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    Comedy

    Sofa King Podcast

    The Sofa King podcast is a twice-weekly show dedicated to influential people, popular culture, historical events, true crime and listener suggested topics the hosts find interesting. From conspiracy theories and technology to the mass media and the future, this show explores major issues in way that is simultaneously informative, critical, and humorous. The hosts have big ideas, big opinions, big mouths, and give their take on topics in a way that is both cynical and educational. Adult content, themes, and language.

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    Latest Episodes:
    Episode 525: The Boston Strangler: A Serial Killer Classic Oct 16, 2020
    Show notes

    On this True Crime episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the infamous case of the serial killer known as the Boston Strangler. Between the years of 1962 and 1964, thirteen women were found killed and strangled in the Boston area. Most were over the age of 60, and no real suspects were being tracked by the police. Meanwhile, a man named Albert DeSalvo was on a spree of serial raping through the area, posing as a repair man or a man from a modeling agency. How do the two things tie together? Why does DNA evidence make officials think DeSalvo is the Boston Strangler, but many experts doubt he did it? Albert DeSalvo checks all the serial killer boxes. His father was a drunk who knocked every single one of his wife’s teeth out and bent all of her fingers back so far they broke. He’d sleep with hookers in their house and force his Albert to watch it. Needless to say, Albert grew up troubled. He tortured and killed animals and was first arrested for robbery and assault at the age of twelve. He was in and out of juvenile detention until he joined the army and things seemed to settle down for him. But, once he was an adult, he took on the persona of The Measuring Man and the Green Man. These were disguises and acts he’d put on to get into a woman’s house and sexually assault them. One source says he assaulted as many as 300 women this way. He did some jail time, got out, started again, and got arrested for it again. Meanwhile, the Boston Strangler started killing people. They were strangled with panties or silk stockings, and they were left on their beds to be discovered. The police had no reason to link DeSalvo to the murders, but in jail, he told another inmate all about it. This inmate, George Nassar, told his lawyer, and eventually DeSalvo confessed to all the crimes with a great degree of detail. However, there was no physical evidence, so he went to trial for the rapes and other charges. So, why do people think he was the Strangler if there is no actual evidence? What lead a member of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill gang to kill him in prison back in 1973? Why does an FBI profiler doubt he was the Strangler? Why do some think the Boston Strangler was Nassar, who DeSalvo first confessed to in prison? What did DNA evidence prove about the murders? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/albert-de-salvo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Strangler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_DeSalvo https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/us/dna-evidence-identified-in-boston-strangler-case.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/19/boston-stranger-dna-test-albert-desalvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkCYM2bzBPc https://historydaily.org/boston-strangler-facts-stories-trivia


    Episode 524: Nintendo: From Yakuza to Mario Oct 13, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the interesting history and massive success of the Japanese gaming giant Nintendo (and we might just look at little red plumber who jumps on psychedelic mushrooms and hides in pipes while we’re at it). Nintendo didn’t start like you think it did. Well, if you thought it started a hundred and twenty years ago by printing playing cards on tree bark for Yakuza gambling dens, then you thought right. From there, a maintenance man named Gunpei Yokoi was discovered to have created a toy to keep himself entertained at work, and the company president happened to see it. This became a massive success called the Ultra Hand and sold millions of units. Nintendo was officially in the toy biz. Yokoi developed several hit toys, including the hugely successful Game Watch, which was the engineering and spiritual successor to the Game Boy. But everything changed when a game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto created the game Donkey Kong with its popular hero Jumpman. Ultimately, renamed Mario, he went on to the best the star of the show for Nintendo, headlining every game system, creating a (horrible) 80s TV show, and becoming the first of many icons for Nintendo. Their systems ranged in ability and success from the Famicon (aka the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES) to the SNES, N64, Wii, Game Cube, and of the course different generations of the Game Boy, all culminating in the Switch. Nintendo found success by always doing exactly what other video game companies did not do. It even survived the video game crash of 1983 that destroyed world-leader Atari. They also clung to their intellectual property and used them very wisely: Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Princess Peach, Zelda, Link, Metroid, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers, Animal Crossing, and more. They all have been substantial successes for this little upstart card company from Japan. Visit Our Sources https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsKyquWWl-s https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Corporate/Nintendo-History/Nintendo-History-625945.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48606526 https://interestingengineering.com/the-extraordinary-and-surprising-history-of-nintendo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Miyamoto


    Episode 523: Michael Swango: Master of Medical Murder Oct 09, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the murders of a man who the FBI says is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, the little known Doctor Michael Swango. Swango killed patients under his care by poisoning them with either legit poison or prescription drugs they may have already been taking. He also poisoned landlords, girlfriends, co-workers…pretty much anyone he could. He was eventually arrested and convicted of four deaths, but some estimates place his killing as high as 60 people. This killing spree ran all over America, down to Zimbabwe, and would have landed in Saudi Arabia if he wasn’t finally arrested. So, he had a childhood that may not have had the typical serial killer abuse boxes to be ticked off. He had a loving mother, but there was no evidence of anything crazy. He had an alcoholic Vietnam Vet for a father, but who didn’t in the 70s? He was an excellent student, graduating valedictorian of his high school and getting into a college to study music. His girlfriend dumped him and broke his heart, and it seemed to utterly change the man. He quit playing music, dropped out of school, and joined the Marines. He served for a few years and finally found his way to medical school, where he almost didn’t graduate due to lying to the school. From there, he interned in a hospital where strange deaths were reported when he was on shift. Nurses knew and reported it, but they were ignored. Eventually, the deaths got bad enough that the hospital let him go, but nobody ever pursued him legally. He worked at an ambulance company where he poisoned his co-workers with evil doughnuts. They set a trap for him with a pitcher of tea, and he couldn’t help but poison it as well, and he was arrested. He did five years after the police found a treasure trove of poisons in his house. You would think that this back story would keep him from practicing medicine. But then there was the forgery. He forged papers about his prison time, his good behavior, and his standing in the medical community and got more jobs in medicine, often under false names. And he killed more people. Eventually, the American Medical Association caught on to him, and he was fired and had a permanent mark put on his record to every teaching school in the nation. So, he moved to Zimbabwe to kill more freely. Like you do. So, how many did he kill in Zimbabwe? What happened to his longtime girlfriend? How was he finally arrested, even though he fled the country? What was his sentence? How did end up in a super max prison? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Swango https://www.thoughtco.com/profile-of-joseph-michael-swango-973127 https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/swango-michael.htm https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Swango https://www.oxygen.com/license-to-kill/crime-time/michael-joseph-swango-house-horrors-murder https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118552/


    Episode 522: Steven Spielberg: Greatest of All Time Oct 06, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the life, awards, career, and films (lord, how many films!) of Steven Spielberg. And buckle up folks, this episode is a record-setting two hours long! With his very first movies being Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and ET, you can see that this man was destined for greatness in Hollywood. Many of the stars and producers who met this young 20 something genius back in the 60s said the same thing. He was the youngest director to ever get a directing contract with a major studio (just 21 years old at the time), and he has won countless awards. His films have made over $10 billion dollars total, and I’d bet good money that if you sat down and made a top ten list of your favorite films, at least one of his is on your list. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a concert pianist and a computer engineer, and though he moved around a lot, he had a love of film even at a young age. He won a merit badge in the Boy Scouts for a short film he directed (to get his still photograph badge). He started making films as a teen with an 8MM camera, and some of them even started to win local awards and make a tiny bit of money at the box office (well, a dollar, actually). After graduating high school, he moved to LA and tried to get into USC (along with film legends like George Lucas), but he was denied due to low grades. He got in to a different school, but ultimately dropped out because he was starting to get work. He started with an unpaid editing internship at Universal, and the gave him a chance to use their equipment to make a short film. He made Amblin’ (which his production company is called to this day), and it impressed studio execs enough to give him a contract directing TV episodes. In short order, this led to him impressing the likes of Rod Sterling and others. They gave him a chance at a first big budget film, a little thing about a shark. Jaws redefined what a block buster meant, and he followed it up with Close Encounters. If you look at the film list of Spielberg, it will astound you. It’s like every four or five films are what a typical director would be known for in their entire career. But then, there is another and another, and most of them are masterpieces. From Saving Private Ryan to Ready Player One, Amistad to Schindler’s List, and rounding it all out with Jurassic Park, his genius and ability to tell stories has not diminished. If you like film, then give this one a listen. If you don’t, then in the words of Conan the Barbarian: “The hell with you!” Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/filmmaker/steven-spielberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/ https://www.forbes.com/profile/steven-spielberg/#b58d2c3228a7 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/steven_spielberg https://time.com/43618/george-lucas-steven-spielberg-star-wars-bet/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firelight_(1964_film)


    Episode 521: The Great Chinese Famine: Mao Murders Millions! Oct 02, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and examine the largest famine in human history, The Great Chinese Famine. Known to the Chinese government as “Three Years of Difficulties,” this famine is unique since it is blamed almost entirely on human governance, not on nature. How bad did it get? Estimates are that 45 million people died in only three years. Most of this was starvation, but much of it was people being killed to keep the famine a secret. This one gets ugly. People eating bark, people eating poisonous mud, parents eating kids, kids eating parents, some villages simply killing any travelers and eating them. So what was the cause of this horrible disaster? People blame Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” Mao wanted to propel China forward to catch up with production levels of Britain and the US, so he shifted his focus from agriculture to the manufacture of steel and goods. He even went so far as to move people off of their farms and made almost everyone mine their own minerals and smelt them in ovens they built in the backyard. Never mind they had no idea what they were doing, and made crap metal that couldn’t be used for anything. And never mind that they were no longer producing food. But that wasn’t all that caused the famine. There was a lack of accurate information coming from scared local government leaders. There was a flood of the Yellow River. There was a drought (which the Chinese say was the main factor, but virtually every scholar says this didn’t make a dent). There was a campaign to kill sparrows which led to massive swarms of insects. And there was a cover up. Everyone who talked about the famine was disappeared by secret police. People who wrote letters to government were sent to labor camps or murdered after they were tracked down. In one instance, some teenage girls asked local governors for food, and they were dragged to a lonely mountain to die of starvation. A lot of the details of the Great Chinese Famine came to us recently from a very brave journalist named Yang Jisheng who secretly wrote the book Tombstone about this famine while working for the state news service. From government cover ups to cannibalism, dead sparrows to Communist leaders eating like kings while the peasants died by the millions, this one has it all. Visit Our Sources https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojOmUWLDG18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164732497/a-grim-chronicle-of-chinas-great-famine https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/pyared/papers/famines.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2014/9/cj34n3-2.pdf


    Episode 520: Barney and Betty Hill: The Epic Alien Abduction Sep 29, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we put on our tinfoil hats and talk about what might be the most important alien abduction case of all time, the story of Barney and Betty Hill. This story, straight outta 1961, has everything you want in an abduction story. Missing time? Check. Lights in the sky? Check. UFO? Check. Project Bluebook Investigation? Check. Human experimentation? Check. “Gray” aliens? Check. Missing memories and hypnosis? Check. And most importantly, anal probes? You betcha! So, this story is the tale of Barney and Betty Hill. They were a rare mixed race couple in the early 1960s, and after a year and a half of marriage, they drove to Niagara Falls and Montreal for a late honeymoon. On their way back, their world changed forever. They were racing home to beat a storm coming in, and at one point that night, they stopped for gas and food. While there, they saw lights in the sky. They checked with binoculars and ruled out normal aircraft. They got back on the road, and suddenly, the lights started to follow their car. What happens then gets pretty crazy. They remember seeing a disk-shaped vehicle filled with people in strange uniforms. Barney grabbed his gun, they both thought they were going to be captured, and they drove as fast as they could. The disk stayed above their car, and suddenly they heard a strange buzzing and zapping sound hit their trunk. They heard it a second time, and realized hours had passed, and they were 35 miles away from where they thought they were. Missing time in full effect. After they got home, they were having trouble sleeping, were filled with anxiety, and suffered psychological trauma. They finally got help after a psychiatrist suggested they go through hypnosis. Nobody thought they were abducted by aliens, but the experts did think something happened to them that caused them trauma. They met a hypnotist named Simon realized they had very similar memories of the event. They spoke with NICAP (a UFO group), and though they wanted to avoid publicity, a story leaked out of Boston, and they were suddenly famous. So, what memories were uncovered through hypnosis? What did the Air Force say with their Project Bluebook investigation? What did the aliens look like? What is the Star Map, and why do people think it points to Zeta Reticuli? What physical examinations did Barney and Betty Hill go through and what hurt worse than the anal probe? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill https://www.history.com/news/first-alien-abduction-account-barney-betty-hill https://www.library.unh.edu/find/archives/collections/betty-and-barney-hill-papers-1961-2006 https://astronomy.com/bonus/zeta https://science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/hill-abduction.htm


    Episode 519: Frank Matthews: The Black Caesar Sep 25, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the life of the African-American drug kingpin Frank Matthews: The Black Caesar. Matthews went from stealing chickens to running a numbers game in the back of his barber shop to being the top non-Mafia drug importer in the nation, in just a couple of years. He organized small drug dealers to take on the Mob; he ran the control of cocaine and heroin to 21 states; he was the first person to tap into the South American drug cartels; he went to war with the Black Mafia. He disappeared at age 29, having already formed a drug empire that bested everyone from Al Capone to Pablo Escobar. He was born in North Carolina and raised by his aunt when his mother died. When he was only 14, he formed a gang to steal chickens from local farms and sell them locally. A farmer caught them one day, and Matthews beat him. With a brick. A year later, he was out of prison and started running numbers. Eventually, he moved to Philadelphia and then New York and did his numbers racket out of the back of a barber shop. However, this wasn’t enough for the ambitious Frank Matthews. He wanted in on the drug trade. He tried to get friendly with some of the big Mafia families, but they all declined. So, he forged his own way. He befriended "Spanish Raymond" Márquez, who put him in touch with "El Padrino", Cuban Mafia godfather of New York. This contact allowed him to get the drugs directly from Corsica, the same supplier as the mob used. And Matthews was now an international player. He started to make so much money he would forget that he gave someone a million dollars, and he ran out of room to store his stacks of cash. He would fly to Vegas to have the casinos launder his money. He saw the potential to really move things, though, and he called a meeting in Atlanta with all big drug dealers cut out by the mob. They created a network, and the drug game changed for America thanks to Matthews. However, he got sloppy, and eventually there were federal and local warrants for his arrest. He was pinched in Vegas and extradited to New York where he silently slipped away on bail. He was never seen again. So where did Frank Matthews go? Why does one author thing this has to do with the CIA? Why did mob boss Carlo Gambino put a hit on him, and what made him retract it? Who was Major Coxson, and what did he have to do with the Black Mafia? Why was he so much more powerful than Jemeker Thompson, Crack Queen of LA? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Matthews_(drug_trafficker) https://themobmuseum.org/blog/did-frank-matthews-get-away-with-it/ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/dn-community/article10277654.html https://ganglandgazette.com/what-happened-to-drug-lord-frank-matthews https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-black-godfather-who-rose-fell-and-vanished/82420/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Coxson


    Episode 518: The Three Stooges: Moe, Larry, the Cheese! Sep 22, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we crack wise about the greatest comedy trio to have ever been put on film—The Three Stooges. Their short films were so popular that they single handedly saved the genre from dying for years and years. They poked fun at Hitler in the 1940s, and were so good at it that they made his personal death list. Though they started as a small vaudeville act in New York, they became the biggest game in comedy for multiple studios and for several decades. The keystone of the Stooges was one family—the Horowitz brothers. Shemp, Moe, and Jerome (aka Curley) Horowitz were all high school drop outs who had a love of acting and theater and quit school to pursue it. Shemp and Moe did various small roles, worked at the theaters and movie companies, and paid their dues. Curley hung out where they did, learned the business back stage, and did his own thing as well, such as studying dance. Eventually, a childhood friend named Ted Healy created a successful vaudeville show, and he needed stooges. He would play the straight man and try to sing and talk to the audience, but three bumbling stooges would come out and interrupt him. Though, it was a rotating cast, Shemp and Moe were the best at it. They hired a violin player named Larry Fine, and the rest was history. As they became more and more popular on stage and some small film roles, Shemp quit because he hated Healy. They added Curley to the act, and they blew up. Their films became so successful, that the movie companies could force theaters to take on B movies and stinkers they made or hold back the latest Three Stooges films. When they were at their peak, however, Curley had a series of health problems and strokes (that some think came from the beatings he took on set). He had to quit, and Shemp came back from a very successful solo act. It was a wild time in Hollywood. Healey was found dead, likely beaten to death by one of Lucky Luciano’s men. Larry at one point had to get paid more for fear that someone would bomb their stage acts. And their horrible producer screwed them out of millions of dollars by permanently convincing them that their movies weren’t making any money. When Shemp suddenly died of a heart attack, they considered quitting, but their evil producer held them to the final four films they had to make. So, how did this lead to fake Shemp? What was Joe, and who was Curley Joe, and why weren’t they the same person? Why did Larry live in a hotel until middle age? What were our personal experiences watching them as we grew up? Listen, laugh, and learn. Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stooges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville https://www.threestooges.com/ https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/three-stooges/ https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/curly-howard-grandson-three-stooges-tells-all https://www.mentalfloss.com/view?id=three-stooges-facts-mm&src=facebook https://screencrush.com/didnt-know-about-three-stooges/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Howard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curly_Howard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shemp_Howard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Fine


    Episode 517: Arthur Dozier School: A Curriculum of Murder Sep 18, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look into the horrible history of Florida’s school for juveniles called the Arthur Dozier School. It opened in 1900 and ran until 2011. It was the subject of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Nickel Boys. The Dozier school was (in)famous for housing children who often did nothing worse than smoke a cigarette at school, be truant, or run away from home. But as punishment, they endured life in leg irons, torture, illegal restraints, beatings till they bled, rape, and even murder. Estimates are that there are a total of 98 bodies buried on the site, and one group alleges there is a cover up by the local and Florida investigation teams. So, based on a law in the late 1800s, this school found funding and opened a couple years later. It was a large 159 acre campus with several buildings. It was segregated, so half the facilities were for black inmates and half for white. It was renamed a few times, and it switched hands as far as what governmental agency ran it. It was built to house 104 boys, aged 13 to 21. But that expanded to as young as 9, and at the height of its population, there were over 500 crammed into this space. It as a place of tragedy and dark history. A fire killed several boys and staff. Almost a dozen died to the Spanish Flu. And in its first remodel, they built a structure that the boys called the White House. It was where they took you if you were going to be beaten. Or tortured. Or raped. Because apparently in the 1950s and 60s, the people who ran the place were sadistic. Hundreds of boys who call themselves the White House Boys came forward in the 2000s to report their bloody beatings (lashed hundreds of times till their underwear was interwoven in their flesh, and they passed out—at the hands of an ominous one armed man), their rape, and even dead boys they saw from time to time. The White House Boys tried to get restitution or legal justice, but the statute of limitation had run out on any abuse they suffered, so it was shot down. But there were hundreds of them, so word must have gotten out, right? It did. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement ran an investigation which said they could find no forensic proof of abuse and no witnesses who would talk. The White House Boys think this might have been a cover up. And an article called “For Their Own Good” that came out of St. Petersburg kept it in the nation’s attention. Eventually, the Department of Justice and the and the University of South Florida each did their own investigations with rather different results. So, how many bodies did they find? What did the surviving boys recall of their tortures here? Why did nobody ever get in legal trouble? What finally got the victims a chance to legally exhume bodies of their relatives? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162941770/floridas-dozier-school-for-boys-a-true-horror-story https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2019/08/18/they-went-to-the-dozier-school-for-boys-damaged-they-came-out-destroyed/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_School_for_Boys https://www.abandonedfl.com/arthur-g-dozier-school-for-boys/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/16/boys-were-beaten-abused-florida-reform-school-now-colson-whitehead-fictionalizes-that-history/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/22/a-type-of-justice-florida-reform-school-yields-evidence-of-more-graves https://dartcenter.org/content/for-their-own-good-0


    Episode 516: Roald Dahl: From Ace to Spy to Oompa Loompa Sep 15, 2020
    Show notes

    On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at the very interesting life of a man named Roald Dahl. You may think you’ve never heard of him, but we promise that you have. For one, he was a world famous and beloved children’s author. He wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many other stories. What you don’t know is that he was an adventure-starved, globetrotting, WWII fighter pilot ace. He survived a crash, shot down enemy aircraft, and was eventually stationed to Washington where he met Ian Fleming and did work for the spy agency MI6. Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 to Norwegian parents who were wealthy. His father died when he was young, but his mother opted to stay in the UK because that’s where the best schools were. So, he attended school there, getting kicked out of one or two and being beaten by a headmaster here and there. He was also behind the Great Mouse Plot of 1924 which involved a dead rodent and a jar of gobstoppers. He eventually got through school, and when his mom said she’d pay for him to attend Oxford and be anything he wanted, he declined. He’d rather see the world. And see the world he did. He hiked around for a while and then got a job for an oil company in the Middle east. While there, he was drafted by England to help round Germans up in the city of Dar-es-Salaam where he was stationed. After that, he joined the Royal Air Force, and soon, his country was at war. After extensive training, he was given a really bad and outdated aircraft. Once, while piloting on his own, he was given the wrong directions and crashed in the middle of the desert. He sustained major injuries and was temporarily blind, but the kept on. Eventually, he fought in several dog fights, including the Battle of Athens, but he had to quit flying because of the injuries from the crash. He was such as smooth talker, however, that he was sent to Washington DC to be a diplomat and try to get the US into the war. While there, he doubled as a spy, meeting people like Ian Fleming and doing tasks directly for MI6. During the war, his friends got him to start writing, and people loved his work. He began with short stories and a tale about his own air crash, but he soon drifted to the fantastical children’s stories he is so beloved for now. He wrote James and the Giant Peach first, and the rest was history. His books were hits. He wrote 19 in all, saw several get adapted to film, and he even wrote the scripts for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and You Only Live Twice. There isn’t much bad to say about this man. He was a war hero. A national patriot. He is beloved by children all over the world. Even Queen Elizabeth considered him one of the most influential people in British culture. Oh, but he was an anti-Semite, so there is that. Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/writer/roald-dahl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl https://www.famousauthors.org/roald-dahl https://www.notablebiographies.com/Co-Da/Dahl-Roald.html#:~:text=Roald%20Dahl%20was%20born%20September,himself%20skilled%20at%20finding%20trouble. https://www.roalddahlfans.com/about-dahl/dahl-biography/ https://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/kids-club/entertainment/books/roald-dahl-facts/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/roald-dahl-words_n_57d74c2de4b09d7a687f6b35?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANNqHUXwNhr2kYfOLAqioxTzln2hiR0gtJSVg8E4wN2pWc677atsmGGp1F8J7guUwxDTauiMAjzHnlH4LXX7bxhUvNaQ8cyS9rsGGMx1E3HNBukSFzUiJ4glE6iFdWmjl9ihTwuf3NTLV9tT-BCrbTFg7QHYxY_l3b01AEYw6XNG https://qz.com/779365/six-of-roald-dahls-made-up-words-have-been-added-to-the-oxford-english-dictionary-to-celebrate-his-centenary/


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