When you talk about the New York Knicks basketball team (and I certainly don't), you are using a name - Knickerbocker - that goes way way back in American history.
I'm sure you remember reading about Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, well, they were the creations of Washington Irving, who was born in 1783 just as the Revolutionary War was being settled, and named for George Washington. He was not a healthy child, and was sent to upstate New York for his health (even today, we salute the salubrious nature of country air, which would come as a surprise to anyone who grew up next to a hog farm).
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| Washington Irving |
But young Washington fell in love with the area, and that's where his classic folklore tales were set.
Eventually, he traveled to Europe, was graduated from law school, and settled back in New York City with plans of becoming a writer. He became the editor of a satirical newspaper called "Salamagundi."
With his eyes on bigger things, Irving wrote a book, but in those days before Tamron Hall, Kelly & Mark, and Kelly Clarkson, opportunities to promote his work were limited.
He decided that a hoax was the way to go, so he placed ads in the newspaper looking for a missing person named Diedrich Knickerbocker, saying that Mr Knickerbocker was missing, last seen in a hotel room.
It worked! People started buzzing about the missing mystery Mister. With the hook baited, Irving tossed it back in, running more ads claiming to be paid for by the hotel owner, and stating that Knickerbocker had left the manuscript for a book behind as he skipped out on his bill.
The ads said that the hotel owner would publish the book and use the money that came in to pay off the hotel bill, and soon enough, people were lining up with their money wadded up in their hands to get those hands on a fresh copy of "A History of New-York From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty," by Diedrich Knickerbocker.
America's first hoax was a success! And people are still trying to pull them off, all these years later.
Every four years, people fall for one.
1 comment:
Excellent account! You've out Paul Harvey'ed Paul Harvey! It recalls, for me, the Southern legend of Georgia Tech student George P. Burdell, an entirely fictional student concocted and maintained (George even took exams!) by those frisky undergrads in the 1920s.
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