The Largely Forgotten Airship Disaster That Helped Kill These Cruise Ships of the Sky

The age of the giant rigid airship or Zeppelin was tragically brief, lasting barely forty years from the first Zeppelin flights in 1900 to the scrapping of the last surviving such airship, the Graf Zeppelin II, in 1940. When we think of the end of giant airships, we tend to picture the Hindenburg, which met its end in fiery end outside Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. But while the Hindenburg was one of the final nails in the coffin for the dream of commercial lighter-than-air flight, the death of the giant airship had begun long before, with a long string of increasingly deadly crashes stretching all the way back to the turn of the century And among the worst was a now largely forgotten 1930 disaster that killed more people than the Hindenburg and ended the dream of airship travel in the British Empire. This is the story of the tragic loss of His Majesty’s Airship R-101.

The early leader in rigid airship technology was Germany, with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a former Army officer, making his first experimental flights in 1900. Zeppelin’s designs were the first to combine innovations such as a rigid aluminium frame, multiple hydrogen-filled gas cells, air filled ballonets for pressure control, and a water ballast system for altitude control into a single, workable package, and his sleek cigar-shaped creations soon became a common sight in the skies over southern Germany. Despite some early mishaps, within a decade Zeppelin had perfected the rigid airship into a dependable form of transport, and in 1910 he formed the world’s first airline, DELAG. The appeal of the Zeppelin as a form of commercial transport was obvious: compared to the small and primitive aircraft of the time, airships could carry a larger number of passengers longer distances in opulence and comfort approaching that of an ocean liner, with relatively little turbulence or risk of motion sickness. But there was a hitch: being lighter than air, Zeppelins were extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of wind and weather. Thus, unlike a modern airline DELAG never kept a regular schedule, its Zeppelins only flying when the weather permitted. Despite this the airline proved extremely popular with Germany’s elite, who gladly paid exorbitant fares for two-hour aerial excursions over the countryside.

To Zeppelin, however, DELAG was little more than a sideshow, for as a former Army officer he saw the airship primarily as a weapon of war. With the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, the German military, who had for years rejected Zeppelin’s proposals, finally expressed interest in airships and commandeered DELAG’s Zeppelins for military use. Particularly enthusiastic was the Imperial Navy, who on May 31, 1915 used Zeppelins to carry out the first aerial bombing raid on London. Such raids would continue throughout the war, and while they were a massive propaganda coup for the Germans and brought the horrors of war home to ordinary Britons, they caused relatively minor damage. And improved defences like antiaircraft guns and fighter aircraft firing incendiary bullets soon made Zeppelin raids increasingly costly, and resulted in most of Imperial Germany’s airships – and their crews – going down in flames.

After the war, with Germany’s economy in tatters and Zeppelin production banned by the Treaty of Versailles, the lead in airship development passed to the British. In July 1919, the British airship R.34 made history by making the first east-west crossing of the Atlantic from East Fortune, Scotland to Long Island, New York, a journey in 108 hours. Four days later it completed the return journey, making the first two-way aerial crossing of the Atlantic. While this feat demonstrated the viability of long-distance airship travel, the struggling British economy could not support further development and the airship program was shut down in 1921. The initiative passed once again to the German Zeppelin Company, who after Versailles Treaty restrictions were relaxed in 1923 produced a number of increasingly massive airships for foreign customers, including the USS Shenandoah for the U.S. Navy. Then, in 1928, the company produced what would become the only truly successful passenger airship: the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin. The Graf Zeppelin was unlike anything the world had ever seen, measuring a whopping 236 metres long and 30 metres tall and featuring accommodations for 24 passengers which rivalled most ocean liners for comfort and opulence. In 1929, in an event bankrolled by American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the Graf Zeppelin became the first airship to circumnavigate the globe, flying from Lakehurst, New Jersey to Friedrichshafen in Germany, then across the steppes of Siberia to Tokyo, then across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles, and finally cross-country back to Lakehurst, a total journey of 33,234 kilometres that took 21 days, 5 hours, and 31 minutes.

Meanwhile in Britain, the accomplishments of the Zeppelin company had reignited interest in airship travel. In 1924, after two years of lobbying, inventor and parliamentarian Sir Charles Burney introduced the Imperial Airship Scheme, an ambitious plan to connect Britain’s far-flung empire with a fleet of long-range airships. Unfortunately, Burney’s campaign coincided with the election of the Labour government of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, who slashed Burney’s proposed fleet of 6 airships to only two and organized a bizarre contest. One airship, the R.100, would be built by private enterprise, while the other, the R.101, would be built by a Government concern. This competition, the Government hoped, would demonstrate the superiority of public enterprise, and lead to the R.100 being dubbed the “capitalist ship” and the R.101 the “socialist ship.” Of the scheme, R.100 assistant engineer Nevil Shute – later to become famous as the author of novels like On the Beach and A Town Called Alice – wrote:

“The controversy of capitalism versus state enterprise has been argued, tested and fought out in many ways in many countries, but surely the airship venture in England stands as the most curious determination of this venture.”

Air Ministry specifications called for airships of not less than 140,000 cubic metres in volume, with a useful lifting capacity of 60 tons, accommodations for 100 passengers, fuel tankage for 57 hours’ flight, and a maximum speed of 110 km/hr. In case of war, the ships would also be expected to carry up to 100 fully-equipped troops or five fighter aircraft carried in onboard hangars.

R.100 was designed and built by the private engineering firm Vickers-Armstrong under the direction of engineer Barnes Wallis, later famous for designing the “bouncing bomb” used in the “Dambusters” raid during WWII. While ambitious in scale at 216 metres long – the second-largest airship at the time after Graf Zeppelin – in design the R.100 was relatively conservative, using proven technologies and construction techniques. This resulted in a vehicle that was not only sturdy, structurally efficient, and pleasant to fly, but which even exceeded its maximum design speed by nearly 20 km/hr. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The R.100’s construction hangar in Howden was infested with vermin and was so cold and humid that workers often arrived in the morning to find the airship’s aluminium frame covered in ice. A labour shortage even forced Vickers Armstrong to throw together a workforce composed mainly of hastily-trained local farmers. But after four years of endless delays, R.100 finally took to the skies for the first time on December 16, 1929, flying to the Royal Airship Works hangar in Cardington for preliminary testing. After a lengthy shakedown period in which numerous adjustments were made to the airship’s engines and fabric covering, the R.100 was declared fit for its first international flight. The initial plan had been to fly to India, but as the R.100 was fuelled with gasoline – considered too volatile for use in hotter climates – the destination was changed to Canada. On July 29, 1930, the R.100 left Cardington with 44 passengers and crews aboard and headed out over the Atlantic, reaching St. Hubert outside Montreal after 79 hours. The R.100 was a smash hit, staying in Canada for nearly two weeks and drawing massive crowds wherever it went. Finally, on August 13, the giant airship departed Montreal and returned to Cardington, completing the return journey in only 57 hours. The trip was a triumph for Vickers-Armstrong, who now had a winning entry for Sir Charles Burney’s Imperial Airship Scheme.

The Government-built R.101, however, was a different matter entirely. From the beginning the Air Ministry was determined to push the limits of airship design and produce the safest, most technologically advanced airship ever built. This, however, lead to a number of questionable design decisions. For instance, while most airships were built of lightweight aluminium alloy, R.101’s designers opted instead for stainless steel and a structural design that significantly reduced the volume of the lifting gas cells. Heavier diesel engines were also chosen over gasoline for greater safety in warm climates, and electric servomotors over simpler cable-actuated controls. This resulted in an airship so overweight that its useful lifting capacity was a mere 35 tons. In warmer climates like India this would drop to 24 tons due to reduced air density. And the problems didn’t end there. In an attempt to increase lift, the R.101’s designers loosened the nets holding the gas cells in place, causing them to chafe against the airship’s structure and leak gas. The cells also had a tendency to surge backwards and forwards, making the airship extremely unstable, while the new gas valves were so sensitive that they constantly vented precious hydrogen. Finally, instead of covering the entire structure with fabric and shrinking it tight with fabric dope as was common practice, the R.101’s designers decided to use smaller pre-doped panels laced into place, most of which rotted and tore before the airship ever left its hangar. In flight tests R.101 was sluggish and difficult to control, with a tendency to suddenly dive and climb. Indeed, about the only redeeming features of the airship were its palatial passenger quarters, which featured two decks of cabins, a gold-trimmed dining salon complete with potted palms, a promenade deck with picture windows, and even an asbestos-lined smoking room.

By the summer of 1930 it was clear that the R.101 was nowhere near ready to make its planned inaugural flight to Karachi in British India. But the successful Canadian flight of the R.100 forced the Government’s hand, for to delay the flight any further would be to admit defeat. Particularly insistent that the flight proceed on schedule was Lord Thomson of Cardington, the Secretary of State for Air. Thomson, who had designs on becoming Viceroy of India, believed that arriving triumphantly in the subcontinent aboard R.101 would greatly increase his chances of promotion, and scheduled the flight for September 1930 to coincide with the Imperial Conference in London.

But it was clear to even the most impatient Government official that the R.101 would never make it to India without extensive modifications. So on June 29, 1930, R.101 re-entered its shed at Cardington to be cut in half, lengthened, and fitted with an additional gas cell. It emerged on October 1 with an improved lifting capacity of 49 tons and total length of 236 metres – a metre longer than the Graf Zeppelin. In total, the British Government’s flagship Zeppelin had absorbed some 717,000 pounds of public funds, compared to only 500,000 for the R.100.

While some in Government like Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation, objected to Lord Thomson’s haste, the die was already cast. The R.101 was given a temporary certificate of airworthiness on the condition that certain tests be conducted en route to India, and the next three days were spent feverishly preparing the giant airship for its maiden voyage. Apparently ignorant of the R.101’s weight problems, the Government proceeded to load the ship up with cases of champagne, beer, and silverware for state dining and unroll a heavy blue carpet down the main corridor and passenger lounge. And while each crew member’s baggage allowance was capped at 10 pounds, Lord Thomson’s weighed in at nearly a ton. Yet despite this and the R.101’s long history of handling problems, Thomson remained supremely confident, declaring that the mighty airship was “as safe as a house.” Nonetheless, he prudently chose to purchase extra insurance for himself and his valet.

Finally, on the evening of October 4, 1930, R.101 prepared to depart Cardington with 54 people aboard – 42 crew and 12 passengers including Lord Thomson, Sir Sefton Brancker, and Reginald Colmore, the Director of Airship Development. The weather was blustery, with winds gusting up to 60 km/hr, and clouds prematurely darkened the horizon. Under any other circumstances the flight would have been postponed, but Lord Thomson was determined the flight should depart on schedule. At 6:36 PM the R.101 detached from its mooring mast, but instead of rising the giant airship began to rapidly sink to the ground. Nearly two tons of water ballast had to be jettisoned before the ship could be levelled. It was a foreboding taste of things to come.

From Cardington the R.101 set a course for the southeast coast and the English Channel, struggling against a 40 km/hr headwind. The crew found the ship sluggish and difficult to control, often dipping as close as 150 metres to the ground. A resident of the town of Hitchin north of London heard the drone of the approaching airship and ran outside to witness an alarming sight:

“We rushed out – and there was the R101 aiming straight for the house. She was so low it didn’t seem as if she could miss it. We could see the people dining, and the electric bulbs in the ceiling. She seemed to be going very slowly. As the green and red tail lights move away up the drive, horror descended on us all.”

At 8:21 the R.101 reached the coast and the radio operator signalled back to base:

“Over London. All well. Course now set for Paris.”

Despite encountering headwinds of up to 80 km/hr, the R.101 still did not turn back. And while airships typically cruised at a height three times their length, the R.101’s altitude over the channel averaged barely 300 metres. Furthermore, heavy turbulence caused the gas valves to continuously pop open, venting hydrogen and forcing the crew to dump ever more ballast to keep the ship airborne.

At 11:36 the R.101 crossed the French coast at Pointe de St. Quentin near the mouth of the Somme River. Shortly thereafter, the radio operator sent another message back home:

“After an excellent supper our distinguished passengers smoked a final cigar, and having sighted the French coast, have now gone to bed to rest after the excitement of their leave taking. All essential services are functioning satisfactorily. The crew have settled down to watch keeping routine.”

The ship was quiet now as she traversed the final 100km to Paris. At 2AM the watch changed as per usual, with Second Officer Maurice Steff relieving the ship’s Captain, Flight Lieutenant Carmichael Irwin, as Officer of the Watch. Four minutes later, however, the R.101 suddenly pitched forward and entered a steep dive. In the smoking lounge, foreman engineer Harry Leech, who was smoking a cigar before retiring to bed, was thrown against the wall along with all the lounge’s lightweight balsa wood furniture. The R.101 fell nearly 300 metres before Chief Coxswain George Hunt managed to level her. Realizing that a crash was inevitable, Flight Lieutenant Irwin ordered slow on the engine telegraph, ordered Rigger Samuel Church forward to manually release the water ballast, and sent Coxswain Hunt to wake the Captain. At 2:09 AM, as Hunt ran down the corridor yelling “we’re down lads!”, the R.101 struck the ground at a speed of 8 km/hr near the edge of a forest called the Bois de Coutumes, 50km northwest of Paris. The first person to see the airship go down was a rabbit trapper named Alfred Rabouille, who later described what happened next:

“There was at once a tremendous explosion that knocked me down. Soon flames rose into the sky to a great height. Everything was enveloped by them. I saw human figures running about like madmen in the wreck. Then I lost my head and an away into the woods.”

In the starboard aft engine car, engineer Joe Binks had just relieved engineer Arthur Bell when the R.101 struck the ground. The pair looked on in horror as the envelope burst into flames, the skeletal steel frame glowing white-hot in the heat. A moment later, a ballast tank burst above them, soaking them in water, and the pair took the opportunity to escape the wreckage. Scrambling with their backs to the flames, they gasped for air as the flames consumed all the oxygen around them. They soon came across another survivor: engineer Harry Leech, who had clawed his way out of the smoking lounge and fallen into a tree. Once safely on the ground Leech returned to the wreck to try and rescue more passengers, but it was already too late. Of the R.101’s 54 passengers and crew, only five others escaped the flames: engineers Victor Savory and Arthur Cook, Riggers Samuel Church and Walker Radcliffe, and wireless operator Arthur Disley. Church and Radcliffe later died of their injuries, bringing the total dead to 48 – 8 more than in the more famous Hindenburg disaster, where by the way in the Hindenburg’s case, over half the passengers survived.

By morning little remained of the R.101 but a charred skeleton at the edge of the wood. The bodies of the crew and passengers, most burned beyond recognition, were laid out under bedsheets, while the survivors were placed in the care of nuns at a nearby hospital. The disaster shocked the world, and a day of mourning was observed throughout France and her colonies. When the bodies were carried to the railway station for transport to Britain, 100,000 people and battalions of French infantry and cavalry escorted the coffins. In London, half a million people watched the funeral procession, which stretched for two miles and took an entire hour to pass. The bodies were buried in a common grave at Cardington and a marble memorial erected on the site.

A board of inquiry was convened, and to nobody’s surprise much of the blame for the disaster was placed on the Government’s excessive haste and corner-cutting, the board concluding:

 “It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the R101 would not have started for India on the evening of October 4th if it had not been that reasons of public policy were considered as making it highly desirable for her to do so if she could.”

No charges were ever laid, as all those responsible – including Lord Thomson – had perished in the disaster. The actual cause of the crash itself, however, has never been determined, the leading theory positing that a gust of wind tore away a large section of the R.101’s fabric covering, causing its forward gas cell to suddenly lose a large volume of hydrogen. Nor is it known what caused the R.101 to catch fire, for many airships had crashed under similar circumstances without exploding. Here again theories abound, including that a severed electrical cable created sparks, that a gas cell rubbing against the structure generated static electricity, or that ballast water spilled onto calcium signal flares stored in the control car. But whatever the cause, the disaster soured British opinion towards giant airships, with newspaper headlines calling for the Government to “Ban the Gas Bags!” The Committee on National Expenditure recommended that the Imperial Airship Scheme be scrapped, and in November 1931 the R.100, despite its excellent flight record, was broken up and sold as scrap for barely 600 pounds.

But while crash of the R.101 was the worst aviation disaster in British history up until that point, it was neither the first nor the worst airship disaster. On December 21, 1923, the French military airship Dixmunde, a former German Zeppelin confiscated as war reparations, exploded in a thunderstorm off the coast of Sicily, killing 52 of its crew. A year earlier on February 21, 1922, the Italian-built U.S. Navy airship Roma crashed into power lines near Norfolk, Virginia and exploded, killing 34. This disaster convinced the Navy to fill all its subsequent airships with safer Helium, on whose production the U.S. Government held a virtual monopoly. But even this could not save the airships from their traditional enemy: the weather. On September 3, 1925, the USS Shenandoah was on a goodwill tour of the Midwest when it ran into a squall line near Caldwell, Ohio and was torn apart, killing 14 of its 43 crew.

In 1929, believing it could outdo the venerable Zeppelin company, the U.S. Navy began construction on two Akron-class airships, the largest Helium-filled dirigibles ever built. Measuring 239 metres long, the Akron class ships were designed to perform forward aerial reconnaissance for the fleet and serve as flying aircraft carriers, carrying a complement of Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighters which could be launched and recovered using a retractable trapeze. On April 4, 1933, the U.S.S. Akron, the lead ship in her class, was conducting an exercise off the coast of New Jersey when she encountered a storm and was thrown into the sea. The airframe quickly broke up and sank in the stormy waters, carrying 73 of her 76 crew to their deaths. It was the single worst airship disaster in history. Two years later on February 12, 1935, her sister ship, the U.S.S. Macon, ran into a storm off Point Sur, California and crashed. While lessons learned from the Akron crash led to all but 2 of her crew being rescued, the Macon was also swallowed up by the waves, bringing the era of American airships to an end.

The decommissioning of the U.S. Navy’s last remaining airship, the U.S.S. Los Angeles, left only one giant airship operating in the world: the German Hindenburg…and, well, we all know how that ended. No longer able to be used for passenger flights, the Hindenburg’s sister ship, Graf Zeppelin II, was acquired by the German Air Ministry and used to probe British radar defences before finally being broken up in April 1940 so its aluminium could be used to build other aircraft. The age of the rigid airship was over.

During their brief heyday, airships seemed to many like the way of the future, promising a more elegant form of air travel with all the grace and comfort of a luxury ocean liner. But the stately giants of the air never lived up to that promise, proving more troublesome and deadly to operate than their champions dared admit. After barely 40 years they were gone from the skies, for by then it clear that the future of aviation belonged not to the airship, but to the aeroplane.

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:

• The Woman Who Survived All Three Disasters Aboard the Sister Ships: the Titanic, Britannic, and Olympic
• Can Sea Captains Really Officiate Legally Binding Marriages?
• Why We Break A Bottle of Champagne Against New Ships
• Over Half the People Involved in the Hindenburg Disaster Survived

Expand for References

Botting, Douglas, The Giant Airships, The Epic of Flight, Time Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1981

 

The Imperial Airship Scheme, Airship Heritage Trust, https://www.airshipsonline.com/airships/r101/index.html

 

R.101 Crew and Passenger List, Airship Heritage Trust, https://www.airshipsonline.com/airships/r101/R101%20Passenger%20%20Crew%20List.htm

 

Crash of the British Airship R-101, https://ift.tt/qZItufh

The post The Largely Forgotten Airship Disaster That Helped Kill These Cruise Ships of the Sky appeared first on Today I Found Out.

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by Gilles Messier - April 10, 2023 at 10:02PM
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Review: Haddar Gluten Free Brownie Bark

This snack was clearly a knockoff of Brownie Brittle, with some obvious differences being that it was Kosher for Passover and gluten free -- with the help of potato starch. ...

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The Mysterious and Fascinating World of ‘Numbers Stations’

Shortwave radio signals, which occupy the radio frequency band between 3 and 30 megahertz, have the unique ability to bounce or “skip” off the earth’s ionosphere, allowing them to propagate over vast distances. This has attracted a devoted international community of shortwave radio enthusiasts, who exploit the unique properties of the medium to listen to and communicate with shortwave stations from around the globe. But among the vast ecosystem of amateur broadcasters, international news services, and emergency communications networks, every so often shortwave operators stumble upon something truly eerie and bizarre. Take the frequency 4625 kilohertz, known to radio amateurs as UVB-76 or simply “The Buzzer.” First discovered in 1985, The Buzzer broadcasts nothing but a constant, monotonous buzz, made up of two distinct tones repeating 25 times per minute. Every few weeks or so, this buzzing is interrupted by a voice, which proceeds to read out a string of random words or numbers in Russian. The buzzing then resumes, carrying on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. While the source of UVB-76 has been traced to two sites outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, no agency or organization has ever admitted to operating the station. This had lead to endless speculation as to the Buzzer’s function, with some theorizing it is used to probe the ionosphere for radio interference, others that it is part of Russia’s infamous “Dead Hand” system, designed to automatically launch the nation’s nuclear arsenal in case of attack. More likely, however, is that the Buzzer belongs to a curious breed of radio stations whose origins lie in the shadowy world of Cold War espionage and which continue to faithfully serve the world’s intelligence services to this day. Welcome to the strange and mysterious world of Numbers Stations.

Numbers Stations are nearly as old as radio itself, with the first examples appearing in Europe during the First World War. Their numbers exploded, however, in the Cold War era, with the phenomenon first coming to the attention of radio amateurs around the mid-1970s. Numbers Stations are so-named because they typically broadcast nothing but seemingly random strings of numbers, letters, or sometimes words. These messages are transmitted in a variety of formats, including Morse Code, phase or frequency shifting, and voice – either real or synthesized. Each string of numbers is usually preceded by a unique identifier or callsign, which often forms the basis for the colourful nicknames given to the stations by radio amateurs. One of the most famous numbers stations, the “Lincolnshire Poacher,” used as its callsign the first bars of the English folk song of the same name, synthesized to sound like a calliope organ and repeated 12 times. This was followed by a British-accented female voice reading a string of numbers. First heard in the 1970s, the Lincolnshire Poacher initially broadcasted from Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire but later moved to the Royal Air Force Station at Akrotiri on the island of Cyprus. It ceased broadcasting in 2008. A similar station called Cherry Ripe, which also used an English folk song as its callsign, broadcast from somewhere in the south Pacific until 2009. Other famous Numbers Stations include “Ready! Ready!” “Allo! Allo!” “The English Man”, “The English Woman”, “Oblique”, “Swedish Rhapsody”, “Nancy Adam Susan”, “Cynthia”, “The Babbler”, “Squeaky Wheel” “The Pip”, and “Magnetic Field”, the latter named for its use of a song by French electronic composer Jean-Michel Jarre. While many of these stations broadcast in English, not all originated in English-speaking countries. For example, “Ready! Ready!” and “The Babbler” are thought to have originated in Bulgaria, “The English Man” in Russia, “The English Lady” in Ukraine, and “Oblique” in Poland.

The eerie and mysterious nature of numbers stations soon attracted a devoted community of radio amateurs, who began to actively seek out, classify, and study these enigmatic broadcasts. The number of recorded numbers stations quickly grew so large that in 1993 a station tracking group called ENIGMA 2000 developed a designation system to keep track of them all. This system classifies stations using a letter prefix indicating the type of broadcast and a number indicating its order of discovery. For example, E indicates a station broadcasting in English, G in German, S in Slavic, V in all other languages, M in Morse Code, and X in all other modes such as frequency and phase-shifting. But as obsessive and meticulous as this might sound, some aficionados have taken their obsession with numbers stations to even more absurd heights. From the moment he stumbled upon his first numbers station in 1992, British radio amateur Akin Fernandez was hooked, explaining in a 2004 interview:

“You’re listening, and all of a sudden you come across a really strong signal. It’s the most chilling thing you’ve ever heard in your life. These signals are going everywhere and they could be for anything. There’s nothing like it.”

Over the next five years, Fernandez spent nearly every waking hour meticulously recording and categorizing every numbers station he could track down. This work culminated in 1997 with the release of The Conet Project, one of the strangest albums in the history of recorded music. Named after the Czech word for “end,” which Fernandez heard often on the airwaves, The Conet Project comprised four CDs filled with over 280 minutes of excerpts from numbers stations around the world, along with a 74-page booklet detailing the background and details of each broadcast. While the album initially sold only 2000 copies, it had a strangely significant impact on the world of music, being sampled in a variety of other artistic projects including the band Porcupine Tree’s 1999 album Stupid Dream, Wilco’s 2001 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the soundtrack of the 2001 Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky.

But just what are these eerie broadcasts for? Are they merely pranks, placeholders for certain radio frequencies, or something more sinister? While for decades numbers stations remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of radio broadcasting, starting in the 1980s a number of international incidents finally began to shed light on their enigmatic purpose. In 1988, British Intelligence detected a strong radio signal emanating from the flat of Dutch national Erwin van Haarlem. London Police raided the flat and found van Haarlem sitting in front of a short wave radio, listening to a numbers station based in Czechoslovakia. Codebooks were later discovered in a hollowed-out bar of soap, and van Haarlem revealed to be a Czech agent named Václav Jelínek. Later that year, when the communist regime of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceasescu collapsed, all numbers stations broadcasting from Romania abruptly stopped. And in October 2011, when German Police raided the Margburg home of Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, they caught the couple sitting at a shortwave radio receiver, receiving coded instructions from Moscow. When interrogated, the Anschlags revealed that they always received instructions at 6PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays – a schedule that happened to coincide perfectly with a Russian numbers station known as XPA. These and other incidents have led experts to suspect that numbers stations are in fact a clever means of solving a classic problem faced by nations trying to communicate with their agents abroad.

Secure communication is one of the key pillars of spycraft. Throughout history, spies and their handlers have come up with increasingly sophisticated methods of keeping secret messages safe from prying eyes, from physically hiding them in ordinary objects – a craft known as steganography – to obscuring them using codes and ciphers. But simply rendering a message unreadable to the enemy is no guarantee of security, as merely being caught sending or receiving a coded message can be enough to expose and condemn a suspected spy. And the steady march of technology only made matters worse, for as easy as it was to intercept a letter or telegram, it was even easier to tap a phone or listen in on a radio signal. This was the dilemma facing the All-Russian Co-operative Society or ARCOS in the 1920s. Officially, ARCOS was a diplomatic body governing economic trade between the UK and the newly-formed Soviet Union. However, intercepts of encrypted Soviet radio signals by the British Secret Intelligence Service or SIS revealed that the organization was in fact a front for Soviet espionage activities in the country. In May 1927, the British Government launched a raid against ARCOS headquarters London, where they discovered a secret room filled with workers hurriedly burning reams of secret documents. Realizing that the British had been reading and decrypting their broadcasts for years, almost overnight the Soviet OGPU intelligence service – precursor to the KGB – changed the way it communicated with its agents abroad. Most significantly, the OGPU switched to an enciphering system known as one-time pads, randomly-generated single-use ciphers whose keys are the same size as the plaintext being encoded – eliminating any repeats that can be exploited by codebreakers. So long as each key is used only once, one-time pads are considered mathematically impossible to crack and an absolutely secure form of encryption. To prevent the keys from falling into enemy hands, one-time pads are often printed on water-soluble or flammable paper so they can easily be soaked, swallowed, or burned.

The absolute security afforded by one-time pads allowed the Soviets to broadcast coded messages in the open, on common civilian radio frequencies. This way, while anyone could theoretically intercept the signal, only those with the one-time key could decipher it. And as it was impossible to tell who the signal was intended for, this system provided a useful degree of plausible deniability for agents, as Akin Fernandez explains:

“This system is completely secure because the messages can’t be tracked, the recipient could be anywhere. It is easy. You just send the spies to a country and get them to buy a radio. They know where to tune and when.”

This system, known as one-way voice link or OWVL, was quickly adopted by a variety of countries, including the UK, which during the Second World War transmitted instructions to the French Resistance and other Allied agents in occupied Europe via coded messages embedded in BBC radio broadcasts. Later, SIS and other intelligence agencies established dedicated numbers stations to communicate with their agents in the field, using the long-range capabilities of shortwave radio to carry their secret messages to every corner of the globe. As espionage expert Rupert Allason explains:

“Nobody has found a more convenient and expedient way of communicating with an agent.

Their sole purpose is for intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents in denied areas – a territory where it is difficult to use a consensual form of communications.”

Indeed, while numbers stations might seem like an outmoded relic of the Cold War, made obsolete by the advent of computers, the internet, and other sophisticated communications technology, in reality quite the opposite is true. Every message sent on a computer or over the internet leaves a digital trace, making absolute security difficult to achieve without incredibly strict communications protocols and sophisticated encryption. Numbers stations broadcasts, on the other hand, are untraceable, efficient, and cost-effective, meaning this system still has a place in the modern landscape of high-tech espionage.

Perhaps the most famous recent espionage case involving a numbers station is the 1998 “Atención” case, in which five agents of the Cuban Wasp network were arrested in Miami. One piece of evidence later used to convict the agents of espionage was that they had received instructions from a Cuban-based numbers station known as “Atención”. Three years earlier, FBI agents had entered the home of a network member and copied decryption software from his laptop, allowing the FBI to decode Atención broadcasts. These messages included instructions to recruit local contacts and intelligence sources, a greeting for International Women’s Day on May 8, and a warning against accepting flights from Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based anti-Castro organization. Interestingly, the only reason Atención was known to be of Cuban origin in the first place is because a technical error resulted in a snippet of a Radio Havana broadcast becoming mixed in with the signal. More recently, another Cuban numbers station was involved in the case of Ana Montes, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who in 2002 was convicted of spying for the Cuban government for nearly 17 years. According to prosecutors, Montes received her instructions via shortwave radio and decoded them using one-time-pads printed on water-soluble paper. North Korea has also made extensive use of numbers stations, suddenly resuming broadcasts in July 2016 after a 16-year hiatus. This is thought to be an act of psychological warfare, meant to put Western intelligence analysts on edge.

But what of UVB-76, the mysterious “Buzzer” that barely seems to broadcast anything but its signature droning tone? While no government agency has of yet admitted to operating the station, the most likely suspect is the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR, the agency to which German spies Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag belonged. And while the Buzzer and similar Russian stations like “The Pip” and “Squeaky Wheel” do not fit the typical profile of numbers stations, experts believe this is because they are on standby, kept in reserve for a future conflict or major deployment of Russian agents. The mysterious “buzz,” then, is likely just a placeholder, meant to discourage other broadcasters from using that particular frequency. Evidence for this theory emerged in 2013 when, after nearly 30 years of nothing but buzzing and brief number strings, UVB-76 suddenly broadcast the ominous message “Command 135 Issued.” According to radio enthusiast Māris Goldmanis, this was likely a test message, meant to bring the whole broadcast system onto a simulated war footing. So as unsettling as UVB-76’s endless, monotonous drone might be, should that drone ever stop, it might be a sign that something very, very bad is about to happen.

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:

• Does Eye Black Actually Do Anything?
• How One of the Most Beautiful Women in 1940s’ Hollywood Helped Make Certain Wireless Technologies Possible
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• How World War I Helped Popularize the Bra

Expand for References

Sorrel-Dejerne, Olivia, The Spooky World of the ‘Numbers Stations’, BBC News, April 16, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24910397

Number Stations, Priyom, https://priyom.org/number-stations

Numbers Stations Research and Information Center, https://www.numbers-stations.com/lincolnshire-poacher/

Gorvett, Zaria,  The Ghostly Radio Station That No One Claims to Run, BBC Future, July 15, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170801-the-ghostly-radio-station-that-no-one-claims-to-run

Segal, David, The Shortwave and the Calling, Washington Post, August 3, 2004, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35647-2004Aug2.html

Goldmanis, Maris, Explaining the ‘Mystery’ of Numbers Stations, War on the Rocks, May 24, 2018

The post The Mysterious and Fascinating World of ‘Numbers Stations’ appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - April 07, 2023 at 04:48AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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The Horrifying Origin of the Term “Stool Pigeon”

American gangster films of the 1920s, 30s and 40s have contributed a wealth of colourful slang to the English language, much of which is still floating around popular culture to this day: “sleeping with the fishes”, “concrete overshoes”, “G-man”, “Chicago typewriter”, “goon”, “big house”, “private dick”, “speakeasy”, “Chicago overcoat”, “ride the lightning”, “fuzz”, and many others. But while many of these terms are self-explanatory or have relatively well-known origins, one piece of Prohibition-era slang stands out among the rest: “stool pigeon”, meaning a police informant. But while this term might evoke images of someone perched on a stool in a police interrogation room and being made to “sing” like a bird, the actual origins of this term are significantly more horrific, and tied to the greatest manmade extinction event in modern history.

In May 1850, Chief Simon Pokagon, of the Potawatomi tribe was camping near the Manistee River in Michigan when he beheld an astonishing sight:

“One morning on leaving my wigwam I was startled by hearing a gurgling, rumbling sound, as though an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me. As I listened more intently I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm and beautiful. Nearer and nearer came the strange commingling sounds of sleigh bells, mixed with the rumbling of an approaching storm. While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season. They passed like a cloud through the branches of the high trees, through the underbrush and over the ground, apparently overturning every leaf.”

The gigantic flock Chief Pokagon witnessed was composed of Ectopistes migratorius, better known as the Passenger Pigeon. Once the most abundant birds in North America – and possibly the world – at their peak Passenger Pigeons numbered some 5 billion. Their range extended from central Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia south to Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, with their main nesting areas stretching from the Great Lakes east to New York. A highly nomadic and communal species, Passenger pigeons migrated across the continent in vast flocks in search of beechnuts, acorns, chestnuts, and other seeds to eats and hardwood trees to roost and nest in. These flocks were often hundreds of millions or even billions strong, and were an awesome sight to behold. One flock observed over Southern Ontario in 1866 was 800 kilometres long and took 14 hours to pass overhead, while in 1855 a flock passing over Columbus, Ohio was so large and dense it blotted out the midday sun:

“As the watchers stared, the hum increased to a mighty throbbing. Now everyone was out of the houses and stores, looking apprehensively at the growing cloud, which was blotting out the rays of the sun. Children screamed and ran for home. Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed. [When the flock passed two hours later], the town looked ghostly in the now-bright sunlight that illuminated a world plated with pigeon ejecta.”

To give an idea of how inconceivably abundant these birds were, American nature writer and poet Christopher Cokinos has calculated that if the entire population of Passenger Pigeons were to have flown single-file, the flock would have stretched around the globe 22 times. Yet little more than a half-century later, there would not be a single Passenger Pigeon left alive anywhere on earth.

When European settlers first arrived on the North American continent, Passenger Pigeons provided a conveniently abundant source of protein. Indeed, even waving a long pole in the low-flying flocks was guaranteed to kill a few birds. But so vast were the flocks that such subsistence hunting posed little threat to the birds’ survival. However, the massive post-Civil War migration of settlers into the American West drove up demand for food, creating a brand-new industry of professional pigeon hunters. And right from the start, business was booming, as the Wisconsin newspaper the Kilbourn City Mirror reported in 1871:

“Hardly a train arrives that does not bring hunters or trappers. Hotels are full, coopers are busy making barrels, and men, women, and children are active in packing the birds or filling the barrels. They are shipped to all places on the railroad, and to Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.”

Commercial pigeon hunters used every method at their disposal to kill the greatest number of birds possible. They shot at them with shotguns, trapped them in nets, set fire to their roosts, gassed them out of the trees with burning sulphur, and even poisoned them with corn soaked in alcohol. And it is among these varied methods that we find the most commonly-accepted origin for the term “stool pigeon” – and any animal lovers or squeamish types in the audience might want to turn off the video now.

Still here? Well, don’t say we didn’t warn you…

One particularly gruesome method used by pigeon hunters was to take a live pigeon, sew its eyelids shut, and nail it to a stool. Its cries of distress would attract nearby pigeons, who would subsequently be killed. It did not take long for this practice to be associated with people who betray their own kind. However, while this is the most oft-cited origin for the term, there are several issues with this explanation which have led lexicographers to suspect it of being a false etymology.

For starters, while “stool pigeon” was used to mean “informant” as early as 1828, when it appeared in the first edition of Webster’s Dictionary, explicit references to the hunting practice do not appear until the 1870s, with its first known appearance being in M. Schele de Vere’s 1871 dictionary Americanisms; the English of the New World:

“Stool-Pigeon… it means the pigeon, with its eyes stitched up, fastened on a stool, which can be moved up and down by the hidden fowler.”

This 40-year gap suggests that either the two uses of the term developed independently, or that the hunting practice was retroactively applied as the origin of a much older term.

There are also more practical issues with the common etymology of “stool pigeon.” For example, it is dubious that hunters would go to the trouble of carrying a wooden stool into the bush solely for the purpose of hunting. Some etymologists thus suggest that the “stool” in “stool pigeon” actually derives from the 16th-century stoale, meaning the base or stump of a tree – a far likelier place for a decoy pigeon to be nailed. Still others suggest that the term has nothing to do with platforms and is instead derived from the French word estale, used to describe a pigeon used to entice a hawk into a net. Indeed, by the early 15th Century the term had entered the English language as stale, used to describe someone who baits or entrap another. It is this meaning of the word that the sorcerer Prospero employs in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, when he commands the spirit Ariel:   

“The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither for stale to catch these thieves.”

An alternate spelling of stale was stall, which came to describe a pickpocket’s accomplice who distracted a mark while they were robbed. This usage survives to this day in the phrase “stall for time.” As for the other part of the expression, the term “pigeon” has been used since at least the 16th century to describe someone who is foolish or gullible. Thus it is possible that the term “stool pigeon” never had anything to do with hunting, and instead simply combined two preexisting slang words to describe a gullible person used as a decoy by criminals. Whatever the case, by the 1840s the term “stool pigeon” was ill-understood to mean “informant”, and had acquired the verb forms “stooling” or “to stool.” Later in the 1920s, the term was shortened to simply “stoolie.”

But while the cruel 1870s hunting practice may not have given us a colourful piece of criminal slang, it – along with the myriad other tactics used by commercial pigeon hunters – contributed to a slaughter on a scale almost imaginable today. During a single hunting season in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878, some 50,000 birds were killed every single day for nearly 5 months straight. The birds were so abundant that they sold for as little as fifty cents a dozen. Yet people continued to believe that Pigeon stocks were inexhaustible, with no less a figure than great ornithologist John James Audubon stating that:

“… nothing but the gradual diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease as they not infrequently quadruple their numbers yearly, and always at least double it.”

And when, in 1857, a bill was brought before the Ohio State Legislature seeking protection for the Passenger Pigeon, a selected committee of the Senate dismissed the petition as unnecessary, concluding that:

“The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced.” 

Similar efforts at protection also failed, and the slaughter continued unabated. It was not until the 1890s, when Passenger pigeon flocks had started to become noticeably depleted, that serious conservation legislation was passed in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. But it was already too late. Passenger pigeon numbers were in freefall, the billions-strong flocks of just a few decades ago now a thing of the past. By the turn of the 20th Century, the bird had completely vanished in the wild, with the last known wild example, a female nicknamed “Buttons”, being shot in Pike County, Ohio in 1900. In 1903, the only Passenger Pigeons left in the world belonged to a captive flock kept by Professor Charles Whitman of the University of Chicago. Whitman attempted to breed his pigeons by getting common Rock Doves to foster their eggs, but was unsuccessful. By 1906, he was down to only five birds. The end finally came on September 1, 1914, when the last known survivor, a 29-year-old female named Martha, died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. The Passenger Pigeon was no more.

But how did this happen? How did the most abundant bird in North America, whose flocks were so enormous they blotted out the sun, go from a population of billions to zero within the span of a human lifetime? While the unchecked commercial slaughter that raged from the 1860s onwards was the main cause, but there were a number of additional factors that hastened the Passenger Pigeon’s rapid demise. Among these, as John James Audubon had predicted, was the large-scale destruction of the birds’ natural habitat. Passenger Pigeons relied on large stands of oak, chestnut, and beech trees in which to roost, nest, and feed – stands which were being systematically cut down to clear land for agriculture and supply timber for industry. The birds large numbers also worked against them. The Pigeons’ iconic behaviour of travelling in giant flocks evolved as a survival strategy known as predator satiation – the idea that no group of predators, no matter how large, could possibly kill enough members of a flock to have any impact on the total population. Unfortunately, this behaviour made the birds extremely vulnerable to human hunters, making them easy to slaughter in large numbers. Worse still, Passenger Pigeons were extremely social and gregarious birds, requiring large flocks to carry out mating rituals and raise their young. Once a flock’s size dropped below a certain threshold – whether due to hunting or habitat loss – its members became unable to breed successfully, dooming the flock to inevitable decline and death. This is why efforts to breed the last captive Passenger Pigeons were unsuccessful, and why recent proposals to resurrect the Passenger Pigeon through Jurassic Park-style cloning are likewise doomed to fail: the birds simply cannot breed successfully in small groups. Furthermore, the vast stands of food-bearing trees needed to support large Passenger Pigeon flocks had already disappeared by the late 19th Century. Thus, even if all hunting had stopped in the 1890s, it is likely that Passenger Pigeon numbers would still have continued to decline. A similar fate is expected befall another heavily overexploited species: the Atlantic Codfish, Gadus morhua. By 1992, overfishing had driven cod stocks on the Grand Banks to less than 1% of their estimated peak, prompting the Canadian government to impose a total moratorium on cod fishing. But it was too little, too late; while the moratorium has been in place for over 30 years, cod numbers are still steadily decreasing, with the Atlantic Cod expected to go extinct by 2050. Both cases clearly demonstrate the principle outlined by naturalist Paul Ehrlich that:

“…it is not always necessary to kill the last pair of a species to force it to extinction.”

Recent genetic evidence has suggested that Passenger Pigeons may also have been victims of  extremely poor timing. An analysis conducted by Pen-Jen Shaner and colleagues from National Taiwan Normal University revealed a surprisingly low degree of genetic diversity in preserved Passenger Pigeon specimens collected across North America indicating that the late 19th Century Pigeon population grew very rapidly from a handful of flocks. This suggests that Passenger Pigeons were a so-called “breakout species” like Australian Plague Locusts or Arctic Lemmings, whose populations explode in times of plenty only to crash once local food resources are depleted. It is thus possible that the mass commercial slaughter of Passenger Pigeons coincided with a natural downswing in population numbers, further hastening their extinction. However, later analysis by Beth Shapiro of the University of California Santa Cruz has challenged this assumption, revealing instead that Passenger Pigeon populations were, in fact, large and stable since the last ice age. Still, rapid population growth may still have played a role in the birds’ ultimate demise. One theory posits that the expansion of agriculture and the relocation of Indigenous peoples across North America both provided Passenger Pigeons with a new, abundant source of food and relieved traditional hunting pressures, allowing the population to skyrocket right before the advent of large-scale hunting.

But whatever the specific factors, what is undeniable is that the rapid and catastrophic extinction of the Passenger Pigeon was ultimately the result of human action, and that this ecological tragedy was responsible for the birth of the modern conservation movement. In 1900, Republican Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa introduced United States’s first wildlife-protection law, which banned the interstate transportation of unlawfully killed game. In his speech to the House of Representatives, Lacey stated:

“The wild pigeon, formerly in flocks of millions, has entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. We have given an awful exhibition of slaughter and destruction, which may serve as a warning to all mankind. Let us now give an example of wise conservation of what remains of the gifts of nature.”

Later that year, Lacey’s bill was signed into law. This legislation was further strengthened in 1913 by the Weeks McLean Act and again in 1918 by the Migratory Bird Act, which protected not only birds but also their eggs, nests, and feathers. While conservation efforts are far stronger today than they were in the early 1900s, the unchecked destruction and pollution of natural habitats around the world continue to put thousands of species at risk of extinction. The destruction of the Passenger Pigeon should serve as a poignant reminder to learn from the mistakes of the past, for, in the words of naturalist and explorer William Beebe:

“The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”

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:

• The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 4)
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• The Origins of the Mathematical Convention of Using “X” as the Unknown
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Expand for References

Billions to None…the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, https://johnjames.audubon.org/conservation/billions-none-extinction-passenger-pigeon

 

Yeoman, Barry, Why the Passenger Pigeon Went Extinct, Audubon Society Magazine, May-June 2014, https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct

 

Why Did the Passenger Pigeon Go Extinct? Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2017/11/24/why-did-the-passenger-pigeon-go-extinct/?sh=70c1849a2a9d

 

Passenger Pigeon Extinction: It’s Complicated, Medium, June 16, 2014, https://grrlscientist.medium.com/passenger-pigeon-extinction-its-complicated-grrlscientist-3f8e8ad3b6de

 

Greenfieldboyce, Nell, Why Did the Passenger Pigeon Go Extinct? The Answer Might Lie in Their Toes, NPR, November 16, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/16/564597936/why-did-the-passenger-pigeon-go-extinct-the-answer-might-lie-in-their-toes

 

Biello, David, 3 Billion to Zero: What Happened to the Passenger Pigeon? Scientific American, June 27, 2014, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-billion-to-zero-what-happened-to-the-passenger-pigeon/

 

The Passenger Pigeon, Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.si.edu/spotlight/passenger-pigeon

 

Kovalchik, Kara, Why is an Informant Called a “Stool Pigeon”? Mental Floss, August 26, 2016, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/83619/why-informant-called-stool-pigeon

 

Stool Pigeon, World Wide Words, https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sto2.htm

 

What’s the Origin of the Phrase “Stool Pigeon”? The Phrase Finder, https://ift.tt/oOni9js

 

The Word Guy: Dropping a Dime on the Origin of “Stool Pigeon”, Tribune Live, December 4, 2015, https://ift.tt/qmOdxu5

The post The Horrifying Origin of the Term “Stool Pigeon” appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - April 07, 2023 at 04:41AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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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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Review: Paradise Green Milk Chocolate Chocobits Ginger

Ever since we started reviewing ginger snacks, we've seen the flavor get combined with all sort of other tastes, but coating it in chocolate is a new one for us. ...

from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by April 04, 2023 at 08:28AM

The Real Life Feud That Created One of James Bond’s Most Iconic Villains

On September 17, 1964, a cinematic juggernaut exploded onto film screens: Goldfinger, the third outing by Sean Connery as suave gentleman spy James Bond. While the two previous entries in the series, 1962’s Dr. No and 1963’s From Russia With Love had been successful, Goldfinger was an entirely different beast. The first true blockbuster of the franchise, it made back its $3 million dollar budget in only two weeks and grossed $46 million – around $440 million today – over its initial theatrical run, making it the fastest-grossing picture in movie history. It also helped cement the so-called “Bond formula” and turn the franchise into the cinematic powerhouse that is still going strong today. Like most good Bond movies, one of the film’s great strengths lies with its villain, bombastic, megalomaniacal gold tycoon Auric Goldfinger, who plots to break into Fort Knox and irradiate the United States’ gold reserves. But while Goldfinger may seem like the type of larger-than-life character that could only exist in the fantastical, hyper stylized world of James Bond, he was, in fact, based on a real person. This is the strange story of how a petty feud over – of all things – architecture, led to the creation of one of spy fiction’s most iconic villains.

The 1964 film Goldfinger is based on the 1959 novel of the same name, the seventh in the James Bond series by British Author Ian Fleming. Fleming, who had served in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, based many of the characters and scenarios in his books on his own experiences. For example, the golf game between Bond and Goldfinger early in the book was inspired by a real game Fleming played in 1957, while names of characters like the ill-fated Masterson sisters and improbably-named henchwoman Pussy Galore were drawn from people Fleming knew in the intelligence community. And so it was with the novel’s main villain, whom Fleming named after an influential but controversial Hungarian-English architect named Ernö Goldfinger.

Born in 1902 to a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest, in 1920 Goldfinger travelled to Paris to study at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. Here he mingled with a veritable who’s-who of mid-century artists and designers including Man Ray, Lee Miller, Max Ernst, and Charles-Édourad Jeanneret – better known as Le Corbusier – many of whom would go on to become leading figures in the burgeoning Modernist movement. Encompassing nearly every field of human creativity from music to literature to interior design, Modernism sought to break from the traditions of the past and create new aesthetics more in line with the scientific and industrial 20th century. In architecture, this meant stripping away unnecessary ornament and creating structures that were true to the character of the materials they were built from rather than mere recreations of past styles. The movement also incorporated a type of functionalism, in which buildings were seen as “machines for living” which could be used as instruments to shape and improve society. This thinking was greatly influenced by socialist principles, with many architects seeing modern architecture as the key to housing large numbers of people in an efficient and egalitarian manner. Indeed, it was while studying in Paris that Ernö Goldfinger first publicly declared himself a communist, a political stance he would maintain for the rest of his life and which would greatly inform his architectural philosophy, which he described in 1941 as:

“Cities can become centres of civilisation where men and women can live happy lives. The technical means exist to satisfy human needs. The will to plan must be aroused. There is no obstacle but ignorance and wickedness.”

Over the following decade Goldfinger remained in Paris where he worked as a designer of furniture and home interiors, both solo and in partnership with fellow Beaux-Arts student Andre Szivessy. In 1931, he met Ursula Blackwell, wealthy heiress to the British Crosse & Blackwell food brand fortune. The two married in 1933 and a year later produced a son, Peter. The birth of his son inspired Goldfinger to maintain a correspondence with British education experts Paul and Mary Abbatt, who throughout the 1920s carried out pioneering research on the role of toys in children’s mental and physical development. Based on the Abbatt’s findings, Goldfinger designed a series of toys specifically intended to foster learning – among the first of their kind in the world.

In 1934, with anti-semitism on the rise in Europe, the Goldfingers moved to London, becoming naturalized British citizens shortly thereafter. It was in London in the late 1930s that Ernö Goldfinger would accept his first architectural commission: a series of 3 modernist houses on Willow Road in Hampstead, one of which Goldfinger built for himself. Still an avowed communist, when the Soviet Union joined the Western Allies in 1941 Goldfinger engaged in a number of advocacy efforts in support of the regime, including a 1942 “Aid for Russia” fundraising party attended by several prominent artists.

After the war, Goldfinger continued to receive architecture commissions, most of which he executed in a controversial style which had recently become popular: brutalism. Named for the French term beton brut or “raw concrete”, brutalism was the most extreme manifestation of the modernist principles of functionalism and honesty of materials. Brutalist buildings typically feature rough-cast, unpainted concrete walls, harsh, geometric shapes and little or no ornamentation. Unsurprisingly, this movement attracted the ire of a great many more traditionally-minded architecture critics, including no less a figure than Charles, Prince of Wales, who in a speech before the Royal Institute of Architects in 1984 stated:

“You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.”

Royal. Mic. Drop.

Unfortunately for Charles and other critics, in the post-war years brutalist architects like Goldfinger found a ready audience, as cities across Europe devastated by the conflict sought cost-effective ways to re-home millions of people. Among Goldfinger’s best-known projects are the Metro Central Heights housing complex, completed between 1959 and 1967; and the Balfron and Trellick Tower tower blocks, completed in 1967 and 1972 respectively. The latter are notable for their space-saving features such as sliding doors between rooms and a separate tower housing the heating plant, elevators, stairs, launderettes, and other service infrastructure. In keeping with his political beliefs, Goldfinger also designed the headquarters for the British Communist Party and the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker.

As you might have guessed by now, one of the many individuals who was not a fan of Goldfinger’s architecture was Ian Fleming. There are differing accounts as to how Goldfinger first appeared on Fleming’s radar. According to some sources, their feud began in 1934 with the construction of the houses on Willow Road. The project involved the demolition of Victorian-era cottages on the site, which an outraged Fleming and many fellow Londoners petitioned unsuccessfully to prevent. According to other sources, however, Fleming learned of Goldfinger through his golf partner, John Blackwell, who was a cousin of the architect by marriage and loathed the man. And there was much to dislike about Goldfinger besides his architecture: despite his noble goals regarding social housing, Goldfinger was by most accounts an arrogant, humorous man, prone to bullying those who got in his way and single-mindedly devoted to his vision of urban development to the exclusion of what ordinary people actually found appealing. But whatever the reason, Fleming found the name “Goldfinger” irresistible and in 1958 used the architect as the basis for Bond’s next foe, changing the character’s name from Ernö to Auric after the Latin word for gold. According to historian Henry Chancellor, Fleming likely also drew inspiration from American gold tycoon Charles Engelhard Jr., who, like the fictional Goldfinger, used his company, the Precious Metals Development Company, to circumvent export restrictions and sell gold in countries where its price was higher.

Upon learning of the title and villain of Fleming’s novel, the real Goldfinger became incensed and threatened to sue Fleming’s publisher, Jonathan Cape, claiming that as there were so few Goldfingers in Britain, the choice of name was obviously a personal attack. With the initial run of the novel already printed but not yet released, the publisher was understandably nervous and did some research on the architect, informing Fleming that:

“…[we] discovered quite a bit, none of it very pleasant and all of it made us unusually wary.”

But Fleming refused to be bullied, pointing out that there were, in fact, many Goldfingers listed in the phone book.

At this point, viewers familiar only with the 1964 film adaptation may be wondering what all the fuss was about, for while the fictional Goldfinger is dastardly and ruthless, as portrayed by German actor Gert Fröbe he is nonetheless depicted as cunning, wealthy, and charming. However, this version of Goldfinger is significantly watered-down; the original book version of the character is much, much worse. Essentially a collection of traits Fleming found despicable, book Goldfinger is depicted as a short, ugly, redheaded, teetotaling Jewish Marxist in league with the Soviets, with a penchant for cheating at cards and golf, a tacky sense of style, and a body Fleming describes as being like“he had been put together with bits of other people’s bodies.” And while movie Goldfinger’s obsession with gold is on full display, the book exaggerates this trait to a grotesque degree, with Goldfinger owning a gold-bound volume of erotic photographs and covering his lovers head-to-toe in gold paint before having sex with him. So you can see why the real Goldfinger might have been a little annoyed at Fleming.

The two parties remained deadlocked until Fleming, in a stroke of glorious pettiness, threatened to release the novel with an erratum slip changing all instances of the name “Goldfinger” to “Goldprick.” Unsurprisingly, the real Goldfinger backed down and the matter was finally settled when Jonathan Cape agreed to include an “all characters are fictional…” disclaimer in the book and sent the architect some complimentary copies. According to Goldfinger’s biographer, the architect believed that the novel – at the time considered little more than a pulpy potboiler – would soon be forgotten, little suspecting the global phenomenon the film adaptation would become. Indeed, for decades following the film’s release, Goldfinger and his family endured endless late-night crank calls in which pranksters would intone, in bad Sean Connery accents, “Goldfingah? Thish ish 007” or sing Shirley Bassey’s iconic theme tune.

In the end, it is difficult to say who had the last laugh – Goldfinger or Fleming. On the one hand, while the fictional Goldfinger has become one of the most iconic villains in cinema history, his real-life counterpart is all but forgotten outside the relatively narrow field of brutalist architecture. Furthermore, criticism by Fleming and others about the dreariness and oppressiveness of Goldfinger’s designs proved prophetic, as his Balfron and Trellick Tower blocks quickly succumbed to the blight of urban decay, becoming poorly-maintained hotbeds of poverty, drug abuse, vandalism, prostitution, and other social ills. And in an even greater irony, the Metro Central Heights complex, originally named Alexander Fleming House after the discoverer of Penicillin, became infamous for making its residents sick due to poor ventilation, forcing the Department of Health and Social Services to abandon the complex as its headquarters. On the other hand, however, in more recent years the architectural community has come around on Goldfinger’s work, recognizing it as significant to the history of architecture. Indeed, several of his creations, including Trellick Tower, Metro Central Heights, and the modernist Teesdale House in Surrey, now enjoy Grade II listing as protected historic buildings. It is the sort of recognition that would have made Ian Fleming livid, meaning that we can probably call this particular feud a draw.

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In adapting Fleming’s novel to the screen, screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn did far more than tone down the villain’s more unsavoury traits. Indeed, the changes the pair made are considered by many critics to have resulted in a far more cohesive and compelling story. For example, in the novel, Goldfinger plans to break into Fort Knox by blowing open the vault with a tactical nuclear weapon, then steal the gold by loading it onto trucks and carting it away. However, Maibaum and Dehn found this notion ridiculous, for given the sheer volume and weight of gold in the repository it would realistically take hundreds of trucks and nearly two weeks to cart away. Instead, the pair came up with a much more elegant plot wherein Goldfinger plans to detonate the bomb inside Fort Knox itself, irradiating the U.S. gold supply and causing the value of his own gold to increase substantially. And as a sly jab at Fleming’s original plot, the film has Bond point out to Goldfinger the impracticality of robbing Fort Knox, only for Goldfinger to turn the tables and reveal his actual plan.

Another positive change from book to film concerns the characterization of Goldfinger’s main henchwoman, Pussy Galore. In the novel, Pussy is explicitly stated to be a lesbian, and heads an all-female gang of acrobats-turned-cat burglars called the Cement Mixers. Yet despite Pussy’s stated sexuality, Bond is still able to seduce and turn her to his side through his sheer masculine charisma, with Fleming explaining that Pussy isn’t really as lesbian but simply hates men on account of being raped as a child. Yikes. But while the film makes Pussy straight – avoiding that particular minefield of misogynistic pop psychology – it is still far from perfect, for Bond’s seduction and conversion of Pussy is accomplished by, shall we say, less than consensual means. Ladies and gentlemen: the 1960s.

Finally, one of the strangest differences between the book and the film is that of Auric Goldfinger’s voice. While in the book Goldfinger is explicitly stated to be British, in the film he speaks with a thick German accent. While at first glance this is readily explained by Goldfinger being portrayed by German actor Gert Fröbe, in reality Fröbe’s command of English was shaky and he was forced to learn most of his lines phonetically. The final result was deemed unacceptable by the studio, and so all of Fröbe’s lines were dubbed over by English actor Michael Collins, who chose to closely emulate Fröbe’s original accent. This disconnect between the character’s backstory and voice results in one of the film’s strangest lines, in which CIA agent Felix Leiter informs Bond: “He’s British, but he doesn’t sound like it.”  

 

2. The film Goldfinger is packed wall-to-wall with iconic Bond moments, from the iconic theme tune sung by Shirley Bassey to Bond girl Jill Masterson covered head-to-toe in gold paint, Goldfinger threatening to cut Bond in half with a giant laser, and henchman Oddjob dispatching enemies with the toss of his razor-brimmed bowler hat. But perhaps one of the most quintessentially James Bond moments occurs in the film’s pre-title sequence, in which Bond swims up to an unnamed central American country’s shoreline and proceeds to infiltrate and blow up a large drug operation. His mission complete, Bond proceeds to strip off his wetsuit, revealing a perfectly dry – and perfectly pressed – white tuxedo complete with a red carnation on his lapel. But while this might seem like the sort of stylized, tongue-in-cheek nonsense the James Bond series has become legendary for, incredibly this particular bit was actually inspired by a real-life secret mission from the Second World War. In 1941, Dutch Resistance fighter Peter Tazelaar was tasked with investigating methods of infiltrating secret agents into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The mission, rather unimaginatively codenamed “Contact Holland”, called for Tazelaar to be dropped by boat off the seaside resort town of Scheveningen, infiltrate a German officers’ party at the local casino, and make contact with British Intelligence using a radio dropped to him by parachute. On November 23, Tazelaar swam ashore and stripped off his dry suit – not a wetsuit as depicted in film – to reveal a full tuxedo. He then doused himself in brandy and stumbled up to the casino, pretending to be a drunken reveller who had gone for a seaside stroll. The act was so convincing that the German guards let Tazelaar pass, and he was able to enter the casino undetected. However, the mission was a failure, for Tazelaar’s radio was damaged in the drop and sea conditions around Scheveningen proved too rough to safely extract Dutch agents by boat. Nonetheless, the improbable mission helped inspire one of the most memorable moments in the history of spy cinema, though there is no evidence Tazelaar ever wore a snorkel topped with a stuffed seagull. That’s the sort of thing only Sean Connery could make look cool.

Expand for References

Wain, Natalie, He Was Immortalized as a Bond Villain by Ian Fleming, but now Architect Erno Goldfinger’s Most Revered London Tower Block Has Been Given Listed Building Status, Ideal Home, July 21, 2013, https://www.idealhome.co.uk/news/erno-goldfinger-s-metro-central-heights-given-listed-building-status-42393

Schwarcz, Joe, Did You Know: Goldfinger’s First Name was “Auric” Based on the Latin “Aurum” for Gold, McGill University, May 28, 2021, https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-did-you-know/did-you-know-goldfingers-first-name-was-auric-based-latin-aurum-gold

Passino, Carla, A Modernist House by the Architect That Inspired James Bond’s Arch-Villain, Country Life, June 15, 2021, https://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/a-modernist-house-by-the-architect-that-inspired-james-bonds-arch-villain-228234

Duncan, Michael, Fleming vs. Goldfinger: What Really Happened When the Architect Took on the Author, Footprints of London, November 12, 2015, https://footprintsoflondon.com/live/2015/11/fleming-vs-goldfinger-what-really-happened-when-the-architect-took-on-the-author/

Ezard, John, How Goldfinger Nearly Became Goldprick, The Guardian, June 2, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/03/film.hayfestival2005

Ernö Goldfinger, GreyScape, https://www.greyscape.com/architects/ernogoldfinger/

How Ernö Goldfinger Brutalised Both East and West, Phaidon, https://ift.tt/e0UV3gG

Forget, Benjamin, Prince Charles, Architecture’s Royal Pain, The Washington Post, February 22, 1990, https://ift.tt/BNe6oOC

The post The Real Life Feud That Created One of James Bond’s Most Iconic Villains appeared first on Today I Found Out.

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