The Song of Werhner Von Braun

[ParkCungHee]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
Enjoy, I know I did.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

That was awesome. "I'm learning Chinese."

 

[Thorbal]

good one!

 

[nonconformist]

This is petty funny, I can't stop listening to it.

What's incredible is that Tom Lehrer had enough foresight in the 50s to predict China's massive growth and eventual space aambitions.

 

[Illustrious]

What's incredible is that Tom Lehrer had enough foresight in the 50s to predict China's massive growth and eventual space aambitions.

Not really. The song was written in 1965 for the TV show "That Was The Week That Was" (a short-lived US version of the classic UK hit series).

A couple of weeks earlier, Lehrer had produced a song ("Who's Next?") about nuclear proliferation, following on from news of a Chinese nuclear test - or, as Lehrer put it:

"One of the big news items of the past year concerned the fact that China, which we called "Red China," exploded a nuclear bomb, which we called a "device". Then Indonesia announced that it was going to have one soon, and proliferation became the word of the day".

So the reference to China as a possible next step on Werner von Braun's grand tour of the world was simply highly topical, as opposed to prophetic...