1 According to Herodotus (writing a century after Thales’ death), Thales used his knowledge of Babylonian astronomy to predict an eclipse of the sun. The eclipse occurred just as the Medes and the Lydians were on the point of advancing into battle. It so terrified their armies that they packed their tents and returned home. Modern astronomical investigations have pinpointed the only eclipse in Thales’ time as that occurring on May 28, 585 BC, a rare instance of establishing a precise date for an early historical event.
2 Aristotle (writing about two centuries after Thales’ death) shows the philosopher as entrepreneur. People often taunted Thales, saying that all his wisdom had failed to make him rich. Thales responded by buying up all the olive presses in Miletus in a year when his knowledge of meteorology enabled him to predict a bumper crop of olives. By charging monopolistic prices for the use of his newly acquired presses, he became extremely wealthy in one season. Having proved his point, Thales then sold all the presses again and returned to philosophy.
3 Plato (writing about a century and a half after Thales’ death) tells a more typical story of philosophical unworldliness. Thales was walking along a road with his head thrown back, studying the stars, when he stumbled into a well. In response to his cries for help a servant girl came and pulled him out, observing that while he was eager to know about things in the sky, he failed to see what lay at his own feet.
4 When Thales entertained the great Athenian lawgiver Solon at Miletus, Solon teased the philosopher about why he did not marry and have children. Thales made no reply. Shortly afterward a stranger came to his house and Thales took him aside for a few words before introducing him to Solon. The man informed Solon that he came from Athens. Solon eagerly asked for news.
“No news,” said the stranger, “apart from the funeral of a great man’s son.”
“Whose son was this?” inquired Solon.
“I cannot recollect the name,” replied the stranger, “but the father is a man of great honor, who is currently traveling abroad.”
Solon, whose forebodings had been growing throughout the conversation, burst out with, “Was it the son of Solon?”
“Yes, that was the name,” said the stranger.
When Solon began to weep and express extreme grief, Thales took him by the hand and said gently, “These things that can strike down even a man as resolute as Solon with uncontrollable grief are the things that prevent me from marrying and raising a family. But take courage, not a word of the man’s story is true.”
5 Thales used to say that there was no essential difference between being alive and being dead. Someone asked why, if that was the case, he chose life instead of death. “Because there is no difference,” Thales replied.
THEMISTOCLES (?527–460 BC), Athenian statesman.
1 Themistocles alienated the allies of Athens by extorting money from them. Anchoring his fleet off a small island, he sent a message saying that he had two powerful deities on his side who would compel them to pay up — Persuasion and Force. The islanders sent back a message saying they had two equally potent gods on their side — Poverty and Despair.
2 Themistocles was overheard to remark that his young son ruled all Greece. Asked to explain, he said, “Athens holds sway over all Greece; I dominate Athens; my wife dominates me; our newborn son dominates her.”
THEODORIC [Theodoric the Great] (c. 454–526), king of the Ostrogoths and of Italy (493–526).
1 Although an Arian, Theodoric had a Catholic minister whom he trusted. This minister, thinking to ingratiate himself with the king, announced that he was renouncing his tenets to embrace Arianism. Theodoric had him beheaded, saying, “If this man is not faithful to his God, how can he be faithful to me, a mere man?”
THIERS, Louis Adolphe (1797–1877), French statesman and historian; first president (1870– 73) of the Third Republic.
1 Someone remarked in Thiers’s hearing that the great statesman’s mother had been a cook. Thiers, intending to imply that she had been worthy of a higher estate in life, rushed to her defense: “She was — but I assure you that she was a very bad cook.”
THOMAS, Dylan (1914–53), Welsh poet.
1 On one occasion when Dylan Thomas had been drinking and talking freely for some time, he suddenly stopped. “Somebody’s boring me,” he said. “I think it’s me.”
2 (Donald Hall, who later wrote about his friendship with Thomas, once had an exchange with the poet that became particularly poignant after Thomas’s death.)
“I was complaining about some Sunday paper critic who used phrases like ‘death-wish.’ Out of brutal innocence I asked, ‘What a dumb idea anyway. Who wants to die?’ Dylan looked up at me. ‘Oh, I do,’ he said. ‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘Just for the change,’ he said.”
3 “There is a story of [Thomas’s] wife in the funeral parlour, who looked down at the poet’s painted face, loud suit, and carnation in his buttonhole, only to declare, ‘He would never have been seen dead in it.’ ”
After a successful career on stage, Julius Tannen came upon hard times in Hollywood. Unable to get an acting job, he finally at least obtained an audition for an editor’s role in a newspaper drama.
He dressed carefully and, worried about his baldness, wore a toupee. After the audition the producer shook his head and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think you will do for the part. I’ve always visualized a bald-headed man for the part.”
Julius pulled the toupee from his head. “I think I can satisfy you on that score,” he beamed.
The producer studied Tannen’s polished skull but shook his head again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tannen, I simply can’t visualize you as a bald-headed man.”
— BEN HECHT, A Child of the Century
THOMAS, M. Carey (1857–1935), US educator.
1 Thomas, who had earned her doctorate summa cum laude in Switzerland and who later became the president of Bryn Mawr College, was denied admittance to higher studies in the United States because she was a woman. “One thing I am determined on,” she vowed, “is that by the time I die my brain shall weigh as much as a man’s if study and learning can make it so.”
THOMAS, Norman (1884–1968), US socialist politician and reformer.
1 Norman Thomas campaigned regularly and unsuccessfully for the presidency from 1928 to 1948. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was President, Thomas visited him in the White House. In the course of the interview Roosevelt said, “Norman, I’m a damned sight better politician than you.” Thomas replied, “Certainly, Mr. President; you’re on that side of the desk, and I’m on this.”
2 Thomas had many distinguished supporters, but lacked mass popular backing. Complimented on the lofty character of his campaigns, he replied, “I appreciate the flowers; only I wish the funeral weren’t so complete.”
3 Looking back at his record of failure in his campaigns for the presidency, Thomas commented, “While I’d rather be right than president, at any time I’m ready to be both.”
THOMPSON, Emma (1959–), British actress.
1 Moviegoers commented on Thompson’s radiance in the film Howards End. Her natural beauty was of course striking, but somehow a glow seemed to suffuse her presence on screen. After she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role, she revealed her secret, claiming she was in debt to the corset she was forced to wear throughout the film. “Every day they laced me up in these whalebone contraptions,” she said. “And the blood rushes to your face when you wear those things. So that explains ‘radiant.’ ”
THOMSON, Sir George Paget (1892–1975), British physicist.
1 The Maud Committee was given its name as a result of a telegram that Niels Bohr, the famous Danish physicist, managed to send to his friends in England shortly after the German occupation of Denmark. The telegram ended: “Please inform Cockcroft and Maud Ray, Kent,” after having assured his friends that he was well. The message was mistakenly thought to be in code and skillfully decoded to mean “make uranium day and night.” It was later found that Maud Ray had been Bo
hr’s English governess.
THOMSON, Joseph (1858–94), British explorer.
1 In 1878 Thomson made his first journey to Africa as geologist and natural historian in an expedition led by Alexander Keith Johnston. Barely six weeks after departing Zanzibar for the interior, Johnston died, leaving the twenty-one-year-old Thomson leader of the expedition. He carried on to the great lakes and brought the expedition to an almost entirely successful conclusion. On his return to London he wrote the book To African Lakes and Back, and became a celebrity. J. M. Barrie asked Thomson what was the most dangerous part of his travels. “Crossing Piccadilly Circus,” said Thomson.
THOMSON, Robert (b. 1923), US baseball player, born in Scotland.
1 No team in the history of American baseball has come from as far behind to win a league pennant as did the National League’s New York Giants in 1951. In mid-August they trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers by 131/2 games, but in the last seven weeks of the season moved up to tie for the top spot, forcing a best-of-three play-off. After each team had won one game, the Giants, in the final game, with the score 4 to 1 against them, went into the last half of the last inning, scored a run, picked up one out, and had two men on base. Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca entered the fray to try to get the other two outs his team needed. Then Bobby Thomson came to bat and hit a three-run home run to win the game 5 to 4 and the league pennant for the Giants. Pandemonium broke out in New York’s Polo Ground, and this became one of the best-remembered moments in American baseball history.
Looking back on his career, Thomson said, “I played fourteen or fifteen years in the majors. I got more than 11,700 hits and more than 100 home runs. But I’d be forgotten except for that one.”
{Curiously, Ralph Branca expressed a similar sentiment about the same moment: “I pitched nine or ten years in the big leagues. I threw thousands of pitches. And no one has ever let me forget that one.”}
THOREAU, Henry David (1817–62), US writer and transcendentalist philosopher.
1 A friend asked Thoreau what he thought of the world to come. “One world at a time,” said Thoreau.
2 Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers did not sell. Eventually his publisher, who needed the space, wrote to ask Thoreau how he should dispose of the remaining copies. Thoreau asked that they be sent to him — 706 copies out of the edition of 1,000. When they arrived and were safely stowed away, Thoreau noted in his journal, “I now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”
3 (Thoreau made the following entry in his journal on September 8, 1859:)
“I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for as I told the storekeeper, the Governor was coming here. ‘Aye,’ said he, ‘and the Legislature too.’ ‘Then I will take two bolts,’ said I. He said that there had been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our protectors were coming.”
4 Thoreau was languishing in jail after he had refused to pay the Massachusetts poll tax in 1843. Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him and asked him why he was there. “Waldo, why are you not here?” said Thoreau.
5 Thoreau, whose father had been a manufacturer of lead pencils, was confident that he could improve on the type of pencil in use at that time. His early experiments were a great success and presented him with the opportunity to make his fortune. Thoreau, however, surprised his friends by announcing that he had no intention of making any further pencils. “Why should I?” he said. “I would not do again what I have done once.”
6 Asked whether he had traveled much, Thoreau replied, “Yes — around Concord.”
7 Toward the end of his life Thoreau was urged to make his peace with God. “I did not know that we had ever quarreled,” he replied.
THORNDIKE, Dame Sybil (1882–1976), British actress.
1 Dame Sybil was the daughter of the canon of Rochester. At evensong one Sunday, she noticed that her father seemed a little distracted as he gave the blessing. She later asked him what he had been thinking about at the time. “My dear!” he exclaimed. “I was thinking how wonderful it would have been if I had been on a trapeze swinging across the aisle.”
2 Sybil Thorndike was married to Sir Lewis Casson, himself a distinguished actor, and they frequently toured together, giving dramatic recitals. After his death she was asked about their long and happy marriage. “Did you ever think of divorce?” was one of the questions. “Divorce?” she said. “Never. But murder often!”
3 Dame Sybil Thorndike appeared in a play with Dame Edith Evans. The theater manager was faced with a dilemma — to which of the two distinguished actresses should the Number One dressing room be allocated? In desperation, he consulted Dame Sybil herself. “The Number Two dressing room is equally luxurious,” he explained, “but it has the disadvantage of being at the top of a flight of stairs.”
“There’s no problem at all, my dear,” replied Dame Sybil. “Let Edith have Number One. I can climb stairs.”
THORPE, Jim (1888–1953), US athlete of American Indian descent.
1 Questioned about his running ability in football, Thorpe smiled and said, “I give ’em the hip, then I take it away.”
Stories involving amnesia are not rare. One of the most endearing is told about the father of the poet Alfred Tennyson. Once, visiting a new parishioner, he was politely asked by the servant admitting him to identify himself. He found he could not remember his own name, turned away, walked, lost in thought, through the village, and encountered a rustic who respectfully greeted him: “Good day to ’ee, Dr. Tennyson.”
“By God, my man, you’re right!” exclaimed Dr. Tennyson.
— MICHAEL INNES, The Gay Phoenix
THRONBERRY, Marv (1933–), US professional baseball player.
1 “During their worst early years no one symbolized the hapless condition of the New York Mets better than first baseman Marv Thronberry. He was the good-natured butt of many of the better (and somewhat exaggerated) Mets stories. Like the time manager Casey Stengel got a cake for his birthday and someone in the clubhouse asked why Marvelous Marv hadn’t got one on his birthday. ‘We were afraid he might drop it,’ Stengel explained.”
THURBER, James (1894–1961), US cartoonist, short-story writer, and humorist who contributed to The New Yorker for many years.
1 The offices of The New Yorker were constantly being altered on editor Harold Ross’s orders and the sound of hammering and drilling filled the air as partitions were moved around by squads of workmen. Thurber once hung up a sign outside the elevator that read: “ALTERATIONS GOING ON AS USUAL DURING BUSINESS.”
2 When The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, with Danny Kaye in the title role, became a hit movie, Sam Goldwyn decided that he would like to have Thurber as a permanent part of his team of writers. He tried to lure Thurber to Hollywood with an offer of $500 a week. Thurber, quite content to go on working for Harold Ross at The New Yorker, wrote back after a decent interval, declining Goldwyn’s offer with “Mr. Ross has met the increase.” Goldwyn wrote again, raising the offer to $1,000 a week, then $1,500, and finally $2,500. On each occasion the response was the same. Goldwyn decided to drop the matter for a while. Then one day he wrote again, but this time the offer had dropped to $1,500. Back came Thurber’s reply: “I am sorry, but Mr. Ross has met the decrease.”
3 Having overdrawn his bank account, Thurber was summoned to a meeting with the bank manager. The humorist freely admitted that he kept no record of the checks he wrote. “Then how do you know how much money is in your account?” asked the manager. “I thought that was your business,” retorted Thurber.
4 One of Thurber’s favorite stories concerned a conversation he had with a nurse while he was in the hospital. “What seven-letter word has three u’s in it?” he asked. The nurse pondered and then said, “I don’t know, but it must be unusual.”
5 At a party a woman lurched drunkenly up to Thurber and told him she would like to have a baby by him. “Surely you don’t mean by unartificial insemina
tion?” protested Thurber.
6 At another cocktail party a woman waxed enthusiastic over Thurber’s work, saying that she found it even funnier in French than in English. “Yes, I always seem to lose something in the original,” agreed Thurber.
7 Thurber and a friend attended the premiere of a Hollywood spectacular. As they were leaving the theater, Thurber inquired what his companion had thought of the movie. “Well, not to mince words, I thought it stank,” was the response. “I can’t say I liked it that well,” murmured Thurber thoughtfully.
8 After he lost his sight Thurber was in a restaurant with Harold Ross when Ross picked up a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and exasperatedly said, “Goddammit, that’s the ten thousandth time I’ve read the label on this bottle.” Thurber said to him, “Goddammit, Harold, that’s because you’re handicapped by vision.”
9 Thurber attended a friend’s party after he had lost his sight. As a certain couple departed, he remarked to his host, “They’re going to break up.”
“That’s not possible!” exclaimed his friend. “I’ve never seen such friendliness and smiling.”
“Yes,” said Thurber, “you saw them. I heard them.”
Six months later, the couple separated.
10 In the fall of 1961 Thurber underwent surgery for a blood clot on the brain. He made a partial recovery but then contracted pneumonia and died on the afternoon of November 2. According to legend, his last words were: “God bless … God damn.”
THURLOW, Edward, 1st Baron (1731–1806), British statesman.
1 As an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Thurlow was principally distinguished for his idleness and un-ruliness. His tutor summoned him and began to rebuke him: “Sir, I never come to the window but I see you idling in the court.” Adopting the tutor’s tone, Thurlow replied, “Sir, I never come into the court but I see you idling at the window.”
Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes Page 93