The Umbrella Man

History is full of lunatics as this film from the New York times shows…

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/21/opinion/100000001183275/the-umbrella-man.html

So there was a guy, on the day JFK was assassinated, holding an umbrella open… The only man in Dallas, that day, with an umbrella.

An umbrella?

On a clear and sunny day?

What the hell?

Some people have suggested that this is some sort of an assassination conspiracy and that he had a gun hidden in the umbrella. No. If you’ve watched the video you’ll know that he was protesting against Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler!

Really… NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN’S… APPEASEMENT… OF HITLER! So either he was a liar… Or, quite frankly, just a bit weird. I’m going to go with the latter. If he was lying why would he come forwards? Maybe the guy who came forwards was just a crackpot anyway? Either way, if it was or wasn’t him, he was weird.

What this film shows is that history is full of weird stuff. The English weren’t wearing any pants at Agincourt because they had dissentry. When the Bastille was stormed there was a man in there who thought he was Julius Caesar… At the battle of Ely in 1071 William the Conqueror had a witch on a platform, with her pants down, waving her derriere at the enemy. She got shot up the bum with a flaming arrow. Mick Jagger once put bees down his pants in order to enlarge himself. It’s an offence to impersonate a Chelsea Pensioner. It’s illegal to die in the houses of parliament…

I’m sure there are many more.