HOTEL AQUARIUM SHATTERS; FISH ALL OVER THE LOBBY

A 50-foot-high aquarium burst in a Raddison hotel in downtown Berlin on Friday morning, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater and 1,500 tropical fish through the lobby and onto the street. The tank, in the center of the hotel’s atrium, had a diameter of 38 feet and was wrapped around a glass elevator that allowed visitors to view the sea life inside.The force of the water pushed mangled debris – from twisted lamps to bellhop trolleys – onto the street in front of the hotel. Some guests of the hotel described a street covered with dying fish, some of which appeared to have frozen to death by the frigid morning temperatures of 19 degrees Fahrenheit. The cylindrical tank was built in the hotel in 2003 and held 264,000 gallons of water.
* What it didn’t have was a lot of nice reinforcing steel.
* The sign clearly states, “Don’t tap on the glass.”
* Those fish should have worked a little bit harder on Step 2 of their escape plan.
* The Berlin Raddison: Now with free ice skating.
* Guess what’s on special at the hotel restaurant?
* I bet next time they go with lizards in a terrarium.
* PHONE TOPIC
“Exploding fish tank” has earned its place as a trope in movies and on TV. How many examples can your listeners name? We found this list on the internet, some of which we’ve never heard of:
1. “A Better Tomorrow”: In the sequel, “A Better Tomorrow 2,” at the start of the final shootout, a grenade flung by Ho blows up a tank full of goldfish.
2. Subverted in “Aquaman” (2018): On a field trip to an aquarium, two of Arthur’s classmates start picking on him. The fish and other sea-animals in the giant tank behind Arthur react – including a great white shark that starts ramming the tank wall to frighten the bullies. The tank cracks, but Arthur uses his telepathy to stop the shark before it can deliver the final blow.
3. “The Blood Rules”: The shootout halfway in the film takes place in the hideout of Mike and his gang, which is disguised as a shop selling aquarium supplies, complete with several glass tanks of goldfishes. Needless to say, a few of these gets shot to bits as Mike and his crew exchanges crossfire with the invading SWAT officers.
4. The destruction of a very large (and thus very expensive) aquarium is the driving force behind the plot of “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” a rare comedy example.
5. Inverted in Doctor Strange (2016): while Strange’s time-reversal spell is cleaning up the damage done by Kaecilius and his Zealots in Hong Kong, one of the Zealots gets caught in a flood of water that is going back where it came from. “Where it came from” is a huge fish tank in the window of an aquarium store. The water pours back into the tank as the tank itself reassembles, trapping the Zealot inside.
6. James Bond #1: In “Octopussy,” the titular character is shown feeding her poisonous blue-ring octopus early in the film. Later, the aquarium is destroyed when James Bond rams an assassin’s head into it (and said assassin ends up with the octopus wrapped around his face).
James Bond #2″: Done in “Licence to Kill” in a scene appropriated from the novel “Live and Let Die” which was too cool to not be filmed.
7. “Lethal Weapon 2”: Martin Riggs intentionally shoots the aquarium in the office of Arjen Rudd, Minister of Diplomatic Affairs for the South African Consulate.
8. “Mission: Impossible”: Ethan Hunt blows up the floor-to-ceiling aquariums in a restaurant as cover for his escape.
9. “Pokémon Detective Pikachu”: Features an underground fighting ring with a Magikarp in a fish tank at one point. It gets shattered when a pair of Loudred end up inhaling some R and start spewing out incredibly loud dubstep.
10. In “Push,” the Pop Family’s first encounter with Nick and Cassie. The Bleeders’ screams first make the fish inside the tanks burst, and then the tanks themselves explode.
11. “Rush Hour 2.”
12. “Police Story 4: First Strike.”
13. In the 2008 “Speed Racer” movie, the mob boss’s piranha tank gets a single bullet hole, forcing one of the mobster underlings to sacrifice a finger to plug the hole.
14. Several shots are enough to crack an aquarium at a zoo in “Eraser,” which then explodes, covering the bad guys with water… and alligators.
15. In the original “Total Recall” (1990), diabolical mastermind Vilos Cohaagen has an aquarium in his office. After he is forced to give the order to kill his brainwashed undercover best friend, he angrily kicks over the the aquarium.
16: In “X-Men: Apocalypse,” when the X-Mansion blows up, inevitably a fish tank in the library gets shattered as well, but thanks to Quicksilver currently using his superspeed to evacuate the mansion, he even took the effort to save all the fishes by using a glass bowl to scoop them up and place them in a random student’s hand.