How Diogenes had fun, or the extraordinary antics of prominent personalities that became part of history

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Many people have come across jokes and practical jokes at least once in their lives. Someone perceived what had happened with a smile, and someone, indignant, complained about the joker. However, not only ordinary mortals loved to joke, but also great composers, philosophers, engineers and other personalities, whose peculiar antics became part of history.

1. Symphony No. 45 by Joseph Haydn

Classical composers had a good sense of humor. Mozart's contemporary Joseph Haydn was for a long time a nobleman's conductor. But his employer never gave Haydn and his orchestra a vacation. Therefore, in protest, he created Symphony No. 45, in which the orchestra members leave the stage one by one.

In 1772, Joseph Haydn spent the summer working for his longtime patron, Prince Nikolai Esterhazy. Accompanied by more than twenty other musicians, Haydn really wanted to leave Esterhazy after a few months there, but the prince wanted them to continue performing. In response, the musician wrote to him that he could not refuse the prince his request, but the symphony he created spoke of the opposite.

The musicians wanted to return home. As a result, Haydn composed Symphony No. 45 - also known as The Magic Well, during which each member of the orchestra left the stage, thereby causing shock and bewilderment to the audience.

2. Juan Puyol Garcia's fake espionage

Juan Puyol Garcia (1912-1988) wanted to spy on the Nazis. The Spaniard offered his services to the Allied intelligence services several times, but he was refused. As a result, Garcia changed his approach, preferring to provide false information to the Nazis rather than collecting intelligence for the Allies.

Garcia convinced the Germans that he was in England, although he lived in Portugal, and that he was running a network of agents collecting information on their behalf. Juan was so successful that British intelligence eventually recruited him to help them deceive the Nazis. Using the codename "Garbo", Garcia tricked the Nazis into thinking he was in charge of over two dozen spies for them. He supplied Germany with false information, especially in the run-up to the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

In 1944, Garcia received awards from both Germany and England. Germany awarded him the Iron Cross for his service at the front, and England made him a member of the most excellent Order of the British Empire.

3. Almon Strowger telephone undertaker

Almon (Elmon) Brown Strowger was an undertaker and funeral home owner in Kansas in the late 19th century. When his business began to decline - and another morgue in the city began to flourish - Stouger figured out why. He learned that the local telephone operator was married to the owner of another funeral home - and was redirecting all relevant calls to her husband.

At that time, all phone calls were first made to the operator, who then passed them on to the intended recipient. But soon Almon invented an alternative. In 1891, he patented an exchange switch that sent a customer's call directly to an intended line. By usurping the role of operator, Stouger's automatic telephone switch simplified the calling process and prevented nefarious human intervention.

In 1892, the first Stowger automatic telephone exchange was installed in La Porte, Indiana. It later became the standard throughout the United States.

4. Betting Hook and Samuel Beasley paralyzed part of London

Theodore Hook was a writer and composer who loved to joke well. He (or someone he knew) was rumored to have some dislike for the residents of 54 Berners Street in London, so he sent thousands of letters to hire services at that address on one particular day.

As a result, chimney sweeps, lawyers, undertakers and priests all visited the house, where Mrs. Tottenham and her maid repeatedly chased them away, trying to get rid of the crowd of people that grew larger and larger each time.

While Hook and his friend Samuel Beasley watched the scene, officials arrived to try and disperse the crowd. Towards evening, the confusion and anger of those who had been fooled reached its climax. According to rumors, Hook and Beasley made a bet that Hook could make any address in London the most popular in the city - and he succeeded.

5. Charles Vance Millar's last joke

Charles Vance Millar died in 1926 while meeting with colleagues. His death was mourned by the residents of Toronto, where he practiced law for decades. Millar was single, had no children, and there was a lot of talk about where his money would go now that he died.

Millar's will was not at all what the public expected. He was full of strange points, especially the one that bequeathed his fortune to the women who would bear the most children in Toronto in the ten years after his passing. Half a million dollars on the line led to the so-called Great Toronto Stoke Derby.

The newspapers even followed families trying to find a way to get money, and when the race was over, the four mothers, who had produced a total of thirty children in the ten-year period after Millar's death, received one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars each.

6. Horace De Ver Cole and the Dreadnought hoax in 1910

Horace de Vere Cole was born in Ireland in 1881 and had a penchant for practical jokes, imitations and jokes. His list of antics includes an adventure with the writer Virginia Woolf (although she bore her maiden name Stephen at the time). Virginia was the sister of Cole's longtime friend, Adrian Stephen, with whom he used to play pranks.

A dreadnought hoax, perpetrated by Virginia, her brother, artist Duncan Grant and Cole in 1910, included beards, a black face, and false knowledge of a fake African language. They sent a notice to the British authorities that the Emperor of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was visiting and would like to tour the HMS Dreadnought. In a hurry, the British navy complied with the request, allowing guests to inspect the ship and inviting them to dinner.

7. Diogenes was a great joker

Diogenes of Sinop, cynical philosopher in Greece in the 4th century BC e., was known for challenging others. His self-proclaimed honesty, moral superiority and rejection of luxury were accompanied by shamelessness, which led to the fact that Diogenes openly confessed the vices of human society.

He openly challenged his contemporaries in Athens, especially Plato. According to the biography of Diogenes, written in the 3rd century BC. BC, the philosopher was very furious in expressing his arrogant contempt for others, and also ridiculed Plato as an endless chatterbox.

He was a cynical philosopher who slept in a barrel in the Market Square, and was usually seen walking around in a loincloth accompanied by dogs with a lantern. He shone a lantern in the face of people, looking for an honest person.

He really enjoyed trolling Plato. He sat in Plato's lectures and ate crispy food to distract him. Plato described a man as a biped without feathers, so Diogenes plucked a chicken, ran into the symposium and shouted:

Alexander the Great, once seeing Diogenes, asked if he wanted anything. Diogenes looked at Alexander and said:. To which the Macedonian replied: and Diogenes replied:.

He condemned those who praise the righteous because they are above money, but at the same time themselves strive for great wealth. Diogenes was also very indignant, seeing how people make sacrifices to the gods. The great philosopher was later enslaved and lived in Corinth until his death at the age of ninety.

8. Jonathan Swift created an alter ego

Back in the 18th century in London, astrology was in vogue, and there were many people who wanted to cash in, claiming that they could predict the future. Astrologers made predictions about the coming year and published them in almanacs. At that time, a man named John Partridge was on everyone's lips. Like all psychics, his almanacs were full of vague predictions that could be applied to almost anything, and there were many people who discredited him and his entire profession as quackery.

Partridge thrived for years, until a guy named Isaac Bickerstaff suddenly appeared, making colossal predictions.

Most strikingly, he predicted that Partridge's death would come in a few short months, at the end of March. The prediction was that he would die of a fever, and even predicted a specific date and time.

Finally, the fateful day arrives, and rumors begin to circulate in London that Partridge is indeed dead! A letter to an unnamed nobleman confirming that Partridge fell ill with a fever a few days earlier and died within hours of the predicted time was published publicly, confirming the prediction. Rumors slowly began to seep through London until they finally became widespread by the first of April. Church bells rang and mourners began to come to Partridge's house to pay their respects, much to the displeasure of the very lively John Partridge.

Partridge wasn't actually dead, but that didn't stop the crowds of Londoners who didn't like him from spreading the news. He posted a rebuttal, insisting that he was actually still alive, but the damage had already been done. People wrote all sorts of testimonies claiming to have seen the body, while others claimed to have seen it alive, adding to the general confusion. It got to the point that his name was even removed from the registry, effectively making him legally dead in London.

In fact, John Partridge died in 1715.

Bickerstaff's true identity has not been lost to history, and we now know who it was. Isaac Bickerstaff was none other than legendary satirist Jonathan Swift.

9. Sergey Korolev is a great manipulator

Sergei Korolev was one of the most influential engineers in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He worked on rocket technology and pushed for satellites, but the Communist Party said there was no interest or funding for these projects.

To influence them, he gave interviews to newspapers to raise general interest in the space program, while demonstrating to the United States that the Soviet Union was able to make a manned moon landing between 1967 and 1969. Thus, he managed to attract to his activities and ideas not only the United States, but also the Soviet Union, on which he made huge stakes.

10. Fraudster Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower

Victor Lustig was born in Austria-Hungary in 1890, studied at school in Paris as a teenager, and by the age of twenty became interested in gambling. He began tricking passengers on ocean liners that traveled back and forth between Europe and the United States, and by the mid-1920s he was focusing again on Paris.

Lustig had a plan that he hoped would bring him immense wealth. He decided to contact scrap metal dealers and, posing as an official from the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, offered to sell them seven tons of metal from the dismantled Eiffel Tower. Victor sent letters to potential buyers, offered tours of the tower, and pitted bidders against each other.

He carried out various sorts of machinations, but after that it began to seem everywhere that the authorities were watching him, he fled from Europe and deceived his way through Chicago, Nebraska, New Orleans and New York.

As a result, Victor was arrested in 1935, but escaped from prison before the trial. Arrested again that year in Pittsburgh, Lustig was sent to prison, where he died in 1947.

Read also about who and why pretended to be other people, and how it all ended: Princess Karabou, Captain from Köpenick, Gray Owl and other outstanding impostors, whose stories are cooler than any movie plot.