
Facts About 'The Voyage of the Mimi' - curtis
http://mentalfloss.com/article/59121/30-fun-facts-about-voyage-mimi
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kough
Damn fascinating -- this finally solves a mystery I've grappled with since
elementary school. My 4th grade year (in the mid-early 2000s) was themed
heavily around... whales. We watched the first season of "The Voyage of the
Mimi" over the course of the year and learned all other sorts of whale facts.
This was in a public school outside of Philadelphia; I had just transferred
from a private Quaker school and was thoroughly confused. Somewhat by the
whole public school experience, but mostly by the focus on whales. By the time
we were watching it the curriculum had lost all focus on math, science, or
computers; the original software materials were probably totally out of date
at that point, so it makes sense.

Thanks for posting this @curtis; I had no idea that it was funded by the
Department of Education.

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mgr86
If you had said your sixth grade year I would have sworn we went to the same
district. I grew up not far from Quakertown, pa and we had a rather rambling
unit on whales where we would watch the Voyage of the Mimi. I say rambling,
because our regular teacher was in and out that year with an illness. The long
term sub would have us watch Voyage of the Mimi at what felt like irregular
intervals.

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curtis
Yeah, it's Mental Floss, but I still found this write-up pretty interesting,
even though I never saw The Voyage of the Mimi myself.

 _Thirty years ago this month, The Voyage of the Mimi debuted on PBS. The
groundbreaking educational science series, part of the curriculum of many
elementary and high school students (including this writer!), captivated kids
throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, spawned a sequel, and kicked off Ben Affleck’s
career. Here are 30 things you might not have known about the show._

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dalke
I did see _The Voyage of the Mimi_ , and enjoyed it very much as a kid. I
watched some of the clips now, and it is still very good.

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curtis
I particularly liked the story (#13) about the "difficult" scene where they
needed to film a scientist tagging a whale with a transmitter. The weather was
good and the whales showed up right on time, and the _real_ scientist
(standing in for the fake scientist played by an actor) made a great shot with
a crossbow to tag one of the whales. The whole scene only took a couple of
hours to shoot.

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thenipper
My buddy's granddad was Pete Marston sr. We always joke that means Ben Alleck
got his start pretending to be him.

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Philadelphia
Great, now I'm going to have the theme music stuck in my head for the rest of
the day.

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dano
Heh, yeah, Ben Affleck as a kid on an adventure.

