This spring’s Ig Nobel Euro (and Brexitannia) Tour ended much sooner than planned.
Because of travel precautions and prohibitions related to the corona virus, we and our host institutions, in the many European and Brexitannian countries, cancelled the Ig Nobel events. (Most of those institutions are also canceling most or all of their other public events.)
We did do one show — last night at the University of Manchester. The performers and the audience, together, created an almost-magical night. As it turns out, that was the entire tour. The Manchester event was livestreamed. Here’s recorded video of the entire event:
The tour was going to be seven weeks long, about the same length as in most years. A large number of people, in many places, put in much thought, time, and work to prepare the events. Thank you to each of those many people! And thank you to everyone who was planning to come participate in whatever ways (as performers, as spectators, as paper airplane enthusiasts, etc.) in the shows. Very sorry that mother nature was uncooperative this year.
Here’s hoping that each and every one of those postponed events happens, some time in the not too-far-off future.
Volcanic, kinda sorta
Ten years ago, part of the Ig Nobel EuroTour ran into unexpected complications when a volcano in Iceland erupted and (among its other effects) led to the shutdown of just about all air traffic in Europe. We are now guessing that every ten years the tour will be a little more interesting—logistically—than in the intervening years.
Here’s a video look back ten years, to the UK part of that 2010 Ig Nobel tour. This particular moment was at Oxford University. Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr. Elena Bodnar demonstrates her invention—the emergency bra—on a volunteer (Alasdair Kergon):