The Agony of Defeat

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dorando_Pietri.jpg

Italian marathoner Dorando Pietri was exhausted and dehydrated as he neared the finish line in the 1908 Olympic Games, and when he entered the stadium he took a wrong turn and collapsed. The umpires helped him up, but he stumbled further and collapsed again. 75,000 agonized spectators watched him fall three more times before he found the finish line; of his total time of 2:54:46, he spent fully 10 minutes on the last 350 meters.

Unbelievably, they disqualified him. The American team complained that he’d received help from the umpires, and he was removed from the final standings. But Queen Alexandra gave him a silver cup, at the suggestion of Arthur Conan Doyle, and Irving Berlin wrote a song for him. He died in 1942 at age 56.

| Entertainment · Society

“The Waco Horror”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lynching-of-jesse-washington.jpg

Between 1882 and 1930, Texans committed 492 lynchings. By most accounts, the most horrible of these was the 1916 slaying of Jesse Washington, a Waco farmhand who had confessed to the rape and murder of a white farmer’s wife.

A jury of 12 whites deliberated for four minutes before declaring Washington guilty. They called for the death penalty, but before authorities could act, he was dragged from the courtroom, doused with coal oil, and suspended alive over a bonfire. A witness wrote:

Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks … was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire. … Wailing, the boy attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this, the men cut off his fingers.

Washington’s corpse was put in a cloth bag and dragged behind a car to Robinson, where it was hung from a pole. Northern newspapers condemned the lynching, but Texas was largely unrepentant. The image above is taken from a postcard (!); on the back someone has written, “This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

| Death · History · Society

“Manufacturing Feat”

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/555019

In 1811 a gentleman made a bet of one thousand guineas that he would have a coat made in a single day, from the first process of shearing the sheep till its completion by the tailor. The wager was decided at Newbury, England, on the 25th of June in that year, by Mr. John Coxeter, of Greenham mills, near that town. At five o’clock that morning Sir John Throckmorton presented two Southdown sheep to Mr. Coxeter, and the sheep were shorn, the wool spun, the yarn spooled, warped, loomed and wove, the cloth burred, milled, rowed, dried, sheared and pressed, and put into the hands of the tailors by four o’clock that afternoon. At twenty minutes past six the coat, entirely finished, was handed by Mr. Coxeter to Sir John Throckmorton, who appeared with it before more than five thousand spectators, who rent the air with acclamations at this remarkable instance of despatch.

— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882

| Oddities · Technology

Unquote

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/190520

“Good enough for our transatlantic friends … but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.” — British Parliamentary Committee, on Edison’s light bulb, 1878

| Technology

Well Prepared

Eagle Scouts:

  • Neil Armstrong
  • Stephen Breyer
  • Clive Cussler
  • Gerald Ford
  • L. Ron Hubbard
  • David Lynch
  • Michael Moore
  • Steven Spielberg
  • Wallace Stegner
  • John Tesh
  • Sam Walton
  • E.O. Wilson

“Regarding the Boy Scouts,” said George Carlin, “I’m very suspicious of any organization that has a handbook.”

| Trivia

Pelorus Jack

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pelorus_Jack.jpg

In 1888 a curious white dolphin appeared in the strait between New Zealand’s north and south islands. “Pelorus Jack” would guide steamers through the dangerous French Pass, known for its rocks and strong currents, swimming alongside each ship for up to 20 minutes.

No one knows where Jack came from or what led him to do this. He appears to have been a Risso’s Dolphin, Grampus griseus, uncommon in those waters, but he led ships through the strait for 24 years, and not a single shipwreck occurred in that time. He disappeared in 1912, as mysteriously as he’d come.

See also Everybody Wins.

| Oddities