Famous Boners

Here's an amusing episode of John Nesbitt's THE PASSING PARADE series for MGM, in which he speaks about famous examples of errors throughout history, from Sir Isaac Newton boiling his pocket-watch instead of an egg, to German spies who, intending to blow up the Erie Canal failing because of a missing "S".

John Nesbitt was a grandson of Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth. He went to work as a broadcaster for NBC in 1933, and began his "Passing Parade" segments for the network in 1937, and it ran as part of various shows for the next dozen years. Eventually, MGM picked up the series as an occasional short subject, produced and narrated by Nesbitt. By 1949, Nesbitt had produced about sixty shorts. He died in 1960, two weeks short of his half-century mark.