In the movies all shotguns make a distinctive *cha-chunk* noise. Sometimes you’ll hear this noise from off-screen and the camera pans to show us a man holding a double-barrel shotgun. Also, in movies all pump-action shotguns must be pumped at every opportunity, because it sounds all cool and stuff. FYI, pumping the action on a shotgun ejects the shell in the chamber. If you fire, then pump the action twice more, you will eject the spent shell and a perfectly good unfired shell.
Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes
In movies guns can “go off” by accident if dropped or bumped. While it is theoretically possible for this to happen, in real life the chances are somewhere between “slim” and “none”. In fairness to Hollywood, this once was very true. Many older guns are notoriously un-drop-safe. In fact the famous British Sten submachine gun was so prone to discharging when dropped that it could be used as an improvised grenade. Toss it through the window of a German pillbox and when it hit the ground it would empty its entire magazine and take out everyone inside. But modern gun manufacturers take great pains to avoid building a gun that can ever “go off” by accident and will voluntarily recall any model found to have that flaw.
In movies, jammed is broken. If your gun jams it becomes useless and you must throw it away. In reality 99% of jams can be cleared in about 1-2 seconds with minimal effort. In Jurassic Park when the raptors attack Dr. Grant and the kids in the computer lab, Dr. Grant’s shotgun jams offscreen and he drops it when they flee. But in the scene you can clearly see it’s a simple stovepipe jam (a spent shell sticking out of the ejection port) which he could have cleared easily by simply plucking it out. He threw away a perfectly good shotgun.
Being shot in the movies can blast someone right off their feet, or even across the room. In real life a gun powerful enough to do that would either blast itself right out of your hands or blast you back with roughly the same amount of force. (Ironically Hollywood used to get this one right. In old black-and-white Westerns when someone got shot they would just crumple to the ground. Apparently something went awry in the intervening years.)
Being shot in the movies kills or at least drops you instantly. There are many examples throughout history of men being shot many times in the chest and barely breaking stride. In movies the only people who get to do that are main characters. On the other hand…
In movies, being shot in the arm, shoulder, or leg is deemed “a flesh wound”. While this may slow the hero down, it will never kill him. He will not be shown growing weaker and weaker from blood loss, nor will the injury have any lasting effects. The hero may be shown wearing his arm in a sling for a while but once the hole closes up the arm is good as new.
Guns aren’t nearly as loud in movies as they are in real life. Characters can even have indoor gun fights with no difficulty. In reality guns are very loud and shooting indoors without ear protection would hurt your ears a lot. Hearing loss is not uncommon among soldiers and police officers. And when was the last time you heard a character in an action movie complain about tinnitus?
In movies, guns can be rendered almost perfectly silent with the use of a magical device called a “silencer”.
In movies, caliber is power. No exceptions. The larger the caliber the more powerful the gun is. In reality, many other factors also play into the “power” of a gun (which is a bit of a nebulous term anyway). Would it surprise you to learn that this actually fires a smaller caliber bullet (.357) than this (.41)?
In movies, characters “dual-wield” pistols. No. This is stupid. You would never do this with any modern pistol. In fact you probably wouldn’t do it with any pistol from any era. There is no advantage to doing this. Gunfighters in the Old West and in the era of black powder sometimes carried more than one pistol at a time, but this was just so they could quickly swap to the second gun after emptying the first one (the so-called “New York reload” technique).
In historical movies, keeping your powder dry is not a concern for black powder weapons (looking at you Pirates of the Caribbean).
Gangsta”-style. AKA “holding your gun sideways like a idiot
Gangsters holding guns sideways is a trend set in movies
Cannonballs in movies never bounce, even though historically this was a major strength of cannon warfare. Unlike arrows or catapults, if you undershot your target with a cannon the ball was likely to bounce right into the enemy lines. Hollywood seems to have gotten cannonballs mixed up with exploding mortar shells (also, they seem to think mortars didn’t exist before the 20th century). One of the few things The Patriot got right was when it showed a cannonball skip off the ground and take off some poor schmuck’s head.
In Western movies movies if two veteran gunslingers notice each other they have to declare “this town ain’t big enuff fer the two ‘o us” and square off for a duel. In reality most veteran gunslingers seemed to believe that every town was “big enuff fer the two ‘o us”, and they would prove the town was big enough by staying the Hell away from each other. Probably because they were afraid some moon-brained city slicker would try to goad them into fighting. Which brings me to my next point…
In the movies, “dueling” with pistols is a thing that happens all the time, especially in the Old West, and it’s something that everyone does. If anyone so much as made fun of your hat the two of you had to meet in the street at High Noon, stand 10-20 paces apart, and then…draw! *bang-bang-thud* No. That’s stupid. While some “quickdraw” duels are recorded in history, they are extremely rare. Dueling was not something that every common gunfighter was eager to do for the very obvious reason that they might get killed. Even many upper class men despised dueling and refused to engage in it themselves. George Washington famously forbade his officers from dueling because he didn’t want them to die.
Gun-twirling. This did not happen. Well okay, it might have happened…in the circus. Today there are some entertainers who specialize in artistic gun-twirling routines so there might have been a few back in the Old West, but these guns are NOT loaded and they are usually rendered inoperative as well just to be sure. Twirling a loaded gun is probably the stupidest and most unsafe thing you could possibly do outside of playing chicken with a train or having a staring contest with the sun.
There have cropped many theories on how Titanic sank, but the real key lies with those drowned with it. However, one of such many theories involves one of the few crew members who managed to survive the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disaster. Fred Fleet was in charge of looking for the icebergs. However, he didn’t have access to the binoculars, as they were locked up and the key didn’t make the journey. Fleet even testified to the senate that if he had the access, he could have seen the impending disaster well in advance to prevent it.
Catastrophically for the Titanic and the 1,522 lives lost
Before the ship set sail, the company made a sudden decision of replacing the second officer of the ship David Blair, with Charles Lightoller. And the key to the locker stayed in the pocket of Blair, who had forgotten to hand it over, as the ship got going.
Without access to the glasses, the lookouts in the crow’s nest were forced to rely on their eyes and only saw the iceberg when it was too late to take action.
The Beatles Manager Brian Epstein made numerous trips to London to visit record companies with the hope of securing a record contract but was rejected by many.
On 1 January 1962, before they reached international stardom, the Beatles auditioned for Decca Records at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, north London. In what is considered one of the biggest mistakes in music industry history, Decca rejected the band, selecting instead Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. After being available only on “bootleg” recordings, some of the songs recorded for the audition were officially released on the Beatles rarities compilation Anthology 1 in 1995.
The Beatles’ audition tape that was rejected
The original safety master tape the group recorded at Decca’s London studios was sold by auctioneers the Fame Bureau in December 2012 to a Japanese collector for £35,000. A spokesman for the auctioneers said at the time “The tape went to a Capitol Records executive after the Beatles signed with EMI. He sold it to the current owner who was one of the top buyers for Hard Rock Cafe but it was for his own personal collection.” The authenticity of the tape sold remains debatable among experts, however, as the tape of the audition contains 15 songs. The tape auctioned has only 10 songs and is on Ampex tape which was not in use in 1962. The master tape is believed to be in possession of the Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd.
The order of the songs at the session was:
“Like Dreamers Do” (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
“Money (That’s What I Want)” (Gordy/Bradford) (unreleased version)
“Till There Was You” (Meredith Willson) (unreleased version)
“The Sheik of Araby” (Smith/Wheeler/Snyder)
“To Know Her Is to Love Her” (Phil Spector) (unreleased version)
“Take Good Care of My Baby” (King/Goffin) (unreleased)
“Memphis, Tennessee” (Chuck Berry) (unreleased version)
“Sure to Fall (In Love with You)” (Cantrell/Claunch/Perkins) (unreleased version)
“Hello Little Girl” (Lennon/McCartney)
“Three Cool Cats” (Leiber/Stoller)
“Crying, Waiting, Hoping” (Buddy Holly) (unreleased version)
“Love of the Loved” (Lennon/McCartney) (unreleased)
“September in the Rain” (Warren/Dubin) (unreleased)
“Bésame Mucho” (Consuelo Velázquez) (unreleased version)
“Searchin'” (Leiber/Stoller)
