This past weekend, I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell as part of my ‘required reading’ for Sixthman University.  In the book, Gladwell discusses the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere, warning the citizens of New England that “the British [were] coming” and effectively preparing them for the surprise invasion.  Growing up in Massachusetts, I’ve known about Paul Revere and studied the Revolutionary War practically every year throughout school.

So it came to my surprise when Gladwell discussed a gentleman by the name of William Dawes who received the same message as Paul Revere, and traveled in another direction to warn of the British invasion.  While Revere’s message reached far and wide, mustering towns full of soldiers in just a matter of minutes, Dawes’s message somehow fell on deaf ears, and most members of the towns he visited didn’t find out about the war until much later.

So what the heck happened? Apparently Paul Revere was quite the popular fellow and knew the right people in each town to reach, while William didn’t have the same level of persuasion and reputation.  Because of his popularity, Paul Revere would go on to become known for his famous role in the American Revolution, while William Dawes would fade into obscurity.  If you’d like to read the whole fascinating account of this story from the Tipping Point, you can read it here.  How about Israel Bissell? This guy rode from Watertown, MA to PHILADELPHIA to warn everybody of the attack, covering some 350 miles in 4 days.  Ever heard of him?  Didn’t think so.

Moving beyond the specifics of Paul Revere, I started thinking about all the other poor suckers in history who had a chance at greatness but due to some circumstance never quite made it over the hump.  Two hundred years from now, everybody will remember that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.  How many people will know that Buzz Aldrin was the second?  According to Wikipedia (obviously not the most reputable source, I know), the reason Armstrong was picked over Aldrin to be the first on the moon was because they thought Armstrong had way less of an ego.  Just think, if Buzz Aldrin hadn’t been such a jerk playing cards at the NASA space station years earlier, he’d be the one in the history books.  Now, the only Buzz anybody cares about will be staring in Toy Story 3 next summer (wooo Pixar!).

Although Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, his request for “ahoy!” to be the official greeting eventually lost out to Thomas Edison who wanted it to be “hello.”  There are conflicting stories why ‘hello’ won out in the end, I’m just glad it did.  I don’t think Neil Diamond would have been nearly as successful with “Ahoy Again” and we just can’t have that.

Because I’m feeling creative, I decided to make up some famous fake “other guys” in history:

• Christopher Columbus discovered America, and will always be known in the poem “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Did you know Christopher Columbus had an older brother named Biff?  Believe it or not, it was actually Biff’s idea to sail west from Portugal, and he did it two years earlier than Christopher.  Unfortunately, Biff made the trip in a bathtub using a bed sheet for a sail; he only made it 20 yards off the coast before sinking.  Biff wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, if you catch my drift (get it? drift? zing!).
• You’ve heard of Lewis and Clark, the first pair of Americans to travel to the Pacific Coast and back in the early 1800s. Did you know it was actually going to be Lewis and Clark and Griswald, but Griswald was eaten by a grizzly bear two days into the trip when he accidentally ate the bear’s porridge.  History will show it’s not the first time this mistake has been made.

I smell a contest! Leave a comment with your best fake history story about “the other guy” – the one who came in second, the girl who would have won had she not given up, the fad that should have caught on but didn’t, etc.  At the end of the week, the Sixthman team will pick the most clever story that made us laugh the hardest.  We’ll mail some free Sixthman swag to the winner.

Napoleon? Caesar? Plato?  All fair game. Fake historians, let’s hear what you got.

-Steve