Topic : Deceit

Despite the mind-numbing brutality of the Joseph Stalin regime in the Soviet Union, his propaganda machine did its job well. Many Russians hailed him as a hero and a savior, including a young school girl who was chosen to greet Stalin on one occasion.

Years later, this woman recalled Stalin taking her onto his lap, smiling like a loving father. She was starry-eyed, and she cherished the moment for many years. Only later did she learn that during this period, Stalin had her parents arrested and sent to the labor camps, never to be seen again.

Today in the Word, October, 1997, p. 36

On his first voyage west in 1492, Christopher Columbus knew that his crew felt uneasy about sailing into unknown waters for an unknown period of time. So he kept two logs for the journey. In the first, he recorded the distances traveled as he calculated them. In the second log, he deliberately entered shorter distances so his crew would think they were closer to home than they actually were.

This deception had an ironic twist, however. As it turns out, the phony mileage figures Columbus entered to soothe his nervous crew were more accurate than his “real” calculations. His “lies” had been closer to the mark than his “truth”!

Today in the Word, January 12, 1997, p. 19

A person on railroad tracks hear a train approaching, looks behind him, sees the train and then freezes on the tracks in fear. The train “outruns” its sound—which means that by the time you hear it, it is virtually on top on you. If a train engineer sees you on a track, he or she will blow the whistle. Often it takes more than one blast to get the average person’s attention, say train engineers. But trains can’t stop the way motor vehicles can. A freight train has about 100 cars, weights 12 million pounds, and takes a full mile to stop. An optical illusion happens with tracks. When you see a train coming, it looks as if it is traveling half as fast, and is two times farther away from you than it really is. For example, if it is going 60 miles per hour and is half a mile away, it looks as if it is traveling 30 mph and is one mile away.

Dennis Heatherington, Operation Lifesaver, in MSC Health Action News, Vol XIV, No. 3, March 1994, p. 4

In late September 1864 Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was leading his troops north from Decatur, Alabama, toward Nashville. But to make it to Nashville, Forrest would have to defeat the Union army at Athens, Alabama. When the Union commander, Colonel Wallace Campbell, refused to surrender, Forrest asked for a personal meeting, and took Campbell on an inspection of his troops. But each time they left a detachment, the Confederate soldiers simply packed up and moved to another position, artillery and all. Forrest and Campbell would then arrive at the new encampment and continue to tally up the impressive number of Confederate soldiers and weaponry. By the time they returned to the fort, Campbell was convinced he couldn’t win and surrendered unconditionally!

Today in the Word, June 27, 1993

In 1212 a French shepherd boy by the name of Steven claimed that Jesus had appeared to him disguised as a pilgrim. Supposedly, Jesus instructed him to take a letter to the king of France. This poor, misguided boy told everyone he saw about what he thought he had encountered. Before long he had gathered a large following of more than thirty thousand children who accompanied him on his pilgrimage. As Philip Schaff records it, when asked where they were going, they replied, “We go to God, and seek for the holy cross beyond the sea.” They reached Marseilles, but the waves did not part and let them go through dry-shod as they expected.

It was at Marseilles that tragedy occurred. The children met two men, Hugo Ferreus and William Porcus. The men claimed to be so impressed with the calling of the children that they offered to transport them across the Mediterranean in seven ships without charge. What the children didn’t know was that the two men were slave traders. The children boarded the ships and the journey began, but instead of setting sail for the Holy Land they set course for North Africa, “where they were sold as slaves in the Muslim markets that did a large business in the buying and selling of human being. Few if any returned. None ever reached the Holy Land.” Two cunning men enjoyed enormous financial profits simply because they were willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of children.

Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, 1991, Multnomah Press, Page 60-61

There are a thousand or more varieties of mushrooms that are good to eat....The most dreaded of the poisonous mushrooms are two members of the Amanita group. One is the death cup, and the other is the fly amanita.

The death cup grows in the woods from June until fall. Its poison acts like the venom of a rattlesnake, as it separates the corpuscles in the blood from the serum. No antidote is known for the poison of the death cup. The only hope for anyone who has eaten it is to clean out his stomach promptly with a stomach pump. It is small wonder that one variety is known as the destroying angel.

The death cup has often been mistaken for the common mushroom. A person should not make this mistake if he observes carefully. The poisonous plant has white gills, white spores, and the fatal poison cup around the stem. The plant that is safe to eat has pink gills, brown spores, and no cup. Many of the mistakes come from picking it in the button stage, for it does not show all these differences until it has grown larger.

Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, 1991, Multnomah Press, pp. 17-18

As physics professor at Adelaide University in Australia, Sir Kerr Grant used to illustrate the time of descent of a free-falling body by allowing a heavy ball suspended from the lecture-theater roof trusses to fall some 30 feet and be caught in a sand bucket.

Each year the bucket was lined up meticulously to catch the ball—and each year students secretly moved the bucket to one side, so that the ball crashed thunderously to the floor. Tiring of this rather stale joke, the professor traced a chalk line around the bucket. The students moved the bucket as usual, traced a chalk mark around the new position, rubbed it out and replaced the bucket in its original spot.

“Aha!” the professor explained, seeing the faint outline of the erased chalk mark. He moved the bucket over it and released the ball—which thundered to the floor as usual.

Reader’s Digest, Contributed by D.G. Dewar

Thomas Edison was concerned about the way visitors to his office helped themselves to his expensive Havana cigars. Since he wouldn’t lock them up, his secretary suggested he have cigars made from cabbage leaves and substitute them for the Havanas. Edison agreed, then forgot about it, and only remembered later when the Havanas started vanishing again. When he asked his secretary why the bogus cigars hadn’t arrived, she told him they had arrived and had been given to his manager—who, not knowing they were fakes, had packed them for Edison to take on a trip. “And do you know,” Edison laughed, “I smoked every one of those cigars myself!”

Today in the Word, December 16, 1992

Bob Harris, weatherman for NY TV station WPIX-TV and the nationally syndicated independent Network news, had to weather a public storm of his own making in 1979. Though he had studied math, physics and geology at three colleges, he left school without a degree but with a strong desire to be a media weatherman.

He phoned WCBS-TV, introducing himself as a Ph.D. in geophysics from Columbia U. The phony degree got him in the door. After a two-month tryout, he was hired as an off-camera forecaster for WCBS. For the next decade his career flourished. He became widely known as “Dr. Bob.” He was also hired by the New York Times as a consulting meteorologist. The same year both the Long Island Railroad and then Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn hired him. Forty years of age and living his childhood dream, he found himself in public disgrace and national humiliation when an anonymous letter prompted WCBS management to investigate his academic credentials. Both the station and the New York Times fire him.

His story got attention across the land. He was on the Today Show, the Tomorrow Show, and in People Weekly, among others. He thought he’d lose his home and never work in the media again. Several days later the Long Island Railroad and Bowie Kuhn announced they would not fire him. Then WNEW-TV gave him a job. He admits it was a dreadful mistake on his part and doubtless played a role in his divorce. “I took a shortcut that turned out to be the long way around, and one day the bill came due. I will be sorry as long as I am alive.”

Nancy Shulins, Journal News, Nyack, NY

On one occasion Norman “Kid” McCoy, who was welterweight boxing champion in 1896, was fighting a contender who had the misfortune of being deaf. Once McCoy discovered his opponent’s disability, he wasted no time in taking advantage of it. Near the end of the third round McCoy stepped back a pace and pointed to his adversary’s corner, indicating that the bell had rung.

“Oh, thank you so much,” said McCoy’s opponent. “very civil of you.” But the bell hadn’t rung at all, and as soon as the other boxer dropped his hands and turned away. McCoy immediately knocked him out.

Daily Walk, May 19, 1992

“Marathoner Loses by a Mustache.” So read the headline of a recent Associated Press story. It appeared that Abbes Tehami of Algeria was an easy winner of the Brussels Marathon—until someone wondered where his mustache had gone! Checking eyewitness accounts, it quickly became evident that the mustache belonged to Tehami’s coach, Bensalem Hamiani. Hamiani had run the first seven-and-a-half miles of the race for Tehami, then dropped out of the pack and disappeared into the woods to pass race number 62 on to his pupil. “They looked about the same,” race organizers said. “Only one had a mustache.” It’s expected that the two will never again be allowed to run in Belgium.

Today in the Word, Moody Bible Institute, Jan, 1992, p.

Deception has been a part of warfare since the Trojan horse. During WWII, it became high art. Members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops used special “weapons” like dummy planes, tanks, antiaircraft guns, and amplified recordings that created war sounds to fool the German high command. To enable a combat unit to change positions or even attack when the Germans thought it hadn’t moved at all, the 1800 men of the 23rd impersonated entire divisions. They would move in at night, change insignias, and inflate their rubber decoys. Meanwhile, the troops they were replacing sneaked away. Such deception was a major factor in the success of the Allies’ D-Day invasion, as the German 15th Army waited elsewhere for an assault that never came.

Today in the Word, November 10, 1991

Circus showman P.T. Barnum once ran an animal museum in lower Manhattan. People enjoyed the exhibit so much they would stay for hours, preventing others from entering. Finally, Barnum devised a way to rid the place of customers who overstayed their welcome. Over the cage of a tigress and her cubs he hung a large sign which read, “Tigress.” Over a doorway next to the cage he hung another sign: “To the Egress.” Thinking they would see another curiosity, people walked through the door and out onto the street!

Moody Bible Institute’s Today in the Word, September, 1991, p. 27

Once, when a stubborn disputer seemed unconvinced, Lincoln said, “Well, let’s see how many legs has a cow?” “Four, of course,” came the reply disgustedly. “That’s right,” agreed Lincoln. “Now suppose you call the cow’s tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?” “Why, five, of course,” was the confident reply. “Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Lincoln. “Calling a cow’s tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

Bits and Pieces, July, 1991

It is estimated that 500,000 Americans have counterfeit diplomas or credentials.

Prokope, July-Aug, 1988

• You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. - A. Lincoln
• Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough. G. K. Chesterton

Sources unknown

One summer morning in the 1920s, a Scotsman named Arthur Ferguson stood idly in London’s Trafalgar Square. As he watched, an obviously well-to-do American began admiring the statue of Admiral Lord Nelson and the column it rested on. Struck with a sudden inspiration, Ferguson put his remarkable selling ability to work and “sold” Nelson’s column to the American for about $30,000—lions included!

Not one to rest on his laurels, Ferguson went on from there to sell the famous clock Big Ben to another American for $5,000 and took $10,000 from yet another as down payment on Buckingham Palace. By the time justice caught up with him, Ferguson had added the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty to the list of his amazing “sales”! He spent several years in prison for his remarkable deceptions.

Source unknown

Christopher Columbus kept two records of the distances traveled on his first voyage to the New World in the Santa Maria. One was true, he thought, but he deliberately faked the other. Ironically, the fake log turned out to be the more accurate of the two. To alleviate his crew’s fears that they were getting too far from home on an unknown sea, Columbus gave them a reduced mileage estimate. When, for example, he told them on Sept. 11, 1492, that they had covered 16 leagues, he recorded 20 leagues in his secret log. Though he didn’t know it, Columbus’ “true” distance records were overestimated by 9% on the average. His faked distances came out closer to the actual distances traveled.

When the crew found out about his deception, they threatened to mutiny. Before they did, however, land—and a New World—appeared.

Parade Magazine, March 18, 1984

• Swindoll, Make Up Your Mind, p. 14

It is reported that in the late 1860s, President Ulysses S. Grant gave a cigar to Horace Norton, philanthropist and founder of Norton College. Because of his respect for the President, Norton chose to keep the cigar rather than smoke it. Upon Norton’s death, the cigar passed to his son, and later it was bequeathed to his grandson. It was Norton’s grandson who in 1932 chose to light the cigar ceremoniously during an oration at Norton College’s 70th anniversary celebration. Waxing eloquent, Norton lit the famous cigar and proceeded to extol the many virtues of Grant until...Boom! The renowned cigar exploded! That’s right—over sixty years earlier Grant had passed a loaded cigar along to a good friend, and at long last it had made a fool of his friend’s grandson!

Today in the Word, July, 1989, p. 39