If You're Listening Skunk oil and the butcher girl
Jun 9, 2025
Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, supervising producer and article swapper with Matt Bevan from Modern Weekly News Magazine, dives into a trove of oddities from 1940s Australia. They discuss an 18-year-old girl running her father's butcher shop and connect it to fluoride research. The laughter continues with tales of a poultry farmer giving metal glasses to chickens and a crocodile hatching in a lawyer's office. They also reminisce about the decline of the skunk oil industry and the whimsical smuggling of Australian bees to Russia. It's a delightful blend of history and absurdity!
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Quirky 1940s Regional Stories
- The 1940s Modern Weekly News Magazine featured quirky regional stories like Barbara Robinson running a butcher shop at 18 years old.
- This unusual focus made the magazine a source of delight for its editors and readers alike.
Chickens Wearing Spectacles
- An article described a poultry breeder fitting chickens with American-imported metal spectacles to calm aggressive fowls.
- This strange innovation claimed to bring peace to the chicken yard, highlighting curious farming practices of the era.
Man Dives for Lost Denture
- A New Yorker dove into the Hudson River to rescue his lost upper denture but lost other items in the process.
- This dramatic and humorous story captured the risks people took to retrieve essential prosthetics.