The Con Artist Who Managed a 13 Year Career as a Professional Football Player Despite Sucking at Football

The game of soccer (henceforth referred to as football to satisfy my English sensibilities, though to be fair, it was the English who originally named the sport Soccer in its earliest days under somewhat codified rules and only abandoned that original moniker about a half century ago in favor of the more generic “Football”) is full of players who have achieved almost legendary status for their ability to run around for a long time and occasionally kick a ball in the general direction they want it to go- all in hopes that their team gets said ball into a certain space more than the other team or, at least, the same number of times as the other team because who doesn’t love ties? Just helps us all more fully internalize the pointlessness of everything in life given we are all going to die, our very substance turned into microbial poop, and ultimately everything we ever did completely forgotten, even the fact that we existed at all…

Perhaps the most legendary of all of these sports stars is the Brazilian striker Carlos Henrique Raposo, if only because he managed to collect a salary playing for various professional football clubs for about 13 seasons from 1979-1992 despite not actually being very good at the sport and managing in just about every way he could think of to ensure that nobody ever figured this out.

Before we talk about that though, a disclaimer. While Raposo’s rather interesting career has since been documented in both film and books, hard contemporary evidence of his exploits are difficult to come by and it’s clear over the years his story has been embellished to an extent. Nonetheless, we have endeavored to tell you the most accurate possible version of his story to the point that our author even went as far as enlisting the help of a Spanish friend to read through every contemporary Spanish language source we could find that inevitably cropped up, to try to separate fact from embellishment. With that out of the way, let’s tell you the story of Carlos Raposo’s rather interesting career.

Born in 1963 in Brazil, as a youth, like many of his peers, Raposo harboured dreams of being a famous football star. The only problem was that he possessed relatively little skill for the sport compared to actual professionals. What Raposo did have though was the athletic build of a footballer, an incredibly charming personality, a host of high-profile friends who were more than happy to do him favors (even ones who knew he was full of crap), and a moral flexibility that ensured he could maximally take advantage of all of these things to become a football star despite not being very good at football. Individuals whom it is often claimed are friends of Raposo include Edmundo Alves de Souza Neto and Romário de Souza Faria, the latter of which is consistently ranked as one of the greatest players of all time.

Raposo’s alleged modus operandi at the beginning of his career was to call one of his more talented friends when they signed with a new club and simply ask for a trial with the club, which they were usually more than happy to put in a good word. During his interview, Raposo would formally request time to get fit before attending a proper training session, at which point he’d use his very made up reputation combined with his formidable physical prowess to make an impression on the club’s coach, via things like demonstrating his prodigious running ability and ability to lift heavy weights, while carefully avoiding actually needing to show off his relative lack of ability playing the sport. While you might think the coaches must have been morons, we should again stress that seemingly in all cases, he brought with him a backlog of former greatness with other clubs, including at times very real press clippings, despite, you know, that being made up.

After being signed, as soon as he attended a “proper” training session where he was expected to actually play and show off his actual football skills, Raposo would do things like feign a crippling injury via things like kicking a ball as hard as he could and then falling to the ground clutching his hamstring – a common injury for footballers. A tactic that worked surprisingly well both thanks to at times him being able to get unscrupulous doctors on his side, and also simple lack of medical technology. To quote Raposo himself about this unorthodox method of making the cut: “There were no MRI scanners in those days, so they had to believe me.”

Once he was declared injured, Raposo could safely wait out the rest of his trial period without worrying about playing and still collect a paycheck. To keep his teammates on his side, Raposo would allegedly arrive at hotels his team were due to stay in a few days earlier specifically to fill them with local women to “entertain” his friends in-between matches, in the process netting him yet more contacts who’d be willing to sing his praises when he inevitably applied to another club. Raposo would also occasionally talk on the phone in perfect English, telling friends that he was in talks with clubs in Europe that were interested in signing him to help convince managers into either extending his contract or raising his wages.

When his time with a given team came to an end, Raposo would simply repeat this formula with another club and, according to him, it worked, with the Brazen Brazilian claiming to have played for a host of well-known Brazilian clubs during his career including Vasco da Gama, Botafogo and Flamengo as well as having brief stints in France, Mexico, America and Argentina. Raposo was able to score these lucrative gigs thanks to a combination of his contacts and eventually showing he had previously played for other clubs and just sort of embellishing his exploits there. In short, developing a carefully crafted reputation, including using the media to help further all this. Sometimes it seems via journalists just trusting what he said about himself, others seemingly journalists who were happy to scratch his back if he scratched theirs.

For example, Raposo saw to it that coverage in his native Brazil while he was playing there always flanked his name by words like “gunner” and “scorer”, adjectives cherry-picked from quotes by legends of the sport whom he called his friends. We should point out here that because he, you know, rarely actually played and wasn’t that good relatively to his peers, he never actually scored any goals. Nevertheless, with such high praise coming from such well-regarded figures in the sport, clubs looking to sign Raposo seldom had a reason to doubt his claims that he was anything but a brilliant, tactically-minded striker capable of scoring goals with surgical precision, despite having a bit of a major injury problem.

Sometime during his career, Raposo also adopted the nickname “The Kaiser” as a nod to legendary German player Franz Beckenbauer, who was known by the same moniker due to his “dominance” and “leadership” while playing. If it wasn’t clear from the rest of this piece, Raposo gave this nickname to himself to try to help convince various clubs to sign him.

Although Raposo usually avoided stepping on the field like it was coated in landmines, there do appear to have been occasions in which he wasn’t able to avoid doing so and as a result, he does appear to have a legitimate traceable football record, albeit a very hazy one that’s mostly in Spanish and French. For example, Raposo is said to have played a single game with the Brazilian team, Bangu, and there’s a purported newspaper headline from the time he was signed that roughly translates to “The Bangu already has its king, Carlos Kaiser”. According to one source, Raposo was able to avoid playing in his first game with the team when he was brought on to substitute for another player by intentionally getting into a verbal argument with the fans from the sidelines, thus getting the referee to send him back to the locker room before he stepped onto the pitch and blew his cover. Raposo was somehow able to spin this into goodwill with the club’s president by saying he only got in an altercation with the fan because they’d called the president a thief. In the end, he was awarded a 6 month contract extension with that club.

Later in his career, Raposo moved to France and signed with a division two team called Gazelec Ajaccio where he made sporadic appearances, mostly limited to kicking the ball up the field and showboating for the crowd, who were more interested in the novelty of having a supposed Brazilian legend on their team than his actual performance. Further, in a training session with Ajaccio, Raposo was able to avoid playing entirely by simply walking onto the pitch and kicking all of the balls they had available into the crowd while warming up. His team, thinking he was playing to the crowd – which was quite large and filled with people eager to see their teams new Brazilian superstar perform- allowed him to do this, not realising Raposo had kicked literally every ball they had lying around. When the time came to start for real, with no ball, his lack of skills on this front was concealed and they simply enjoyed watching him show off his more natural physical skills in the training session.

As Raposo played in a time before our modern extensive online stat tracking websites and ubiquitous sports coverage, we have no way of knowing what his career record was, though most sources say that he played in around 30 games during the course of his career, the majority of which were with the aforementioned French team, with whom Raposo claims to have played “20 minutes per game, a few times per season”, although it should be noted here that one of his fellow footballers claims that actually never happened and the pictures of such were simply staged to convince other teams he had played. Whatever the case there, everybody seems in agreement that Raposo never scored a single goal, an impressive feat when you consider that he was a striker, which for non-football fans means his entire job on the pitch was more or less to score goals.

Raposo retired from the sport at age 39 and remained amazingly unrepentant about his deception, openly admitting in interviews with the Brazilian and French press that he “regretted nothing” about what he did because the clubs he played for treated their actual players so poorly, being quoted as saying: “Clubs already deceived so many players, someone had to be the avenger of the guys.”

Today, Raposo makes ends meet as a personal trainer and occasionally gives interviews about his rather colorful “career”, and even has had a book and a movie made about his exploits as a professional footballer who wasn’t actually very good at football.

Expand for References

Carlos Henrique Kaiser the biggest football fraud?

Football’s Greatest Liar

CARLOS THE KAISER: FOOTBALL’S GREATEST CHARLATAN

The story of Carlos Henrique Kaiser, the Forrest Gump of Brazilian football

Forrest Gump do futebol e a personal embananada no programa do Jô – Video – In Spanish

Carlos “Kaiser”, the legend of the player who has never played a game

Carlos ‘Kaiser’: the story of an impostor in football

Carlos ‘Kaiser’ balls off, scheduled injuries, fake mobile phones

 

The post The Con Artist Who Managed a 13 Year Career as a Professional Football Player Despite Sucking at Football appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Karl Smallwood - April 04, 2023 at 12:16PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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The Heartwarming Story of Mexico’s Real Life Badass Wrestling Priest

For just over 2 decades the people of Mexico were thrilled by the antics of a dashing masked lucha libre wrestler known only as Fray Tormenta. Styling himself as a priest fighting the forces of evil, Tormenta travelled the globe elbow dropping large men from low orbit. For much of his career, few people knew that the man beneath the mask was a former streetwise drug addict turned priest who was wrestling solely for the benefit of the orphans in his congregation he had pledged to take care of.

Fray Tormenta was born Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez in 1945 in a small town of Cieneguillas in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. The second youngest of 18 children, Tormenta’s youth was an unhappy one with his family moving around for several years after the murder of one of his uncles before eventually settling in Mexico city- a place where the young Tormenta fell in with a series of ever worsening crowds. Already a member of a gang and abusing drugs before age 10, Tormenta’s formative years were spent getting into fights and working a series of odd jobs, doing everything from making chairs to performing on street corners, to fund his numerous substance abuse vices. If all that doesn’t sound like fun enough, we should also point out that during his youth Tormenta was stabbed multiple times, smashed over the face with a beer bottle, and once even shrugged off being shot, earning him a reputation as a tenacious and seasoned street fighter.

This all changed when, at around 20 years old, Tormenta found himself facing down a murder charge after a friend from his gang turned up dead with a drunken Tormenta the prime suspect. After narrowly avoiding life in prison when it turned out he was passed out drunk in a bar at the time the murder occurred, Tormenta sought solace in religion and walked into a local church. What happened next isn’t entirely clear as Tormenta has recounted multiple versions of the same story with various layers of embellishment over the years; all we know for sure is that it turned the 20 year old drug addict into a man of god.

One version of the story tells of Tormenta being roughed up by the church’s priest after asking for help, while another explains that Tormenta had a vision of himself in full priest regalia giving a sermon. Either way, Tormenta’s experience inside the church profoundly changed him as a person after he came to the conclusion that if there were “cool priests” who understood the pressures young, impoverished people were facing, maybe fewer of those youths would turn to crime and substance abuse.

Before he could walk the path of a holy man though, Tormenta had to rid himself of his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Showing the same kind of grit and determination that would later make him famous in the ring, Tormenta opted to shake the hold substances had over him the hard way- entering a rehab clinic where they basically strapped him to a bed for a week and let the drugs work their own way out of his system. It was just the beginning, however. As a nurse at the clinic told him: “Here you don’t get cured; you get detoxed. Curing you have to do for yourself.”

After leaving the rehab clinic, Tormenta did just that, as well as travelled to Toluca where he was thrown out of the first seminary he joined owing to punching someone in the face. When later asked about this in an interview with Vice, Tormenta quipped: “How are you going to break a wild colt from night to morning?”

Tormenta was able to control himself better in the second seminary and travelled Europe as a priest-in-training, learning about philosophy, theology and child psychology. After completing his training, he returned to Mexico and was sent to a run-down parish in Veracruz to spread the word of God. Of course, Tormenta being Tormenta, he almost immediately made an impression on locals by getting into a fist-fight with a local drug addict.

The fight which occurred basically moments after Tormenta set up shop in Veracruz was a calculated move to earn the respect of locals. Dutifully, Tormenta prayed for forgiveness from God and then threw down… in the process getting his butt kicked. Nevertheless, covered in blood, Tormenta stood up after the fight and merely asked “Who’s next?”- a move that instantly endeared him to his new flock.

Soon after, he began helping the people of Veracruz, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and forming multiple mariachi bands. That last one isn’t a joke by the way. A keen musician, Tormenta taught down-on-their-luck drug addicts, prostitutes, and petty criminals to play various instruments and helped them secure band bookings at local events to give their life structure and help them earn an honest living. It’s noted that it was a member of one of these bands, a young man called Pinguino, that pushed Tormenta to become an officially ordained minister, owing to Pinguino’s death.

A drug addict just like Tormenta had once been, Pinguino unfortunately relapsed and went on a binge at which point he was found by Tormenta. Fearing for his life, Tormenta put him into his car and began speeding towards a nearby hospital. On the way, Pinguino began pleading with Tormenta to hear his confession and read him the last rites- a request Tormenta could not honor as he hadn’t yet been officially ordained. After taking a visible turn for the worse, Tormenta pulled over and read the boy his last rites anyway, reasoning that God would forgive him for breaking the rules to provide comfort to the sick and weary. Pinguino ended up dying in Tormenta’s arms right there on the side of the road, just moments after he absolved him. Shaken, he asked to be ordained just a few days later, a request which was granted on May 26, 1973 at his own church surrounded by his faithful parishioners, instead of the more stately local cathedral as the bishop suggested.

Now officially a priest, Tormenta began taking in young boys, turning his small church into a makeshift orphanage. Tormenta’s commitment to the orphans was such that when he was transferred to another church 150 miles away, he paid for them to come with him at considerable expense to himself.  A short while later, he was transferred yet again, this time at his behest to another church in Texcoco after his new church requested he stop taking in orphans. A request you can probably guess, he didn’t pay any attention to. Although the diocese of this new church allowed Tormenta to continue housing orphans, it was decided that he would have to pay for their upkeep.

Unfortunately for him, priests of his ilk aren’t exactly known for being flush with cash or material goods to sell. Thus, while carrying out his priestly duties and pondering how to best provide for the many children under his care, Tormenta fondly recalled a film he’d seen a decade earlier called El Señor Tormenta. A fairly obscure film released in 1963, the movie details the adventures of a priest who inexplicably decides to become a lucha libre wrestler to earn money for some orphans in his care. For most, it was a fantastical film with no basis in reality. For Tormenta, it was a sign from God.

Inspired by the film and the reported astronomical per-fight earnings of boxer Muhammad Ali, Tormenta began training in secret and creating his now iconic alter-ego, Fray Tormenta – literally “Friar Storm”. Yes, Tormenta’s wrestling alter ego was also a priest.

To sell crowds on his priestly-ness Tormenta would walk to the ring in his priest robes, pray mid-bout and even had a finishing move called La Confesora – literally the confessor – which involved putting his opponent into a crushing leg-lock and making them beg for forgiveness from God. For much of his earlier career, many assumed that Tormenta was simply incredibly committed to his priest gimmick and nobody realised that the humble local priest padre Sergio Benítez and the high-flying wrestler Fray Tormenta were one in the same. This was fine by Tormenta who knew that if his bishop learned that he was secretly going out at night and drop-kicking people for money, he could get in trouble.

As for masking his identity, Tormenta’s wrestling attire consisted of a simple yellow and red mask of his own design. When asked what the colors represented, Tormenta explained that yellow stood for life whereas the red stood for the blood he had to spill in the ring in God’s name. From here, Tormenta faced off against countless wrestlers, most of whom he humbled with holy elbow drops and crushing backhands. On one occasion, he even put a wrestler called Judas into La Confesora, much to the delight of the gathered crowd.

Juggling his secret life eventually became second nature to Tormenta and he would casually recall in a later interview the feeling of stepping into the ring at 9am to suplex someone in the name of god knowing he had to give mass at 12, then again at 3.

Despite making efforts to conceal his secret identity from the masses while he was, well, giving mass, a fellow wrestler called Huracen Ramirez noticed Tormenta at a wedding in full priest attire and put two and two together and his secret identity was revealed.

Initially, Tormenta’s bishop was furious and ordered the priest to stop wrestling as it was felt that word of his actions could damage the church’s reputation. The problem, of course, was the orphans. Working it out, Tormenta agreed to stop moonlighting as a wrestler if the local diocese would match the money made from his winnings so that he could continue funding his makeshift orphanage. At the time, Tormenta wasn’t earning a huge sum. For example, he reportedly earned the equivalent of just $10 for his first fight, which he won. But he banked on the bishop assuming he was earning much, much more. It worked, and the bishop begrudgingly told Tormenta they couldn’t match the funds, so he could keep doing what he was doing on a singular condition- “be careful”.

With the implicit blessing of the church and his identity revealed, Fray Tormenta’s popularity exploded and Tormenta soon found himself wrestling on both the Japanese and American circuit, earning him enough to build a proper orphanage for the children under his care in 1975. As a knowing nod to the invaluable contribution his wrestling persona had made to the existence of the orphanage, the priest decided to name it: Casa Hogar de los Cachorros Fray Tormenta, or in English, “Shelter for Fray Tormenta’s Cubs”.

Despite his growing fame, Tormenta continued to live a simple, spartan life devoid of luxury, funneling just about every penny he earned back into his church and orphanage and thumbing his nose at fame, as he would tell The Guardian in 2006: “I wasn’t after glory, I was after money for the kids.”

Still, Tormenta wasn’t completely adverse to fame, as long as he could capitalise on the fortune that often comes with it for the good of his orphans. To this end, he appeared in films, recorded albums and lent his likeness to toys and comic books.

Within a few years, the fame of mask had eclipsed the man beneath it, with Tormenta’s own parishioners taking to calling him Padre Tormenta, or in some cases simply, El Fray. In response, Tormenta began going about his priestly duties while wearing his wrestling attire, sometimes saying mass from his pulpit while wearing both his priest robes and mask.

A veritable legend of lucha libre, Tormenta earned the admiration of most, if not all of his fellow wrestlers who largely consider it an honor to have faced off against or fought alongside a man of such convictions. Although he retired from wrestling in the early 2000’s, Tormenta continues to occasionally don his iconic mask while giving mass, and peppers his sermons with lessons he learned in the ring and stories of his time as one of Mexico’s most famous and respected wrestlers.

Noteworthy, after retiring from wrestling, the mantle of Fray Tormenta was picked up by a former orphan who’d been trained by the original Tormenta. This would later be directly homaged by the video game Tekken 3, where the character King (who is loosely based on Tormenta) is replaced by an orphan the original King had helped raise with his wrestling earnings.

Expand for References

• Addict, Priest, Luchador
• ‘I didn’t want glory. I wanted money’
• The Superman Priest
• Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo
• Wrestling Babylon: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal
• The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity
• Image Source https://ift.tt/wKmuofU

 

The post The Heartwarming Story of Mexico’s Real Life Badass Wrestling Priest appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Karl Smallwood - December 13, 2022 at 04:08PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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The King of Hustlers

In the annals of gambling history, the name Titanic Thompson is one treated with reverence and awe. This almost mythical figure became a legend in his own time for his ability to perform seemingly superhuman feats to win outrageous bets, from driving golf balls 500 yards to hurling lemons clear over 5 story buildings. Along with being a well-known gambler. Thompson was also a highly-skilled pool player and golfer, to the point that given his propensity to beat some of the best in the world at golf, someone once suggested he go pro. A suggestion Thompson dismissed, because he couldn’t afford the pay cut.

The man who would eventually become the legendary Titanic Thompson was born with the decidedly less memorable name Alvin Clarence Thomas in rural Missouri (some sources say Arkansas as he lived on the border of the two states) in 1893 (give or take, there is some dispute about his precise birthday) . Growing up in a small cabin in Arkansas, Thomas rarely attended school and spent little time at home, instead spending much of his youth throwing coins and playing cards with other kids, becoming frighteningly adept at both. Even at a young age, he apparently quickly developed an eye for making bets, with one of his first hustles being to swindle a fisherman out of his prized pole.

The story goes that at the tender age of 11 Thomas bet a local angler that his dog was smart enough to recognise and fetch a random rock thrown into a nearby river. The fisherman, intrigued, took Thomas up on his bet and they agreed to draw a large X on the otherwise common looking rock to ensure the dog brought the correct one. The angler then stood dumbstruck as Thomas threw the rock into the river several times, with his pet pooch being able to somehow sniff it out and fetch it back every single time. As per the terms of their bet, the angler handed over his fishing rod and left in a foul mood. Thomas then took the rod and sold it to a local store for a tidy profit. So how did he do it?

Well unbeknownst to the fisherman, Thomas had spent the entire evening prior drawing large X’s on hundreds of similar looking rocks and throwing them into the water approximately around the same spot. Such shenanigans would become a hallmark of Thomas’ later bets, though he didn’t need to rely entirely on such underhanded tactics to win much of the time. Growing up in the rural backwoods of Arkansas, Thomas had countless hours to practise random skills that would become invaluable to him in later life such as throwing horseshoes, shooting targets and skimming stones, all of which gave him a near unparalleled ability to throw objects with pin-point accuracy over large distances. Thomas also dealt himself thousands of poker and blackjack hands and became adept at intuiting the probability of certain hands, and for good measure, taught himself to deal cards from the bottom of the deck for no particular reason…

Skills and moral flexibility in hand, Thomas reportedly left home at age 16, telling his mother he was going to find his father (a gambler himself) who’d skipped out on them a few years earlier, leaving them destitute. Despite being unable to read or write properly, Thomas’ mother was confident in her son’s future and wished him well, only asking him to promise to never drink or smoke- a promise he kept, being a teetotaler until the day he died.

From that point on, Thomas worked a number of odd jobs throughout the American South, ironically given his lack of formal education even selling encyclopedias door-to-door. The most lucrative part of these jobs was not so much the direct money he earned from them, but getting more or less paid to travel and meet people.

As for paying for hotels, it is noted that, a lover of the finer things in life, Thompson often scored himself free nights in the finest hotels by betting he could throw the key to his room into the room’s accompanying pigeonhole, offering to pay double if he missed. Thanks to his excellent hand-eye coordination and throwing abilities, Thompson apparently generally did not have to pay for his lodging.

Also while traveling, he naturally took the opportunity to fleece the residents of any town or city he visited as well, using his impressive repertoire of skills, along with a fair amount of trickery when the situation warranted. It’s also noted that Thomas would announce his arrival to every town he visited by walking into the first saloon he found and loudly asking “Does anyone know of a gambler named Lee Thomas?” in the hopes of finding his father.

On this one, we should point out that Thomas actually did get to randomly meet his estranged father in 1910 in Oil City, finding him dealing cards in the corner of a smokey bar. Thomas then proceeded to win $3600 (about $92,000 today) from his father, before announcing himself as his son, handing the money back and telling the old man he never had a chance. Thomas never saw his father again after this encounter.

After this, Thomas once again hit the road, honing his craft before being called up for military service in 1918. Already a crackshot from his youth firing endless rounds at targets (Thomas could reportedly fire a shot through a silver dollar at a remarkable distance and often displayed this skill to win bets), he was ultimately promoted to the rank of sergeant and was tasked with training recruits in marksmanship. A few months later when the war ended, he was discharged and decided to return home to visit his mother. During the brief visit, Thomas bought his mother a house with cash he reportedly recently won from card games with other soldiers.

While you might think this would put a dent in his net worth, it didn’t in the slightest at the time. In fact, at just 26 years old, Thomas had so much money that before he hit the road again, he had to warn the bank he was going to be making a rather large withdrawal because he had more money in his account than they usually kept on hand.

After extracting the funds, Thomas once again hit the road, becoming a legend among gamblers for his impossible apparent luck, skill, and sheer bravado.

As to some more specific examples, a physically imposing figure, one of Thomas’ favourite bets was that he could throw a random object, usually a small walnut or piece of fruit, over a several story high building.

You, like so many people he won this bet off, might be thinking such a light object could never be thrown that far, and you’d probably be right. Except, Thomas’ trick was to weigh the item down with lead shot beforehand, allowing him to send it sailing over the building in question.

Perhaps the most famous example of this trick was used by Thomas against Al Capone (yes, that Al Capone). After a night of cards with the gangster, Thomas bet him that he could throw a lemon over a 5 story building. Capone, being well aware of Thomas’s tricks, picked a lemon himself from a nearby cart and squeezed all of the juice out of it and bade him use that one. Thomas took the lemon from Capone and ultimately agreed to toss it. He subsequently hurled it into the lower stratosphere, earning him a $500 (about $6500 today) payday from the feared gangland figure. Capone told Thomas in no uncertain terms that the feat had earned his respect, completely unaware that the lemon had been subtly switched by one of Thomas’ associates and the one he actually threw had been filled with some buckshot.

However, Thomas’ real skill was golf, something he became frighteningly adept at while staying in San Francisco in the 1920’s. Hustling being the name of his game, naturally left-handed, Thomas taught himself to play right-handed and was effectively ambidextrous at the sport, and would thus frequently win bets at golf right handed then offer to go double or nothing playing with his supposed bad side, left-handed.

His skill eventually saw him being challenged even by future golf hall of famers, who generally walked away humbled and with a terminal injury to the wallet. Perhaps the most famous golfer to lose to Thomas was Bobby Jones, a man generally agreed to be one of the finest golfers in history.

As a testament to his skill, Thomas would frequently beat his opponents by only one or two strokes, in some cases deliberately handicapping himself, thus making it easier to goad them into another round for money. When this didn’t work, Thomas would sometimes volunteer to physically handicap himself to lure in potential marks, reportedly beating opponents wearing everything from a sling to a blindfold, with perhaps his most brazen example of skill being the time he turned up and won playing in a wheelchair.

On one occasion, as references previously, Thomas was asked why on Earth he hadn’t yet gone pro, to which he infamously replied “I could not afford the cut in pay”.

Though undeniably cocky, Thomas’ statement was fairly accurate. At a time when pro golfers could possibly earn somewhere in the region of $30,000 (about $450,000 today) a year, Thomas could earn that in a month hustling rich golfers.

On this note, along with winning in straight matches, he was a fan of challenging individuals with entirely too much money in their pockets to driving contests. The most famous example of which is the time on one wintry morning that he bet an entire group of golfers $500 each (about $7000 today) he could drive a ball 500 yards (a near impossible feat even by today’s standards).

As soon as the bet was struck, Thomas turned around and drove his ball onto a nearby frozen lake and watched as the ball bounced across it an estimated mile. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Noteworthy in all this was that it was during the height of his golfing career in the 1930’s and 40’s that the papers accidentally misprinted the hustler’s name as “Thompson” in an article about his prowess at the sport. Liking that it gave him a degree of anonymity, Thomas began referring to himself as Thompson from that point on. This name would later become Titanic Thompson after he bet a group of pool players he could leap all the way over the table. After doing just that, one gambler quipped that Thompson should call himself Titanic given how hard he’d sunk them all. The nickname stuck and became the name he’d be known by for the rest of his life.

With money, however, came enemies and throughout his life Thompson had to kill a reported 5 men in self-defence. With these, he shot 4, and killed one with a hammer when the assailant threatened his girlfriend at the time with a knife.

In the case of the first 4 killings, each one was either a known criminal trying to rob Titanic, or a mugger and thus Thompson was allowed to walk free. In the case of the latter, though, Thompson was given a choice- go to jail or hand over the deed to his boat to the state to make the case go away… Thompson chose the latter.

Speaking of murder, Thompson also played a part in the highly publicised murder-case of Arnold Rothstein (the kingpin of the so-called Jewish Mafia) in the late 1920’s, taking part in the fixed card game that prompted the debt that directly resulted in Rothstein’s assassination. At the subsequent trial, Thompson famously answered the question of what he did for a living by stating: “I play a little golf for money.”

Despite his knack for skill-based games and the fact that he made tens of millions of dollars throughout his life, Thompson’s rather high spending lifestyle, penchant for gambling on horse racing with much less success, and with little regard to saving ultimately left him penniless in his final years, when traveling around was no longer quite as feasible. As a result, he lived out his last years in a rest home, though he never let his spark for proposition bets die, and could reportedly be found at a local mini-golf courses hustling people over 2 dollar games well into his 70’s.

Nobody can live forever, however, and Thompson died in 1974 at the age of around 80. According to local legend, upon hearing the news, some old pros at a nearby golf club are said to have had the following exchange with their caddy:

“You ever know Titanic Thompson, boy?”

“Can’t say that I did sir.”

“But you say he’s dead?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Well son, likely he is dead. But take my advice and don’t go betting any money on it.”

Expand for References

Titanic Thompson: Introducing America’s Greatest Ever Gambler

All Bets Are On

‘Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything’ by Kevin Cook

Titanic Thompson Profile

The man who hustled Al Capone

Review: Titanic Thompson – The Man Who Bet On Everything

 

The post The King of Hustlers appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Karl Smallwood - December 13, 2022 at 04:06PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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Did People in Medieval Times Really Have Bad Teeth?

The Medieval Period (which began at the fall of Rome in the 5th century and is generally agreed to have ended in the 15th century, dovetailing into the early renaissance) is often portrayed by pop culture as being a time when peasants

walked around with mouths filled with blackened, rotted teeth, and bodies covered in excrement and muck from lack of proper bathing habits. But is any of this actually true?

Let’s start with teeth, shall we? On this one, our understanding of Medieval dental hygiene has been rather poorly informed up until relatively recently. As one representative of the British Dental Association noted in 2004, “Our ancestors were far more aware of the value of a good smile than we have previously given them credit for.”

In fact, it turns out that Medieval doctors, surgeons, and healers were well aware of a number of dental ailments including plaque, cavities and, naturally, bad breath. On top of that, they knew how to treat these conditions. Or, at least, treat them with the tools and medicine available at the time.

That said, given their limited tools, it is noted that by far the most common treatment for a tooth gone bad was simply to have it pulled, usually by a blacksmith or barber. However, Medieval surgeons did have the ability to create rudimentary fillings to save a tooth, using materials including beeswax, grease and arsenic, because why not? The price of such procedures sometimes put them out of the reach of most common folk, which, well, wasn’t really all that big of an issue seeing as it was mostly wealthy people with bad teeth…

As we mentioned in our article on why pineapples were considered the ultimate symbol of wealth for a brief, but hilarious period in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries- so much so that renting a pineapple by the hour to show off at parties was a thing- sugary food and sugar itself was for a significant period of history, only something the most wealthy could afford. Even fruit, which is rich in natural sugar, was rarely consumed by peasants, with their diet mostly consisting of grains, vegetables, and calcium rich foodstuffs. You know, the diet that almost perfectly mirrors the recommended diet by dentists today.

This means that, for the most part, the teeth of Medieval people were likely better than those of many today, particularly those who avoid dentists like we all avoid confronting the fact that not only are we all going to die, but everything we do, good or bad, will ultimately be forgotten, as will ourselves and all our descendants, and for that matter the entire human race and all of existence…Nothing matters, including you…

In fact, archaeological research has shown that “for much of the 2000-year period between the Iron Age and the end of the Medieval period”, less than 20% of teeth appear to show any evidence of tooth decay whatsoever. For comparison’s sake, similar, albeit more robust studies of the teeth of modern Americans show that this figure sits closer to 30%. As you’ve probably surmised, this figure is near universally agreed to be higher due to the abundance of sugar present in modern diets. It’s also worth noting that this figure is better than it was at the turn of the 20th century, when sugar was more readily available, but dental care was not, nor even when available nearly up to modern standards. Around this time some sources claim that anywhere upwards of 90% of teeth of adults showed evidence of decay in some western populations.

These figures, however, aren’t representative of wealthy people during the Medieval Period, who, despite having access to better dental care, often had worse teeth because of their sugar-rich diets. King Richard III, for example, who ruled during the latter half of the 15th century reportedly had terrible teeth based on an analysis of his skeletal remains, even having several teeth removed. As you might expect, it’s thought the sorry state of his teeth was almost certainly a byproduct of his wealth and privileged position which allowed him to endlessly indulge his sweet tooth.

In addition to being less at risk of cavities due to a diet naturally low in sugar, Medieval peasants are known to have routinely cleaned and maintained their teeth. Historical documents note that peasants would clean their teeth with rough linen or twigs similar to how we use toothbrushes today and would likewise chew on pleasant smelling herbs to freshen their breath as we would use toothpaste or mouthwash. This latter fact has led historians to conclude that clean teeth and fresh breath was just as desirable a trait during Medieval times as it is today because, shocker, people had noses back then too. There’s even an Medieval recipe for whitening teeth using a combination of sage, salt and the herb, elecampane, which has been used since ancient times to “fortify” teeth.  These remedies were all, of course, available to wealthy people, but the excess of sugar in their diets made them far less effective, meaning tooth decay was still more common with the rich and powerful.

Going back to chewing on twigs, the general method here was to chew one end of a twig for a time, then once it was properly mashed up, use that end as a sort of tooth brush. In fact, in some cases, while they didn’t know it at the time, the twigs or roots used actually contained antibacterial substances, perhaps why certain plants became so popular for this purpose as people observed the effects, even if they didn’t understand why they worked so well at cleaning the mouth and teeth. Turns out humans of any era we have historical record for, while they didn’t maybe have our understanding of things, were not stupid.

In addition to basic dental hygiene, peasants even had cures for ailments as serious as mouth cancer. Though these cures obviously were likely mostly ineffective, because, cancer. That said, they often made use of herbs such as sage and rosemary to mask the smell of gangrenous pus, again suggesting a particular stigma surrounding foul breath.

Speaking of bad breath, curiously enough, many early folk remedies from the Medieval period for bad breath made extensive use of mint. In fact, one folk remedy in particular tells readers that an effective cure for, as it calls it “stinking of the breath” is to gargle a mixture of mint, wine and birch before roughly scrubbing the teeth and gums. Just for a second, let the last part of that sentence soak in for a moment- peasants in Medieval times were aware of how important it is to clean your gums to keep your breath fresh. Keep in mind that dentists today still have to routinely tell patients not to forget to clean their gums when brushing their teeth.

So yeah, while we feel it is important to constantly remind people with their rose colored glasses that the past was just the worst and they sound like absolute ignorant fucking dumbasses who really should crack a history book once in a while when they say things like “I wish I lived in literally any time period but right now in history”… in this one rare case, I mean, while we’re not going to say it was better to live in the past, because we have some pretty awesome options for dental care that medieval people would have given their right molar’s for, and I think we can all agree a good Oreo Blizzard at Dairy Queen is worth the need for the occasional dentist checkup, the fact remains that Medieval peoples in the general case probably had better teeth than most of the people reading this. Just, you know, those sparkly medieval teeth had to be attached to bodies that lived in the past which was, say it with me- the worst.

Now, moving on from teeth to bathing and that side of hygiene, Medieval peoples had a rather fun way to do this that made your Saturday date night dinner with your partner look rather tame, which we’ll get into shortly. Yes, it turns out that, once again, humans during medieval times were just as keen as humans today to not stink, because, noses. Except for, of course, certain individuals… We’re looking at you Chris. Ya, take a bath dude.

First, let’s discuss washing hands, beyond doing so during a morning body scrub down from a basin (which by the way also seems to have include a good daily teeth scrub as mentioned), hands were also usually washed again before and after eating. Remember, this was a time before widespread use of utensils, and the fork at one point was actually viewed as sinful to use anyway for hilarious reasons we’ll get into in the Bonus Fact later.

Beyond eating with one’s hands, particularly those of lower classes also often ate and drank from the same containers as well. From this, it should come as no surprise that getting your hands clean before eating was considered good manners, and cleaning the fingers after was also something of a necessity to get remnants of food off.

Moving back to bathing, at least during medieval times, while some medical professionals did advise against doing it excessively, many others extolled the benefits of bathing regularly at keeping one healthy. For example, Italian physician Magninius Mediolanesis, who functioned as a court physician as well as for a time Regent master at the University of Paris, in the 14th century notes,

The bath cleans the external body parts of dirt left behind from exercise on the outside of the body… if any of the waste products of third digestion are left under the skin that were not resolved by exercise and massage, these will be resolved by the bath.

He also recommended bathing as a means to cure or ease discomfort, such as for the elderly and women who are pregnant.

Of course, when talking full body baths, only the reasonably well off at this point could actually afford to own a bath of some sort and to supply it with hot water, so most relied on bath houses, rivers, lakes, hot springs, etc. Thus, poorest of the poor who could not afford to go to a bath house are generally thought to have had extremely poor hygiene during the winter months, outside of washing using basins. But this wasn’t exactly by choice.

For the rest, bath houses were common, particularly after the 11th century when crusaders, who had become accustomed to such and the excellent hygiene habits of Muslim and Jewish peoples, popularized and regularly frequented these establishments not just for bathing purposes, but also to socialize and get spicy.

In fact, if we fast forward to the 15th century, bathing and eating at bath houses were often combined. As noted in the book: Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity, by Virginia Smith:

By the fifteenth-century, bath feasting in many town bathhouses seems to have been as common as going out to a restaurant was to become four centuries later. German bath etchings from the fifteenth century often feature the town bathhouse, with a long row of bathing couples eating a meal naked in bathtubs, often several to a tub, with other couples seen smiling in beds in the mid-distance.

While this might seem a little odd at first glance through a modern lens, consider that many people today enjoy soaking in a hot tub or pool with their friends while drinking alcoholic beverages, which is not too dissimilar to these former bath house practices, except now usually featuring skimpy bathing suits.

Going back to bath houses, given that many were connected to bakeries in order to use heat from their ovens to warm the water, let’s face it, there’s no way one could sit there in the water smelling freshly baked bread and not develop a voracious appetite.

And speaking of voracious appetites, given that many bath houses were not gender divided and featured naked, now clean people having a good time together, it should also come as no surprise that bath houses were known to be places to go to have a REALLY good time…

For those without a non-paid partner, these establishments were also frequently places to find or engage the services of exceptionally good smelling ladies of the night.

As you might have guessed from all this, many church groups looked down on bath houses for that reason. For example, consider this excerpt from an 11th century minister known as Burchard of Worms,

If thou, being a married man, hast shamed the nakedness of any woman, as, I say, her breasts and her shameful parts- if thou hast, thou shalt do penance for five days on bread and water. But if thou art not married, two days on bread and water.

Hast thou washed thyself in the bath with thy wife and other women and seen them nude, and they thee? If thou hast, thou shouldst fast for three days on bread and water.

However, contrary to popular belief, on the whole at this time, it doesn’t seem as if most church organizations had a big problem with the bathing itself, just the perceived immorality exhibited at many bath houses. For example, 6th century Pope Gregory I is known to have encouraged Christians to bathe regularly. And, as alluded to, Muslim and Jewish groups were likewise known to be even more fastidious than their Christian brethren about keeping clean.

As for the Christian church in Europe, to solve the issue of a whole lot of nakedness and lovin’ taking place at bath houses, it became relatively common for bath houses to be built by the various church groups themselves near monasteries. The difference between these bath houses and the other variety was that they were a whole lot less fun… Specifically, separating areas for men and women, instead of mixing them.

Further demonstrating that most church organizations did not really have anything against the act of bathing itself, many monasteries actually piped water into their own, sometimes elaborate baths, and even required the clergy to bathe before many events. For example, at Westminster Abbey, they required their monks to bathe for Christmas, Easter, at the end of June and at the end of September. This doesn’t mean, however, that the monks weren’t bathing elsewise, just that they were required to do so during these periods. In fact, evidence seems to indicate they bathed much more frequently than that, as they seem to have employed a bath-attendant year round at that Abbey.

So if people during medieval times actually did bathe reasonably frequently, where did the perception that they did not come from? This came about thanks to the latter end of this period and beyond where people really did start bathing less.

As to why, to begin with, around the mid-14th century about 60% of the European population died within about seven years or so- not too dissimilar to “The Snap”, but in this case because of the Black Death. This saw the former popular practice of people communing in bath houses together start to become decidedly less popular for a time, though it seems to have picked back up after.

Things went the other way again around the early 16th century when diseases like Syphilis were rearing their ugly heads in Europe. Around this same time, a popular notion arose in some regions of Europe that water could carry disease into the body through the pores in the skin, especially hot water.

It wasn’t just diseases from the water itself they were worried about. They also felt that with the pores widened after a bath, this resulted in infections of the air having easier access to the body. Hence, bathing, particularly at bathhouses, became connected with the spread of diseases.

Of course, given countless people were all bathing together in the same warm water, sharing food, and even sometimes having sex, this probably did genuinely invite the spread of disease at these establishments. Further, even in home baths water still was commonly shared with many people, as hauling it all in was no small task, and even much more work and cost if choosing to heat it up as well.

Thus, the popularity of bath houses began to significantly decline around when Syphilis was making the rounds. As noted by Dutch philosopher Erasmus in 1526,

Twenty-five years ago, nothing was more fashionable in Brabant than the public baths. Today there are none… the new plague has taught us to avoid them.

And to be fair, when choosing to be a little more stinky or getting the literal plague or syphilis without modern medicine available… Ya, solid choice ancestors. Checks out…

But, again, then, as now, people tended to still not like to stink if they could help it. Thus, without the bath houses around or as popular, many began mostly relying on the age old method of washing using a basin and the like as a primary means to keep clean, as well as, when weather permitted, taking dips in lakes and rivers.

To further get around the stink problem, people who could afford it took to frequently changing their linen undergarments, as well as rubbing themselves down with freshly clean linen or scented rags. Various perfumes were also used, as well as the practice of wearing small bags containing fragrant herbs. Herbs, such as salvia officinalis, bay leaves, and hyssop, were also commonly rubbed under the armpits and elsewhere for use as a deodorant.

That said, while most still bathed occasionally, just less frequently than before, it does appear that some, even among the nobility, really did forgo full body bathing at this point, or at least they’d claim such.

For example, one Russian ambassador to France noted, “His Majesty [Louis XIV] stunk like a wild animal.” Russians were not so finicky about bathing and tended to bathe regularly even after their European brethren had largely abandoned bath houses. King Louis XIV’s stench seems to have come from the fact that his physicians advised him to bathe as infrequently as possible to maintain good health. He also stated he found the act of bathing disturbing. Because of this, he is said to have only bathed in a bath twice in his lifetime.

Another in this “gruesome two-some” class among the aristocracy was Queen Isabel I of Spain who claimed that she had taken a full body bath only twice in her lifetime, when she was first born and when she got married. Of course, in both cases, they are perhaps forgetting many times servants perhaps bathed them as children. And given certain moral attitudes of the day, particularly in the case of Isabel, it may be that they were just saying they didn’t ever bathe, rather than this actually being the case.

Whatever the case, amazingly, these post-medieval time attitudes against regular full body bathing in certain pockets of Europe lingered among some groups until around the mid-19th century.

But to sum up, there doesn’t actually ever seem to be a time in recorded history that people are known to have ceased bathing in some form altogether, with the record for the least hygienic not going to our ultra distant ancestors like medieval peoples or those before, but to our more recent ones, with the abandoning of better hygiene by some groups around the 16th century and beyond thanks to widespread disease and the development of more prudish attitudes. And as for teeth? Ya, they probably had better teeth than you thanks to meticulous daily dental care, combined with diets more conducive to the health of teeth and gums than yours.

Bonus Fact:

Some of the earliest known table forks made their debut in Ancient Egypt. The Qijia culture (2400-1900 BC) that resided in part of present day China also are known to have used forks. A couple thousand years later, the fork’s popularity in the Western world spread via the Silk Road into Venice, with one of the earliest recorded instances of forks in Venice coming from an 11th century story of the wedding of a Byzantine princess, Theodora Anna Doukaina, to Domenico Selvo.She supposedly brought gold forks as part of her dowry. However, the God fearing Venetians saw these pronged monstrosities as a slight against The Lord himself who gave us perfectly good fingers to eat with. And if you’re now thinking we’re exaggerating, consider this quote from St. Peter Damian: “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating.”Of course, in the Book of I Samuel (2:13)- thought to have been composed around 640-540 BC- it states that Jewish priests’ assistants used forks: “And the priests’ custom with the people was, that, when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand…”Such trivial mentions as usage in the Holy scriptures by none other than the priests’ servants themselves didn’t stop many religious elite from vilifying the fork and poor Theodora. (They also didn’t like that she used napkins, among other things.)When the princess died two years later of a mysterious degenerative disease, it was considered by some to be punishment for her pride and perceived excesses.Despite being mentioned as OK to use in the Hebrew Bible, forks in the Western world continued to carry this negative stigma due to their association with Eastern decadence and being perceived as an affront to God.

The fork’s popularity began to grow, however, during the 16th century due to the infamous historical trend setter Catherine de Medici. She helped popularize the fork with the French tables after her marriage to Henry II. At this time, anything Italian was in vogue thanks to the Renaissance.

The fork also became more popular as hygiene ideals began to change, particularly as people started bathing and washing less frequently around this time, as previously noted. Naturally, the fork began to seem increasingly attractive to those who preferred their food to be free of anything on their hands.

However, many men still rejected them as they were considered too feminine. This attitude began to alter when they began to be crafted with ruffled cuffs…. This might seem strange to us, but let’s not forget that high heels were originally invented for men, who also commonly wore tights…

On that note, when forks began gaining in popularity, this resulted in less of a need for a pointed knife during meal times. As such, in 1669, Louis XIV- the same guy who loved doing up his hair, wearing tights, and high heels as was the manly fashion at the time- made these overly sharp knives illegal at the table and replaced them with blunter / wider ones.

That said, it wouldn’t be until the Industrialization period that the lower and middle classes began commonly using forks, thanks to the reduction in price. When this happened, forks quickly surpassed knives as the most popular cutlery item.

Finally, any mention of the history of cutlery would not be complete without giving a nod to the fact that ancient spoons in China also sometimes featured a pointy end to be used as a one prong fork / knife… perhaps the first known instance of the spork or spnife, depending on how you want to look at it.

Expand for References

• WHAT WAS DENTAL HEALTH LIKE IN THE MIDDLE AGES?
• Middle Ages Hygiene
• Medieval Times and Dental Health
• Medieval teeth ‘better than Baldrick’s’
• Atlantic Monthly Company, 1945
• Oral Health and Frailty in the Medieval English Cemetery of St. Mary Graces
• Ancient Herbs
• King Richard III’s teeth and jaw reveal monarch’s anxious life and violent death

The post Did People in Medieval Times Really Have Bad Teeth? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Karl Smallwood - December 09, 2022 at 02:05AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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What Do Scientologists Actually Believe?

Laura A. asks: What exactly do Scientologists believe?

Oh boy, we can already tell that the comment section for this one is going to be a ton of fun, so let’s just get straight to it. The Church of Scientology has a reputation as an infamously secretive and litigious organisation that hides its inner workings far from the prying eyes of the public. As a result, we kind of expected piecing together the church’s beliefs and stance on certain social issues to be a difficult, unforgiving slog. As it turns out, this wasn’t, on the surface, the case and the church is surprisingly forthcoming about both, although some feel there’s a veneer of insincerity in much of their official writings given what often leaks about their leadership to the press. It should also be noted that, as ever with any religion, beyond controversy within the church about specific precepts in terms of the official view verses what is practiced, individuals themselves can also practice the faith in their own unique ways, so saying what exactly the church believes is even more nebulous. Those caveats out of the way, let’s dive into it, shall we? So what do Scientologists believe?

Fortunately for our research the Church of Scientology maintains a fairly strong online presence and has an official website answering common questions members of the public have about their religion and beliefs. According to these sources the church “has no set dogma concerning God” and in theory, is remarkably liberal in its approach to personal morality. How this works in practise is debatable and the reputation of the church’s sometimes alleged draconian rules and strictly hierarchical internal power structure precedes itself. Likewise, noteworthy individuals who’ve spent time with the church and since renounced the religion outright have spoken of how non-conformity is strictly punished.

That said, within Scientology there exists only a singular deity known as the Supreme Being, a nebulous figure of which there is no official description and the religion has no set idea of what constitutes the afterlife. In the words of the church itself: “Scientology seeks to bring one to a new level of spiritual awareness where one can reach his own conclusions concerning the nature of God and what lies beyond this present lifetime.”

To this end Scientology is a rarity amongst religions in that individual followers are free to worship other gods and even celebrate other religious holidays or observe the rules of another holy text if they so wish, not unlike the Ancient Romans who were widely accepting of other deities, even almost universally openly embracing them. So, for example, a Sikh Scientologist can continue to wear a turban or follow the Khlasa, a Muslim Scientologist can fast during Ramadan, a Christian Scientologist can celebrate Christmas and a Jewish Scientologist can continue to abstain from pork without it being deemed to interfere with the duties of being a Scientologist. In fact, Scientologists are specifically instructed to respect the religions of others with the Church’s own “Moral code” stating: “The way to happiness can become contentious when one fails to respect the religious beliefs of others.”

For this reason, the Church openly takes part in seasonal Christmas celebrations, going as far to sell seasonal Scientology related gifts to members of the church such as at one point selling a CD player they inexplicably peddled for $500 dollars because they call it a “Clearsound Listening System” instead of something like a Walkman.

Like other religions, there are important days Scientologists are encouraged to celebrate including March 13 (founder L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday), May 9 (the day L. Ron Hubbard’s book, “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health” was released in 1950) as well as the day the first Church of Scientology was founded in your country of residence. In addition, the church also celebrates New Years Eve on December 31st, encouraging members to use it as an occasion to reflect on personal achievements.

Now, contrary to popular opinion, Scientologists don’t worship a giant prehistoric alien called Xenu, although the Intergalactic Tormentor does seemingly play a crucial role in the Church. For anyone unfamiliar with the story of Xenu, here’s a cliff-notes version of the alleged story for your edification.

Many millions of years ago an intergalactic space dictator called Xenu killed billions of his own people by dropping them into the volcanoes of Earth and vaporising them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these aliens survived, however, and were captured by Xenu who, for lack of a better term, brainwashed them all by forcing them to watch movies which implanted various pieces of false information such as imagery of Christ on the Cross as well as the creation stories of almost every other major world religion. Scientology posits then that the souls of these aliens, called Thetans in Scientology literature, live on and inhabit the bodies of all living things, causing both mental and physical anguish. It is the belief of Scientologists that humans can harness the legendary power of the Thetan soul inside of themselves to attain various superhuman abilities with the ultimate goal of most Scientologists being to reach the level of Operating Thetan. Upon reaching the level of Operating Thetan an individual is said to achieve a state close to godliness and, according to leaked documents will have abilities ranging from telekinesis to being able to just know when a hamburger is cooked perfectly.

All this said, the church has notably never publicly acknowledged the existence of Xenu. Further, official church documents do not claim that people will ever be given hamburger cooking superpowers and has in fact attempted to actively suppress information related to becoming an Operating Thetan or Xenu that has leaked in the past. The church notoriously also only grants this level of knowledge of the faith to people who reach the rank of OT3, a process that can cost many thousands of dollars and years of investment and devotion to the church. This is all something that stands in stark contrast to the creation stories of other world religions which are commonly known and openly taught.

Moving on from there, as it is the belief of many Scientologists that all humans are simply conduits for an immortal alien spirit, the most basic tenet of Scientology is simply to “survive”, first as an individual, then as a species and finally as a component of the universe itself. Scientologists then believe in something known as the “Eight Dynamics” which are defined as the fundamental aspects of life from an individual to a universe-wide macro level. The ultimate goal of Scientologists appears to be to understand life in relation to the Eight Dynamics and eventually reach the final, eighth level, which occurs when an individual Scientologist becomes one with the concept of infinity, simultaneously existing within all things… Or at least that’s our author’s understanding of the literature he read. This stuff is complicated and often a bit nebulous…

Moving on, which is hard when what we’re moving on from is a story about an ancient alien genocide using infinite hydrogen bombs in tandem with exploding volcanoes, how does one worship as a Scientologist? In short, there doesn’t appear to be any correct way to “worship” per se and individual Scientologists are encouraged to instead follow what it called the “Code of Honor”.

For the most part, members of the church are asked to keep in mind the Code of Honor while living their day to day lives, with this Code being fairly benign. In fact, most of the Code wouldn’t seem out of place plastered over a picture of a sunset being shared on Facebook by your grandmother. For example, the Code of Honor includes gems of wisdom like- “Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.”

And, “Be your own adviser, keep your own counsel and select your own decisions.”

However, some elements of the Code are altogether more, shall we say, unsettling given the reputation of the church and certain stories told by former members of how individuals are allegedly brutalised emotionally to make them more compliant. For example, an item like, “Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.”

Likewise entries from the Scientology Code of Honor like, “Never desert a group to which you owe your support,” and “Never withdraw allegiance once granted” have also caused some controversy among some.

On this note, individual Scientologists are purportedly expected to swear fealty to the Church and to allegedly sign billion year contracts when they join the Sea Org (a pseudo-military faction of the Church comprised of its most dedicated members) and that people who leave the church of their own accord have allegedly been harassed by current members for years after the fact. Although, to be fair on this one, openly leaving any religion can occasionally cause some harassment from those who are still participants. Humans are gonna human.

Whatever the case, this brings us to the issue of Suppressive Persons. “Suppressive Persons” is a somewhat vague term used by Scientologists to describe anyone who the church deems an “antisocial personality”, more or less an enemy of the church and its day-to-day operations. Anyone from Hitler to all psychiatrists make the list on this one. That said, officially the church’s position is that while it dislikes Suppressive Persons, it doesn’t necessarily bear ill-will against them. Unofficially, however the classification has been used as a scarlet letter to silence criticism and those who’ve been labelled SP’s by the church have, as noted previously, been allegedly stalked and harassed by more fanatical members of the church. A good example of this can be seen in the feature length Louis Theroux documentary, My Scientology Movie, which shows the titular documentarian being followed around by a camera crew allegedly sent to make a documentary on him by the Church. It’s all very meta.

In regards to psychiatrists, as Vice so aptly sums it up, Scientologists allegedly “really, really hate them” and have blamed the profession for everything from the death of George Washington to the 9/11 attacks. (If you’re curious, we cover what actually killed George Washington here.) The position of the church on psychiatry is perhaps no better summed up than by the fact that the church covertly co-founded a museum unimaginatively called “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” demonising the profession.

In regards to social issues, the church is somewhat more liberal than other religions in some ways. For example, officially the church has no stance on either abortion of the use of birth control and contraceptives, stating: “The Church of Scientology does not mandate a position on these subjects. They are an individual’s personal choice and Scientology parishioners are totally free to decide for themselves.”

In addition, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once made it clear to his flock that he had no interest in what they got up to in the bedroom and would no longer seek to control or limit the kind of sex individuals had. It should be noted here that, despite this, Hubbard had previously spoke out against both sexual promiscuity as well as so-called sexual deviancy, included in this homosexuality. Of course, people can grow and change, and change their minds, but those other comments still provide a bit of controversy to this day.

Regardless, in more recent years, the church has taken a far more liberal stance, stating that they don’t discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, race or creed. To quote: “Because people are spiritual beings, gender of a minister is not an issue in Scientology. Scientology is a meritocracy. There are no “glass ceiling” limitations based on race, gender, ethnicity or similar criteria for individuals who serve as ministers or as executives in the Church’s ecclesiastical management.”

That said, this official stance has been challenged by some who’ve since left the church and it has been claimed that homosexuals are allegedly frequently abused for their sexuality and there are allegations the church has attempted to “cure” gay members. Likewise, many former female members of the church have alleged being exposed to astonishing levels of sexism and misogyny during their tenure with the church.

In the end, in theory Scientology is a remarkably pliant and liberal religion which offers and individual almost unprecedented freedom among religions to set their own moral compass as long as they strive to live a good life. In reality, however, it has been strongly alleged that this isn’t really the case in practice, with the official teachings marred by the reputation of the inner workings of the church itself. What’s the truth of any of this? We’ll leave that for discussion in the comments below as we don’t want to get sued…. Allegedly…

On this note, the author of this piece, Karl Smallwood, actually tried calling the Church of Scientology to inquire about their beliefs and get some official quotes, but didn’t really get very far because the church representative spent most of the time encouraging Mr. Smallwood to visit a local church to speak to a representative in person rather than answering questions over the phone. Being an author here at TodayIFoundOut, it should be noted that this is impossible owing to being kept chained in a basement, where our glorious leader, may he reign forever, graciously gives us nutrient supplements and coffee so that we may continue our noble work of educating the world. Our author also notes he took one of the Church’s fancy online personality tests, but couldn’t access the results because the Church of Scientology would only give them out in person, and the nearest office they had was 60 miles from the basement he is kept in. While a church representative would be welcome to come to us, Mr. Smallwood notes he would not recommend this, as it’s likely said representative would find himself also chained up in the basement and recruited for the expansion of our writing team.

On the note of recruitment, it should be noted that nobody really knows how many authors we have here at TodayIFoundOut, nor how many Scientologists there are and the church itself has repeatedly been accused of massively inflating figures related to its membership. On this note, while the church claims membership in the tens of millions, more conservative estimates based on leaked information from high ranking members of the church place the number of practising Scientologists at less than 50,000. Worldwide.

The post What Do Scientologists Actually Believe? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Karl Smallwood - December 02, 2022 at 12:51AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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What Do Scientologists Actually Believe?

Laura A. asks: What exactly do Scientologists believe?

Oh boy, we can already tell that the comment section for this one is going to be a ton of fun, so let’s just get straight to it. The Church of Scientology has a reputation as an infamously secretive and litigious organisation that hides its inner workings far from the prying eyes of the public. As a result, we kind of expected piecing together the church’s beliefs and stance on certain social issues to be a difficult, unforgiving slog. As it turns out, this wasn’t, on the surface, the case and the church is surprisingly forthcoming about both, although some feel there’s a veneer of insincerity in much of their official writings given what often leaks about their leadership to the press. It should also be noted that, as ever with any religion, beyond controversy within the church about specific precepts in terms of the official view verses what is practiced, individuals themselves can also practice the faith in their own unique ways, so saying what exactly the church believes is even more nebulous. Those caveats out of the way, let’s dive into it, shall we? So what do Scientologists believe?

Fortunately for our research the Church of Scientology maintains a fairly strong online presence and has an official website answering common questions members of the public have about their religion and beliefs. According to these sources the church “has no set dogma concerning God” and in theory, is remarkably liberal in its approach to personal morality. How this works in practise is debatable and the reputation of the church’s sometimes alleged draconian rules and strictly hierarchical internal power structure precedes itself. Likewise, noteworthy individuals who’ve spent time with the church and since renounced the religion outright have spoken of how non-conformity is strictly punished.

That said, within Scientology there exists only a singular deity known as the Supreme Being, a nebulous figure of which there is no official description and the religion has no set idea of what constitutes the afterlife. In the words of the church itself: “Scientology seeks to bring one to a new level of spiritual awareness where one can reach his own conclusions concerning the nature of God and what lies beyond this present lifetime.”

To this end Scientology is a rarity amongst religions in that individual followers are free to worship other gods and even celebrate other religious holidays or observe the rules of another holy text if they so wish, not unlike the Ancient Romans who were widely accepting of other deities, even almost universally openly embracing them. So, for example, a Sikh Scientologist can continue to wear a turban or follow the Khlasa, a Muslim Scientologist can fast during Ramadan, a Christian Scientologist can celebrate Christmas and a Jewish Scientologist can continue to abstain from pork without it being deemed to interfere with the duties of being a Scientologist. In fact, Scientologists are specifically instructed to respect the religions of others with the Church’s own “Moral code” stating: “The way to happiness can become contentious when one fails to respect the religious beliefs of others.”

For this reason, the Church openly takes part in seasonal Christmas celebrations, going as far to sell seasonal Scientology related gifts to members of the church such as at one point selling a CD player they inexplicably peddled for $500 dollars because they call it a “Clearsound Listening System” instead of something like a Walkman.

Like other religions, there are important days Scientologists are encouraged to celebrate including March 13 (founder L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday), May 9 (the day L. Ron Hubbard’s book, “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health” was released in 1950) as well as the day the first Church of Scientology was founded in your country of residence. In addition, the church also celebrates New Years Eve on December 31st, encouraging members to use it as an occasion to reflect on personal achievements.

Now, contrary to popular opinion, Scientologists don’t worship a giant prehistoric alien called Xenu, although the Intergalactic Tormentor does seemingly play a crucial role in the Church. For anyone unfamiliar with the story of Xenu, here’s a cliff-notes version of the alleged story for your edification.

Many millions of years ago an intergalactic space dictator called Xenu killed billions of his own people by dropping them into the volcanoes of Earth and vaporising them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these aliens survived, however, and were captured by Xenu who, for lack of a better term, brainwashed them all by forcing them to watch movies which implanted various pieces of false information such as imagery of Christ on the Cross as well as the creation stories of almost every other major world religion. Scientology posits then that the souls of these aliens, called Thetans in Scientology literature, live on and inhabit the bodies of all living things, causing both mental and physical anguish. It is the belief of Scientologists that humans can harness the legendary power of the Thetan soul inside of themselves to attain various superhuman abilities with the ultimate goal of most Scientologists being to reach the level of Operating Thetan. Upon reaching the level of Operating Thetan an individual is said to achieve a state close to godliness and, according to leaked documents will have abilities ranging from telekinesis to being able to just know when a hamburger is cooked perfectly.

All this said, the church has notably never publicly acknowledged the existence of Xenu. Further, official church documents do not claim that people will ever be given hamburger cooking superpowers and has in fact attempted to actively suppress information related to becoming an Operating Thetan or Xenu that has leaked in the past. The church notoriously also only grants this level of knowledge of the faith to people who reach the rank of OT3, a process that can cost many thousands of dollars and years of investment and devotion to the church. This is all something that stands in stark contrast to the creation stories of other world religions which are commonly known and openly taught.

Moving on from there, as it is the belief of many Scientologists that all humans are simply conduits for an immortal alien spirit, the most basic tenet of Scientology is simply to “survive”, first as an individual, then as a species and finally as a component of the universe itself. Scientologists then believe in something known as the “Eight Dynamics” which are defined as the fundamental aspects of life from an individual to a universe-wide macro level. The ultimate goal of Scientologists appears to be to understand life in relation to the Eight Dynamics and eventually reach the final, eighth level, which occurs when an individual Scientologist becomes one with the concept of infinity, simultaneously existing within all things… Or at least that’s our author’s understanding of the literature he read. This stuff is complicated and often a bit nebulous…

Moving on, which is hard when what we’re moving on from is a story about an ancient alien genocide using infinite hydrogen bombs in tandem with exploding volcanoes, how does one worship as a Scientologist? In short, there doesn’t appear to be any correct way to “worship” per se and individual Scientologists are encouraged to instead follow what it called the “Code of Honor”.

For the most part, members of the church are asked to keep in mind the Code of Honor while living their day to day lives, with this Code being fairly benign. In fact, most of the Code wouldn’t seem out of place plastered over a picture of a sunset being shared on Facebook by your grandmother. For example, the Code of Honor includes gems of wisdom like- “Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.”

And, “Be your own adviser, keep your own counsel and select your own decisions.”

However, some elements of the Code are altogether more, shall we say, unsettling given the reputation of the church and certain stories told by former members of how individuals are allegedly brutalised emotionally to make them more compliant. For example, an item like, “Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.”

Likewise entries from the Scientology Code of Honor like, “Never desert a group to which you owe your support,” and “Never withdraw allegiance once granted” have also caused some controversy among some.

On this note, individual Scientologists are purportedly expected to swear fealty to the Church and to allegedly sign billion year contracts when they join the Sea Org (a pseudo-military faction of the Church comprised of its most dedicated members) and that people who leave the church of their own accord have allegedly been harassed by current members for years after the fact. Although, to be fair on this one, openly leaving any religion can occasionally cause some harassment from those who are still participants. Humans are gonna human.

Whatever the case, this brings us to the issue of Suppressive Persons. “Suppressive Persons” is a somewhat vague term used by Scientologists to describe anyone who the church deems an “antisocial personality”, more or less an enemy of the church and its day-to-day operations. Anyone from Hitler to all psychiatrists make the list on this one. That said, officially the church’s position is that while it dislikes Suppressive Persons, it doesn’t necessarily bear ill-will against them. Unofficially, however the classification has been used as a scarlet letter to silence criticism and those who’ve been labelled SP’s by the church have, as noted previously, been allegedly stalked and harassed by more fanatical members of the church. A good example of this can be seen in the feature length Louis Theroux documentary, My Scientology Movie, which shows the titular documentarian being followed around by a camera crew allegedly sent to make a documentary on him by the Church. It’s all very meta.

In regards to psychiatrists, as Vice so aptly sums it up, Scientologists allegedly “really, really hate them” and have blamed the profession for everything from the death of George Washington to the 9/11 attacks. (If you’re curious, we cover what actually killed George Washington here.) The position of the church on psychiatry is perhaps no better summed up than by the fact that the church covertly co-founded a museum unimaginatively called “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” demonising the profession.

In regards to social issues, the church is somewhat more liberal than other religions in some ways. For example, officially the church has no stance on either abortion of the use of birth control and contraceptives, stating: “The Church of Scientology does not mandate a position on these subjects. They are an individual’s personal choice and Scientology parishioners are totally free to decide for themselves.”

In addition, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once made it clear to his flock that he had no interest in what they got up to in the bedroom and would no longer seek to control or limit the kind of sex individuals had. It should be noted here that, despite this, Hubbard had previously spoke out against both sexual promiscuity as well as so-called sexual deviancy, included in this homosexuality. Of course, people can grow and change, and change their minds, but those other comments still provide a bit of controversy to this day.

Regardless, in more recent years, the church has taken a far more liberal stance, stating that they don’t discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, race or creed. To quote: “Because people are spiritual beings, gender of a minister is not an issue in Scientology. Scientology is a meritocracy. There are no “glass ceiling” limitations based on race, gender, ethnicity or similar criteria for individuals who serve as ministers or as executives in the Church’s ecclesiastical management.”

That said, this official stance has been challenged by some who’ve since left the church and it has been claimed that homosexuals are allegedly frequently abused for their sexuality and there are allegations the church has attempted to “cure” gay members. Likewise, many former female members of the church have alleged being exposed to astonishing levels of sexism and misogyny during their tenure with the church.

In the end, in theory Scientology is a remarkably pliant and liberal religion which offers and individual almost unprecedented freedom among religions to set their own moral compass as long as they strive to live a good life. In reality, however, it has been strongly alleged that this isn’t really the case in practice, with the official teachings marred by the reputation of the inner workings of the church itself. What’s the truth of any of this? We’ll leave that for discussion in the comments below as we don’t want to get sued…. Allegedly…

On this note, the author of this piece, Karl Smallwood, actually tried calling the Church of Scientology to inquire about their beliefs and get some official quotes, but didn’t really get very far because the church representative spent most of the time encouraging Mr. Smallwood to visit a local church to speak to a representative in person rather than answering questions over the phone. Being an author here at TodayIFoundOut, it should be noted that this is impossible owing to being kept chained in a basement, where our glorious leader, may he reign forever, graciously gives us nutrient supplements and coffee so that we may continue our noble work of educating the world. Our author also notes he took one of the Church’s fancy online personality tests, but couldn’t access the results because the Church of Scientology would only give them out in person, and the nearest office they had was 60 miles from the basement he is kept in. While a church representative would be welcome to come to us, Mr. Smallwood notes he would not recommend this, as it’s likely said representative would find himself also chained up in the basement and recruited for the expansion of our writing team.

On the note of recruitment, it should be noted that nobody really knows how many authors we have here at TodayIFoundOut, nor how many Scientologists there are and the church itself has repeatedly been accused of massively inflating figures related to its membership. On this note, while the church claims membership in the tens of millions, more conservative estimates based on leaked information from high ranking members of the church place the number of practising Scientologists at less than 50,000. Worldwide.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• Who Started the Lizard People Conspiracy Theory?
• The Popular Oneida Silverware and the Polyamorous Religious Cult That Started It All
• Who Started the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory, How Many Actually Believe This, and What Do They Believe Exactly?

Expand for References

Scientologists: How Many Of Them Are There, Anyway?

Inside Scientology

Do Scientologists celebrate Christmas?

The Scientology Christmas Catalog Is Totally Insane

Juliette Lewis Explains Why Scientologists Can Celebrate Christmas

SCIENTOLOGY v. the INTERNET

The Real Science Behind Scientology

Scientology’s hidden allegations of rape and abuse

7 Superpowers Available to Scientologists

Hacking the Future

Scientologists Really, Really Hate Psychiatrists

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The post What Do Scientologists Actually Believe? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Karl Smallwood - May 12, 2022 at 04:15PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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