adulthood! 🤣

 

--

Pete

When I was in my early teens we were living up in the mountains in the Argentine.  I was told that there had been some searching for uranium up in the mountains and I  was given a piece of shiny black stone with yellow crystals in it.

 

Some years later I asked someone about this. "Oh yes!! That was pitchblende and oh yes it  was radio active."  I had had it in my bedroom for years.

[Peter Miller]

http://www.doyletics.com/tidbits/militaryadvice.pdf

Edited May 22, 2023 by Martin Harris - Moderator

[J D 8]

            Shooting at shotgun live shells with an air rifle was not a good idea for a mate and myself.

              The aim was to try and hit the primer cap and detonate the shell. We took turns and after a couple of nearly's I hit the cap. The shell went off but what happens is the heavy stuff, the lead pellets stay put and so did the case but primer cap came straight back and hit me in the forehead!

Explanations to ones Mam as to how there was a bloody mess had to be made up.

 

[Alex Ferguson 2]

2 hours ago, Peter Christy said:

Makes you wonder how we ever managed to survive to adulthood! 🤣

 

The ones who didn't aren't posting much on this thread....

[Brian Cooper]

[Don Fry]

2 hours ago, J D 8 said:

            Shooting at shotgun live shells with an air rifle was not a good idea for a mate and myself.

              The aim was to try and hit the primer cap and detonate the shell. We took turns and after a couple of nearly's I hit the cap. The shell went off but what happens is the heavy stuff, the lead pellets stay put and so did the case but primer cap came straight back and hit me in the forehead!

Explanations to ones Mam as to how there was a bloody mess had to be made up.

 

You could have told her you was learning what Newton’s third law was about. Brownie points. Mind you could get away with anything then. I was I think 10 or 11, allowed to clear pigeon and rabbits across Farmer Browns 300 acres, on my own with a 410. Me and my mate Nobber (future senior officer, Royal Engineers) made a crossbow from the rear axle spring of a 15 cwt Bedford. Trailer mounted, stopped one day on our bikes,  by the law. You go careful, lads was the extent of the conversation.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Don Fry

[Andy J]

Its a real shame that kids today are not allowed to play with fires, climb trees, make explosives, have knives or anything else slightly hazardous. Not sure what they do for fun other than sitting in front of a computer screen until they are old enough to be let out alone.

[cymaz]

All this reminiscing reminds me of a famous Monty Python sketch. 
I remember licking the road wit’ tongue 😝

[EvilC57]

47 minutes ago, cymaz said:

All this reminiscing reminds me of a famous Monty Python sketch. 
I remember licking the road wit’ tongue 😝

You were lucky!

 

My late father once told me the story of how on the last day of term when he was at technical college in the 1940s, the chemistry lecturer said ‘Right lads, what do you want to do?’. ‘Can we make some gunpowder sir?’, said one of the lads. ‘Of course!’, said the teacher. So they proceeded to make gunpowder. Having effectively made a small bomb in a glass container, someone lit the fuse and they all ducked down below the benches. Apparently the resulting explosion saw them spending the remainder of the lesson removing bits of broken glass from the wooden panelled walls. Health & Safety, what’s that?

Edited May 22, 2023 by EvilC57

[paul devereux]

1 hour ago, EvilC57 said:

You were lucky!

 

My late father once told me the story of how on the last day of term when he was at technical college in the 1940s, the chemistry lecturer said ‘Right lads, what do you want to do?’. ‘Can we make some gunpowder sir?’, said one of the lads. ‘Of course!’, said the teacher. So they proceeded to make gunpowder. Having effectively made a small bomb in a glass container, someone lit the fuse and they all ducked down below the benches. Apparently the resulting explosion saw them spending the remainder of the lesson removing bits of broken glass from the wooden panelled walls. Health & Safety, what’s that?

Another gunpowder story:

A man who recently died at the age of 106 attributed his longevity to the old cowboy habit of putting a pinch of gunpowder on his oatmeal every morning. He left behind 3 children, 8 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren and a 30 foot hole in the wall of the crematorium.

[Peter Miller]

A less lethal but hopefully amusing story and connected to modelling.

In 1954 I was with the Regents Park model club for a short time in the winter.

 

We used to meet in the cellar of a building and the in thing was Jetex round the pole speed.  The models developed until they consisted of a Jetex 50 motor with a shim brass wing,a wire tail boom an a shim brass tailplane.  It was then discovered that if you put four grooves up the side of the Jetex pellet you got a lot more power for a shorter flight.

In the end we used to put the tables on their sides and take shelter behind them.

This soon became boring  so then we started building  solid models hollowed out with the motor inside. This was far more fun and you could actually see the models.  I had a Supermarine Swift that flew like a dream and looked perfect.

One person built a lovely DH Vampire but unfortunately the wick came out and stuck on the tailplane setting on fire on fire.  The result was a nearly complete circle of fire going round the pylon.