Fun Fact of the Week: Success is Overrated
The Book of Heroic Failures is the official handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. What is the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain, you might ask? Well, the journalist Stephen Pile formed it in the 1970s to bring together fine individuals who had a particular knack for failure. A collection of people who were particularly not good at something. Their anecdotes were recorded faithfully by Stephen Pile, and are now brought to you in the Quest.
The Least Successful Inventor:
Mr. Arthur Paul Pedrick patented 162 inventions between the years 1962 and 1977, none of which ever resulted in commercial success. The designs included such fantastic ideas as a bicycle with amphibious capacity, a golf ball which could be controlled mid-flight, and a network of giant launchers which would shoot large snowballs from the polar regions of Earth to the arid ones so that they could be irrigated.
Slowest Solution to a crossword:
For a certain family, a duration of 35 years and 4 months was necessary to solve the The Times of London’s crossword, written on April 4, 1932. It was attempted by a woman from Fiji in the 1930s before being forgotten and stored in a chest, where it remained until 1966. It was rediscovered by the original solver’s sister, who completed it after some thorough thought.
The Least Successful Demolition:
Margate Pier, of Kent, England was closed over safety concerns in 1978 after a storm. The following year, a demolition crew tackled the problem with great vim and vigor, but were unsuccessful in dismantling it. Their primary method of attack was explosives, which resulted in a strange series of occurrences. The first attempt created a massive plume of water over a hundred feet tall, but when it all fell away, the pier remained standing. A second attempt was made, much to similar results. However, this time a bolt which had been caught in the explosion was found embedded deep in the wall of a waterfront pub, and it was concluded that all further testing should be conducted at high tide to prevent debris. Six more attempts passed, and the pier remained standing, at which point it was noticed that large crowds began to gather at the scheduled demolition times to watch the spectacle. Fourteen tries later, the pier still standing, the original demolition crew was retired and replaced. The fifteenth try produced moderate results, but it was finally concluded that a different method was necessary. Via other methods, the demolition continued until 1998, when the last parts of the pier fell to the demolitionists.
Least Successful Names:
The following is a list of names widely used between 1838 and 1900, but are now non-existent:
Abishag, Amourous, Babberly, Brained, Bugless, Clapham, Despair, Dozer, Energetic, Feather, Ham, Lettuce, Minniehaha, Murder, Salmon, Strongitharm, Tram, Uz, Water, and Wonderful. Bring these back?
Least Successful Saint:
Judas Thaddaeus became Saint Jude, but was so frequently confused with Judas Iscariot (betrayer of Christ) that his role was officially changed to be the patron saint of desperate causes, desperate situations, and lost causes.
Worst Robbery Plan:
An unnamed burglar of Paris once attempted to rob an antique dealer on the November 4, 1933. The brilliant plan involved donning a fifteenth-century suit of armor, which he thought would scare the antique dealer away (and he would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!). Unfortunately, the antique dealer saw through his clever disguise and smacked him with a plank, incapacitating the poor guy. He was then apprehended by the police, immobilized in the heavy metal armor. The police were puzzled to find that the blow had bent the metal in such a way that it was impossible to remove, and thus the burglar remained in the suit for over 24 hours, in custody, while they worked out a way to resolve the issue.
Worst Robbery Execution:
Unfortunately, I could find no corroborating evidence for the following, so we’ll just have to believe Stephen Pike, but it’s a funny story nonetheless. In Portland, Oregon, in 1969, a man entered a bank with a gun and handed the teller a note which read, ‘This is a hold-up and I’ve got a gun. Put all of your money in a paper bag.’ The message was seen by the bank teller, who took the slip of paper and wrote their own message back, which read, ‘I don’t have a paper bag’. The robber, not having considered this possibility, lost their nerves and fled.
Unfortunately, the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain was not to last, and Stephen Pile disbanded the group in 1979. The reason? More than likely they all simply had better things to do, but the ‘official’ narrative is that The Book of Heroic Failures was a tremendous success. Thus, the club disbanded in shame, for to succeed was entirely antithetical to the purpose of the coalition.