On Speed

“If everything is under control, you’re going too slow.”

– Mario Andretti

Wife Carrying

Wife Carrying as a sporting activity was first played in Finland where it is known as Eukonkanto. Its history is probably based on the 19th century legend of Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen, or ‘Ronkainen the Robber’, whose band of thieves were known for stealing food and women from small Finnish villages. Somehow, the practice of picking up a woman (with her consent) and running off evolved to a sport.

The first modern day wife carrying event was held in Finland in 1992 and foreign contestants were admitted in 1995. This event is now held annually in Sonkajärvi, Finland as the World Championship. A North American Championship was started in 1999.

The International Wife Carrying Competition Rules Committee has set a number of official rules, among others:

• The length of the official track is 253,5 meters and surface of the track is sand.
• The winner is the couple who completes the course in the shortest time.
• The track has two dry obstacles and one water obstacle, about a meter deep.
• The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbour’s or you may have found her farther ahead; she must, however, be over 17 years of age.
• The minimum weight of the wife to be carried is 49 kilos. If she weighs less, she will be burdened with such a heavy rucksack to reach the desired minimum weight.
• If a contestant drops the wife, he has to lift her on to his back or in his arms and continue carrying.

On Body and Brain

Batiatus: A good body with a dull brain is as cheap as life itself.

– Lewis. E. (Producer), Kubric. S. (Director). (1960). Spartacus [Motion Picture]. United States: Universal Studios

Jib [Noun.]

• A triangular staysail set forward of the foremast.
• The projecting arm of a crane.

“I have seen that girl on the deck, and I like the cut of her jib. I like the way she walks. Her independence suits me.” – Robert Barr, A Woman Intervenes (1896)

Stupidity and the Helmet Law

‘There are many things we can point to as proof that the human being is not smart. The helmet is my personal favourite. The fact that we had to invent the helmet: why did we invent the helmet? Well, because we were participating in many activities that were cracking our heads. We looked at the situation. We chose not to avoid these activities but to just make little plastic hats so that we can continue our head cracking lifestyles.

The only thing dumber than the helmet, is the helmet law, the point of which is to protect a brain that is functioning so poorly it’s not even trying to stop the cracking of the head that it’s in.’

– Seinfeld, J. (1998). I’m Telling You For The Last Time. Broadhurst Theatre, New York: Universal Records.

5/v mmxv

If the empty space in atoms could be removed, the entire human race could fit into an average sugar cube.

The most common surname in China is Wang.

Originally, the traditional Argentine game of pato, which is a combination of rugby, polo and basketball, was played – as the Spanish name suggests – with a live duck in a basket. Nowadays, a leather ball is used.

There are 117 road accidents in Rome every day.

No country in history has imprisoned more citizens than the United States.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

19/ii mmxv

In 40 US States, the highest paid public employee is the States’ leading college football or basketball head coach.

The Archbishop of Manila from 1974-2003 was called Cardinal Sin.

In 2012, the Swedish town Soderhamn paid people to look for work in Norway in an attempt to reduce soaring youth unemployment.

Elephants are the only mammals that can’t jump.

By twelfth grade, 65% of high school students will have engaged in sexual intercourse, and one in five sexually active teens will have had four or more sexual partners. Please note, according research published in 2012 by the non-profit Guttmacher Institute, all sex education delays teen sex.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Moacir Barbosa Nascimento

In the final game of the 1950 World Cup, an honest mistake by a man called Moacir Barbosa condemned him to spend the rest of his life being vilified by millions.

The tournament’s last game saw Brazil and Uruguay engaged for the right to call themselves World Champions. Before the match began the Brazillian national team – known locally as the Seleção – were given solid gold watches stating: ‘For the World Champions’.

“Football is the ballet of the masses.” – Dmitri Shostakovich

Only one player has achieved the dream of all Brazilians – scoring in a World Cup Final for the Seleção on home soil at the famed Maracana stadium. A minute into the second-half Albino Friaça Cardoso realised that fantasy. It was his only goal for Brazil. It was to be the only goal Brazil scored that fateful day. The Uruguayan jet-heeled right winger, Ghiggia from Montevideo, surged down the line crossing the ball for Schiaffino to equalise past Barbosa. Thirteen minutes later, Ghiggia surged down the line again. This time he was to ruin Moacir Barbosa’s life forever.

Footage exists of 4.33pm, 16th July 1950: the worst moment of all Barbosa’s days on earth. What is a second in a lifetime of existence? For Moacir this instant would shape the rest of his 50 years.

“The first World Cup I remember was in the 1950 when I was 9 or 10 years old. My father was a soccer player, and there was a big party, and when Brazil lost to Uruguay, I saw my father crying.” – Pele

The official attendance was 173,850 – some say 200,000 – making it the largest football crowd ever. Yet they all fell quiet at Barbosa’s error. As Ghiggia said years after his goal that won Uruguay a World Cup: “Only three people have silenced the Maracana: Sinatra, Pope John-Paul II and me”. It was said without any fear of contradiction.

Brazilians – never opting for stoicism when flamboyant exhortations suffice, variously described the defeat as ‘the greatest tragedy in Brazilian history’.

For Moacir Barbosa, 16th July 1950 was not an exercise in extravagant self-flagellation: it started a living nightmare. He was never forgiven. Life treated him harshly. He never played for Brazil again. People spat at him or abused him. He was denied coaching jobs after he retired. Having black skin didn’t help in a racially-divided country.

Once he visited the Seleção to wish them well. He was denied, fearing bad luck. He was even refused a commentator’s job.

After his wife died a friend revealed “he even cried on my shoulder – until the end he used to always say: ‘I’m not guilty. There were 11 of us.’”

An elderly Barbosa lamented, ‘In Brazil, the most you get for any crime is 30 years. For 50 years I’ve been paying for a crime I did not commit. Even a criminal when he has paid his debt is forgiven. But I have never been forgiven.”

In 2000, penniless and close to death, he recalled his memory of 1970 – in the year when the greatest-ever Brazil team won the World Cup, a mother pointed him out to her child in a market saying: ‘Look at him. He was the man who made all of Brazil cry’.

Heart failure caused Moacir Barbosa to die in 2000, aged 79. Some say it was a broken heart that killed him.