TODAY IN HISTORY - April 18: Town lifts its 80-year ban on dancing, inspiring hit movie
The town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, lifted its 80-year ban on dancing on April 18, 1980.
Since the town was founded, locals had viewed dancing as Satanic and had outright forbidden it.
But high school students began lobbying to have a school dance the previous year.
The town mayor relented, allowing the students to have dancing at their prom.
The decision was made despite the overwhelming opposition of people in the town of several hundred.
The dance made national news, drawing the attention of screenwriter Dean Pitchford.
Pitchford was inspired to pen the movie Footloose, about a fictional town with similar rules.
The film was a massive hit when released four years later.
The Royal Navy used 6700 tonnes of leftover ammunition from World War II to stage the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time on April 18, 1947.
Operation Big Bang was intended to remove the German island of Heligoland as a military threat.
The explosion was intended to destroy all the bunkers and military installations on the island.
But it was feared the explosives would destroy the entire island.
Fortunately most of the island survived, though every building but a lighthouse was destroyed.
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