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There are many thousands of videos online that begin with the line “hold my beer.” In fact, people often deliberately do dangerous things and pull truly mind-numbingly ill-conceived pranks just to get those all important “clicks” and become internet famous. But if you think that is all a trend of the digital age, well, no it isn’t. In fact, perhaps one of the most ambitious stunts held just to get attention occurred all the way back in 1896, and, as is often the case, it didn’t exactly go as planned.
An Olympic medal event only since 1998 you might think that curling is a relatively new sport apparently invented in Canada. And, of course, neither is true. The sport dates back at least to the 16th century, and comes from perhaps a surprising place.
During the later half of the nineteenth century numerous attempts were made to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Killing the Tsar, however, turned out to be no easy task.
The St Louis World’s Fair, officially known as the Louisiana Purchase Expedition, was an enormous event, with more than 60 countries and 43 states maintaining exhibition spaces for nearly twenty million visitors. In addition to the many exhibitions, a variety of private enterprises set up camp near the fair in the hopes of making money off the guaranteed audience. Some of those ideas worked better than others, but few among them went as ridiculously badly as the attempt to put on a Spanish-Style bullfight.
