1The War of The Worlds
The story of mass panic in New York caused by the radio broadcast of The War of The Worlds in 1938 is largely false and was caused by the newspaper industry sensationalizing the story, seeing it as an opportunity to attack the radio as being an untrustworthy source of news.
2. Immediately after the end of slavery was declared in America, there was a surge in Wanted Ads placed in newspapers across the country. African-Americans used them to search for family members sold or escaped, sometimes decades earlier.
3. The practice of playing music for callers on hold began with a faulty phone line connection. A loose wire touching the steel frame of an office building caused it to act as a giant radio receiver, allowing callers to hear music from local radio stations while they waited on hold.
4. When Chicago radio station “the loop” was replaced by a Christian music station, they signed off with the song ‘Highway to Hell.’
5. In 2015, a radio DJ named Joe Kohlhofer in Austria barricaded himself into his studio and played Wham's 'Last Christmas' 24 times in a row. He did it as a protest for lack of holiday spirit and only stopped after his 4-year-old daughter called in to complain.
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6John R. Brinkley
Country music became popular in America partially through a pirate radio station of a quack doctor named John R. Brinkley based out of Kansas who built a fortune on a procedure to implant goat testicles into men's scrotums.
7. In 1996, a man broke into a radio station in New Zealand, held the staff hostage, and made them play Kermit’s Rainbow Connection non-stop.
8. In the 60s not only could you advertise cigarettes on television, but you could have cartoon characters be the pitchmen. For example, The Flintstones endorsed Winston cigarettes.
9. The peak of TV attention can be assigned an exact date: Sunday, September 9, 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first appearance on television, on CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show. Its 82.6% share of US viewers has never been equaled or bettered.
10. The heaviest newspaper ever delivered was the September 14, 1987 edition of the New York Times. It weighed 12 lbs. (5.4kg) and contained 1,612 pages.
11Inverse Square Law
All of our terrestrial radio and television broadcasts become indistinguishable from background noise at only a few light years away from the Earth thanks to the inverse square law.
12. In 1937, a newspaper named Los Angeles Examiner published a full-page map predicting Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
13. Sitting close to the TV will not damage your eyesight. The myth spread after it was discovered that televisions made prior to 1967 emitted excessive radiation.
14. In the 1940s, the Superman Radio Show had Superman fight their version of the KKK using real information about the Klan. This was a crippling blow to the organization, causing recruitment to drastically decrease. In response, the KKK ordered a boycott of the Radio Show’s sponsor, Kellogg.
15. In 1989, the Australian youth radio station Triple J played the song "Express Yourself" by N.W.A. Hip hop group on a continuous loop for 24 hours (360 times in a row) while the station went on a protest strike against censorship of NWA's song F*ck Tha Police.
16WLW radio station
The most powerful commercial radio station ever was WLW (700KHz AM), which during certain times in the 1930s broadcasted 500kW radiated power. At night, it covered half the globe. Neighbors within the vicinity of the transmitter heard the audio in their pots, pans, and mattresses.
17. The first TV remote controls were called "clickers" and did not use batteries. They transmitted an ultrasound signal when the user clicked the button, striking a metal rod inside to send an audible signal to the TV.
18. Radio GTMO, the Armed Forces radio station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has a vinyl collection of over 20,000 records, including some albums that exist nowhere else.
19. In 1972, Canadian radio station CBC held a poll to find a national simile (an answer to 'As American as apple pie'). The winning response was "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances."
20. Newspapers are so big (broadsheet) because the British government began taxing newspapers in 1712 based on the number of their pages.
21Vrillon
On November 26, 1977, a television station in southern England had their broadcast hijacked by an entity referring to itself as Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command who disrupted regular programming to give a six-minute message about humanity's future. It is still a mystery who was behind this.
22. In 1977, the Guardian newspaper produced a 7-page supplement for April Fool's day detailing the discovery of a fictional island called San Serriffe that was in the shape of a colon. Thousands fell for the hoax leading to a tradition of April Fool's stories.
23. A small portion of television static you see between channels is caused by cosmic background radiation, remnants of the 'Big Bang.'
24. During World War 1, British newspapers falsely claimed that the Germans rendered down soldiers' corpses to make soap, candles and nitroglycerin. As a result, when news of the Holocaust reached Britain during World War 2, the government assumed it was another made-up atrocity story.
25. In July 2005, the British radio station Planet Rock invited their listeners to select a singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer to create the "ideal supergroup". The members of Led Zeppelin won in each category.
