Martin Fone's Blog, page 231
April 15, 2019
Double Your Money – Part Forty
Titanic Thompson (1893 – 1974)
Titanic Thompson, born Alvin Clarence Thomas, was a larger than life figure, born to gamble, the more unlikely and remarkable the wager the better, so much so that separating the apocryphal from the kosher in his long and inglorious career takes some doing. Take his nickname, Titanic. It wasn’t because he escaped Davy Jones’ locker whilst a passenger on the ill-fated liner by dressing as a woman, as some sources suggest. No, it relates to the reaction to another of his outlandish bets.
After a hard day’s work hustling in a pool hall called Snow Clarks in Joplin, Missouri in 1912, he noticed a sign offering “$200 to any man who jumps over my new pool table.” This was a challenge Thompson could not refuse, even though the table was nine feet long, 30 inches off the floor and 4.5 feet wide. No one believed he could do it and so he had many willing takers for the best. Thompson left the room and came back ten minutes later dragging an old mattress which he put on the other side of the table, where he was to land.
Thompson performed a prodigious leap head first, doing a flip, clearing the table and landing on his back on the mattress. As he was collecting his winnings, someone asked the proprietor his name. “I don’t rightly know, but it ought to be Titanic”, the hall owner said, “He sinks everybody.” The name stuck and Titanic set out on a peripatetic gambling career, targeting the rich, famous and anyone brave or foolish enough to take him on at golf, dice, pool, poker, coin-flipping or to accept his outlandish challenges.
Titanic was ambidextrous when it came to playing golf, although he was naturally left-handed. He challenged an amateur, who regularly carded a gross score of 90, to a game. Playing right-handed he lost a close game. Inevitably, Titanic challenged the amateur to a double or quits game and to make it easier for the amateur Titanic would play left-handed. Of course, he won with a score of 80.
Thompson once bet that he could drive a golf ball over 500 yards at a time when even the best golfers could only achieve around 300 yards. There were a lot of takers for this wager. Allowed to select his golf course, Titanic chose a tee on a hill overlooking a lake at Long Island. The lake was frozen. He struck the ball towards the lake, where it landed and slid and skidded for at least the requisite distance.
You had to read the small print when you struck a bet with Titanic. Irritated by a particularly obnoxious boxer, he bet the champion $1,000 that he could not knock him out while they both stood on the same piece of newspaper. This seemed too good to be true and the boxer accepted the challenge. Thompson laid a copy of the Spring Valley Herald across the threshold of the door, shut the door with him on one side and the increasingly frustrated boxer on the other.
Titanic was also known to play fast and loose with the rules. Horseshoe throwing was a popular sport at the time and the standard distance between the point where the thrower stood and the ring was forty feet. A champion pitcher, Frank Jackson, had issued an open challenge to all-comers with a prize of $10,000. Thompson challenged him and Jackson was astonished to find that his usually unerring throws were falling a foot short. Naturally, Thompson had set the ring forty-one feet away from the line.
A similar trick was played with sign posts. Returning to from a fishing trip to Joplin with a couple of inveterate gamblers, they noticed some workmen erecting a sign saying it was 20 miles away. The next time the trio passed the sign, Titanic wagered the pair that it was only 15 miles away. The bet was accepted, the odometer was studied, and, lo and behold, the distance was 15 miles. Thompson scooped the pot. Of course, he had had the sign moved!
He liked to throw a piece of fruit over a building. After the bet was struck an adjacent fruit seller would pass a weighted piece of fruit to Titanic and the feat was accomplished. He even hooked in Al Capone. Scarface wanted to investigate the lemon before it was thrown and only sleight of hand enabled Titanic to show him a real lemon before throwing the doctored fruit.
Damon Runyon, a writer, wanted to write a story about Thompson’s exploits but was rebuffed on the basis that Titanic’s occupation wasn’t conducive to publicity. In retaliation Runyon based Sky Masterton in a story that later became Guys and Dolls on him.
But there was a seamier side to Titanic. During his career he killed five men, four of whom were in self-defence. He is a subject I shall return tom no doubt.
If you enjoyed this, why not try out Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
April 14, 2019
Names Of The Week (4)
At the best of times, voting can be a bit confusing. Who do you vote for, what are you voting for, are you convinced they are even vaguely competent?
As Churchill once said, “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” Perhaps we should take to heart Mark Twain’s aphorism; “if voting made any difference they wouldn’t let you do it.”
Here in Britain we’ve made a pretty poor fist of matters psephological in recent times, so imagine what we would do if we had the dilemma that the voters in the district of Kensington-Malpeque on Prince Edward Island in Canada face on April 23rd.
The incumbent is a 37-year-old estate agent called Matthew Mackay. One of his challengers is a 64-year-old graphic artist called – you guessed it, Matthew Mackay.
Perhaps it is a legacy of the Scottish settlers who colonised the island off the east coast of Canada or the fact that the people there are not very imaginative when it comes down to names, either way it is a tad confusing. The elder candidate has sportingly offered to use his middle initial, J, to minimise the confusion and with an electorate of just 4,000 in a close-knit community, it may not matter too much.
That is, until the result is in, as we know to our cost.
April 13, 2019
Frustration Of The Week
It never ceases to amaze me what people will get up to in order to secure a place, if only for a while, in the Guinness World Record book.
Sometimes it doesn’t always go to plan. Take poor old Carlos Silver, a singer from the Dominican Republic.
He was attempting to smash Sunil Waghmore’s record, set in the Indian city of Nagpur in March 2012, of singing non-stop for 105 hours. All seemed to be going well for Carlos when he broke the 106 hour barrier.
Unfortunately, in order for a record to stand it has to be verified by officials from Guinness. Carlos’ problems started when they were shown a video of his performance and noted that he was taking breaks of up to two minutes between a song. The rules are very clear on that point; the singer can only take a break of up to 30 seconds. The hard-hearted men from Guinness had no option but to disqualify Carlos, the second time he has failed to secure the record.
Never mind, I’m sure he consoled himself by humming “Always look on the bright side of life”.
April 12, 2019
What Is The Origin Of (226)?…
Skinflint
There’s one thing being careful with your money but being excessively parsimonious for the sake of it is another. We have all met them and when we become exasperated with their meanness, we call them a skinflint.
The term has a long pedigree and probably originates from the argot of thieves, developed to prevent or at least frustrate those who wanted to listen into their conversations. It is defined, helpfully for us, in that wonderful testament to the secret expressions of England’s demi-monde, A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, compiled by the almost anonymous B.E in 1699, although he did own up to being a gentleman. Skin-flint, he wrote, is “a griping, sharping, close-fisted Fellow.”
The idea is simple enough and takes the form of an exaggerated image of parsimony. Someone is so tight that he would even try to remove the used layer of a flint stone so that he could use it anew. The use of skinning a flint as a metaphor was certainly in currency in the 17th century and not just among the lower orders of society. A Welsh clergyman, David Lloyd, wrote a satirical poem about the exploits of Captain John Smith – we met him last week when we were trying to get a word in edgeways – in 1631; “this were but petty hardship. Jones was one/ would Skinne a Flint, and eat him when h’had done.”
Flints were used as a means of getting a spark to fire the gunpowder in an old rifle. After a number of firings, the flint would wear out. The majority of riflemen would simply replace the flint but some in a display of parsimony under duress would simply get out their knife and sharpen their flint once more. This practice has led at least one etymologist to surmise that it is the origin of our term. I suspect, though, it is merely a prosaic example of the behaviour of a skinflint rather than the origin of the term, not least because its usage in relation to this practice cannot be attested or dated.
The French had a wonderful, and slightly earlier, phrase for describing an act of meanness, tondre sur un oeuf, which became slightly abbreviated to tondre un oeuf. The, presumably, metaphorical practice of shaving an egg was brought to the attention of the English by Randle Cotgrave in his 1611 Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. There he gave one of the definitions of the phrase as “to make a commoditie of any thing, how bare souer it be.” Perhaps the English just replaced an egg with a flint.
The concept of what to most people would seem a futile exercise as a metaphor for meanness took hold and generated a few, even more picturesque variants. The English author, John Davis, wrote about his adventures in the United States at the turn of the 19th century in Travels of four years and a half in the United States of America, published in 1803. He clearly wasn’t impressed, particularly when he encountered a mean lot in New Jersey; “you New Jersey Men are close shavers; I believe you would skin a louse.”
A variant was to skin a flea which cropped up in William Faux’s Memorable days in America, published in 1823; “Coals are few and our captain stingy, being one of those Yankees (says our first mate) who, in the Southern States, are said to skin a flea for the sake of its hide or tallow.” This phrase cropped up again in The Weekly Courier and Journal of Natchez in Mississippi in August 1840; “is mean enough to steal chickens from a hospital or skin a flea for its tallow.”
Alas, these phrases seem to have dropped out of use but they have encouraged me, at least, to be more imaginative in the terms I use to describe the next skinflint I encounter.
April 11, 2019
Motivated By Curiosity And A Desire For The Truth – Part Thirty Five
Why are most display watches set to ten past 10?
I have been thinking about buying a new watch over the last few weeks. With the ubiquity of mobile devices such as smart phones, there is something anachronistic about feeling you need something on your wrist for you to consult if you need to know what time it is. At my time of life, I hardly need the chronological precision that a decent watch gives me to regulate my activities. Sometimes I barely know what day it is.
But old habits die hard. For over half a century I have had a timepiece strapped to my left wrist and on the occasions I have not worn one, either because I have forgotten to put it on or it has broken, I somehow feel under-dressed. It is a kind of comfort blanket and wear one I will continue to do.
What struck me as I browsed at jewellers’ window displays and catalogues was that invariably those watches which had a conventional face as opposed to those digital abominations were invariably photographed as showing the time as ten past 10 or, for those manufacturers showing a rebellious streak, ten to 2. Why was that, I wondered?
It has not always been thus. Back in the 1920s and 30s watches were invariably set to 8:20. The Hamilton Watch Company bucked the trend in 1926 when their watches in advertisements showed the time as 10:10. Rolex followed suit in the 1940s and Timex, with their Marlin model in 1953, began to move their advertisements to the now accepted default time. Other manufacturers bowed to peer pressure and by the 1960s ten past 10 it was.
The reasons for the transition are quite easy to understand and it is all about presenting the watch to its best advantage. The hands are symmetrical, a look most people find more appealing than an asymmetrical one, and the two hands, as well as not overlapping so that they can be admired, allow the manufacturer’s logo, usually placed immediately below the figure of 12, to be seen clearly. The lower part of the face, where other features of the watch such as the date and day of the week are displayed, is unobstructed. The clincher is that the V-shape that the hands make represent a smile, a happy face, whereas the inverted V of 8:20 looks like a frown. And we all respond positively to a smile, don’t we?
Marketeers have long been associated with the dark arts, so is there a deeper, psychological reason behind the portrayal of watches? To answer this question we need to look at some research conducted by Ahmed Karim, Britta Lutzenkirchen, Eman Khedr, and Radwa Khalil, reported in the August 2017 edition of Frontiers in Psychology.
The first of their experiments involved showing a group of people pictures of twenty watches, with their faces set at one of the following settings, 10:10 (the happy face), 8:20 (the sad face) and 11:30, the latter selected because it was neutral and had no associations with human physiognomy. In what the uncharitable may view as a scientific demonstration of the bloomin’ obvious, the results showed that the happy face setting elicited greater feelings of pleasure amongst the viewers than the other two settings.
Perhaps of greater interest was the finding that the sad face setting did not affect feelings one way or the other. For those keen to understand the differences between the sexes, the research showed that the female participants registered stronger expressions of pleasure from the 10:10 setting than did their male counterparts. The researchers thought that this was in line with earlier studies in which women were shown to be better at recognising facial expressions and empathising with them than men.
Showing the watch faces alongside pictograms of happy and sad faces confirmed the assumption that the upturned V-shape was associated with a smile and the inverted V with a frown. However, the good vibes generated by the cheerful 10:10 setting were not strong enough to convince the participants to buy, although the inclination to buy was stronger than that generated by the other settings.
I think the case for any deeper psychological significance in the face display is unproven. In any event, if you are presented with a page of smiling watch faces on a page, the good feelings engendered by one are neutralised by the same feelings that come from the others, forcing you to make your selection based on other criteria.
So, the answer is simply a case of aesthetics, one that has clearly stood the test of time.
If you enjoyed this, check out Fifty Curious Questions by Martin Fone
April 10, 2019
Book Corner – April 2019 (2)
Friends and Heroes – Olivia Manning
The opening of Friends and Heroes, published in 1965, the final book of Manning’s Balkan Trilogy, finds Harriet Pringle safely in Athens, waiting for her husband, Guy, to join her from Bucharest, which has now been occupied by the Nazis. As Athens is the acknowledged escape route for the ex-pats who frequented the Romanian capital, inevitably many of the characters we came across in the first two books reappear.
It is the comical rogue, Prince Yakimov, who first gives Harriet the news that Guy has arrived safely in Greece. Harriet warms to Yakimov, whom in the earlier books she had treated with disdain, and he grows into something of a confidant. Greece soon comes under attack from the Italians and by the end of the book the Pringles are on the run again, last seen on a boat entering Egyptian waters.
But the war is just a rumble in the background of this story. It is a device to allow characters, many of whom we have met before, appear and disappear as quickly from the story without too much explanation. There is, of course, the diurnal concern of whether they are safe from invasion or incarceration and how they might effect their escape when necessary but it is mood music rather than the heart of the book.
What the book does do is continue the exploration of the state of the Pringles’ marriage. If it wasn’t apparent before, in Athens Harriet realises that Guy is naïve and generous to a fault. His generosity to others is exploited without him receiving anything in return. Cases in point are Toby Lush and Dubedat. Guy had bent over backwards to find the duo employment in the university in Bucharest. They scarpered when the going got tough but when Guy caught up with them in Athens, they did everything they could to thwart his desire to find employment teaching at the British School.
Harriet, less educated than Guy but more worldly-wise, gets frustrated with her husband’s inability to come to terms with the reality of their situation and how his so-called friends are using him. What adds to her frustration is Guy’s inability or unwillingness to see her as a separate individual. Rather Guy sees Harriet as just an extension of his own persona.
Inevitably, these tensions lead to Harriet becoming disillusioned with her marriage and left alone for more time than she deems reasonable, her fancies start to roam. A handsome officer, temporarily stationed in Athens, Charles Warden, takes her fancy. They start a tentative on-off affair, Harriet battling against her innate sense of convention and her loyalty to Guy. Charles and she almost consummate their fling but it is interrupted by the chance arrival of another character from her past who, true to form, throws the Pringle’s erstwhile kindness and hospitality in their face.
Rather echoing Saki’s demise, Yakimov is killed towards the end of the book, a sad loss as he was the one character of truly comic genius in the book.
I enjoyed this book more than the other two, perhaps because I was more familiar with the characters and because there is more action. But, nonetheless, what we have is a collection of English eccentrics, acting as English eccentrics would do. The war and the particular circumstances of war-torn Romania and Greece are just the backdrop to allow Manning to create vignettes of humour, drama and despair. For that reason, I do not see the trilogy as a great piece of literature but Manning did have the luck, if that is what it was, of experiencing and being able to write about the war in a theatre that has rarely been written about in English literature. It makes for a useful addition to the literature of the Second World War.
Perhaps I will revisit the Pringles in the Levant Trilogy but I feel I need some compassionate leave before I start.
April 9, 2019
A Glowing Feeling
Fisherman’s Friends
The economics of cinemas defeat me. TOWT and I and two others were the only people in the cinema to watch an early evening showing of Chris Foggin’s latest film, Fisherman’s Friends. We were there on free tickets supplied by our bank, although we did splash out a couple of quid to upgrade to VIP seats. But how does all that work?
As a child I always had a slight aversion to the menthol sweet called Fisherman’s Friend, recommended as a sure-fire way to clear blocked bronchials. They were fiery and destroyed all sensation in my mouth, at least for a little while. We need to blame a pharmacist from Fleetwood, James Lofthouse, for them. In 1865 he came up with a menthol and eucalyptus liquid concoction for fishermen to take with them on expeditions to the North Atlantic. As taking a liquid concoction on the rolling high seas was a bit tricky, he converted them into lozenge form and hey presto.
If you like a group of hairy-arsed Cornish fishermen singing a capella versions of sea shanties and bawdy nautical songs, then you have probably fallen for the charms of the Port Isaac Fisherman’s Friends. They had a remarkable rise to fame but tragedy has dogged their steps. In February 2013 the tenor soloist, Trevor Grills, and their promoter, Paul McMullen, were killed at Guildford’s GLive, when a heavy metal door fell on them and crushed them. Rock and traditional folk music were never happy bedfellows.
Foggis’ film concentrates on their discovery, or at least his version of it, rather than dwelling on their unfortunate later career. There is something cartoonish about the film. Country versus town, rich versus poor, sophisticated ways compared with down-to-earth living. The wide-boys from London, initially there on a stag do until Danny, played by the excellent Daniel Mays, is set up to sign up a group giving an impromptu concert on the harbour front, are buffoons straight out of central casting. And the love interest, played by Tuppence Middleton, must have the poshest accent of any woman supposedly born and brought up in a remote Cornish fishing community.
None of the characters are really developed and a number of the group are reduced to walk-on parts, adding a bit of local colour and harmony to the action. For a stunning part of the world, Foggis doesn’t make much of the scenery. It is a surprisingly unphotogenic film.
These are all minor quibbles because as a piece of entertainment it works. If you can disengage yourself from the ludicrous attempts at Cornish accents and the telegraphed twists in the plot, it is a delightful, heart-warming couple of hours with a genuine feelgood factor. All the ingredients you would hope to find in a piece of entertainment are there – a love story, a cute kid, death, tears, betrayal all laced with large helpings of humour and pathos. The songs are excellent and I found myself humming some of them later on in the evening. And the portrayal of the native Cornish folk’s antipathy to the emmets who invade the peninsula is spot on.
This is a film that is bound to hit your TV screen in the very near future.
April 8, 2019
There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Ninety Two
Charles Francis Jenkins (1867 – 1934)
Whether we like it or not, popular entertainment was transformed in the early 20th century by the development of television and cinematography. Someone who could justifiably claim to be at the birth of both media is the latest inductee into our illustrious Hall of Fame, Charles Francis Jenkins. Much good it did him.
Born to a Quaker family who moved, when Jenkins was just two, to farm in Fountain City, Indiana, as a boy he was forever tinkering with machinery and soon proved to be a dab hand at fixing broken down implements. He also showed an inventive streak, developing a jack to lift wagons so their axles could be greased.
Like many a youth, Jenkins could not resist the lure of the city and at the age of nineteen moved to Washington DC, working as a stenographer in the early incarnation of the US Coast Guard. Although he had left his country roots behind, Charles could not shake off his inquisitiveness.
By 1890 Jenkins began working on what he described as a “motion picture projecting box” and called a Phantoscope. By the spring of 1894 he was sufficiently satisfied with his progress that he wrote to his parents that he was coming back to Indiana to show them his latest invention, instructing them to assemble a crowd of relatives and interested bystanders at his cousin’s jewellery store in Richmond on 6th June.
The gadget was packed up and sent to Richmond, Jenkins following on, completing the 700-mile journey by bicycle.
After some technical issues, according to the Richmond Telegraph, “there began a sputtering sound as the machine kicked into life and out of the lens shot light onto the wall and a girl clad in garments more picturesque than protective stepped lively. She did not seem bashful thus displayed, while those in the audience were taken aback.” The shameful hussy was Annabelle, a vaudeville favourite.
The audience, after recovering from the assault on their sensibilities, went behind the screen to check that there had been no sleight of hand. Not only was this the earliest documented performance of moving pictures to an audience but, astonishingly, it was in colour as each frame had been stained or coloured by hand. Moreover, it used reeled film and an electric light to project the images.
In the winter of 1894 Jenkins was introduced to Thomas Armat who was looking for investment opportunities. Jenkins was strapped for cash and by March 1895 they concluded an agreement by which Armat would “finance and promote the invention” of Jenkins.
The duo patented the Phantoscope on 28th August 1895 and gave a public demonstration of their device at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in the autumn of 1895. A modified Phantoscope was patented on 20th July 1897 but relations between the two began to deteriorate. Jenkins eventually sold his interest in the projector to Armat who then sold the rights to Thomas Edison and the rest is history.
But Jenkins wasn’t finished as an inventor.
He developed a spiral-wound cardboard container, the design is still used today, a car with an engine in the front rather than under the driver (in 1898), an early version of a sightseeing bus (in 1901), an automatic starter for cars (1911), and an improved internal combustion engine (in 1912).
In an article entitled Motion Pictures by Wireless – Wonderful possibilities of Motion Picture Progress which appeared in the Movie Picture News of 27th September 1913, Jenkins announced that he had developed a mechanism which enabled him to view distant scenes by radio or, what we would nowadays know as television. Notwithstanding his enthusiasm, it took him another ten years before he was able to transmit a picture, of President Harding, from Washington to Philadelphia but by 1925 he was beaming moving pictures.
Granted a patent (US No 1,544,156 for Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on June 30th 1925, Jenkins established the first commercially licensed TV station in America, W3XK, which made its first transmission on 2nd July 1928 from Washington. In 1929 it was broadcasting five nights a week.
It initially broadcast silhouettes but later moved on to transmitting black and white programmes. Jenkins’ company even produced the equipment that early adopters would have to use to receive the pictures.
But timing is everything. Selling expensive and, essentially, novelty equipment and services as America was plunging into the depths of the Depression was not a smart move. Jenkins’ company was declared bankrupt in 1931, opening up a space for RCA to exploit.
For your part in developing the cinema and television and failing to profit from it, Charles, you are a worthy inductee into our Hall of Fame.
If you enjoyed this, check out Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone
April 7, 2019
Recycling Tip Of The Week
I like to think I’m doing my bit for the environment by assiduously recycling everything that I can. Such is the plethora of well-meaning advice that we are inundated with that it is often difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
And this seems to be a problem that is besetting the recycling plants that the detritus of our modern lifestyle is delivered to.
Take aluminium cans. There is something deeply satisfying about crushing a can before putting it into the recycling bin. As well as the marvellous crunching sound pleasing my aesthetic sensibilities, the mangled can takes up less room in the bin.
But, I learned this week, it buggers up the system.
The majority of refuse sorting plants dump all of the refuse on to one conveyor belt and rely on a machine, which recognises items by its shape and material, to sort it out into the appropriate bins. However, it cannot cope with a mangled can and sticks it into the non-recyclable pile.
Either the machinery needs to be consigned to the scrapheap or we will have to change our habits.
To paraphrase Aristotle, you can’t do right for doing wrong.
April 6, 2019
Fart Of The Week (4)
So it’s official then. Farting in front of a colleague is not bullying. This ruling from the Victoria state court of appeal will come as a great relief to all flatulent employees.
In a bizarre case, David Hingst, in the process of claiming $1.8m from his former employers, Construction Engineering, claimed that his supervisor, Greg Short, would “lift his bum and fart” up to six times a day and what was worse, his office was “small and had no windows”.
The court gave Hingst short shrift, ruling that even if his allegations were true, flatulence did not necessarily constitute bullying.
Hingst is not taking this lying down, vowing to take his case to the high court, claiming that the psychological trauma he had suffered made it impossible to find other employment. He left the court room without making any comment to the waiting representatives of the press but was pictured holding a piece of clothing over his mouth and face.
Presumably someone had dropped one in the courtroom.
