The Best Soccer Game

       I am no expert on soccer. My knowledge extends as far as knowing to not kick the ball into your team's goal, and that the game is called "football" pretty much everywhere except America. Well, it turns out that I know even less than I previously thought. Kicking the ball into your own team's goal can be an ingenious maneuver. Well, supposing you are Barbados' 1994 soccer team.

       The Barbados team was playing Grenada in the Group round of the Caribbean Cup. They were winning 2-0 with seven minutes still on the clock, when all of a sudden Grenada scored and brought the score to 2-1. Even though Barbados was still winning, they were technically losing. You see, if they won the game, the two teams would be tied in the standings. But Grenada would win the tiebreaker based on having scored more in prior matches. The only way Barbados could advance to the next round was in they won the game by two goals.

       So with three minutes to go and Barbados still only winning by one, the team came up with a brilliant plan. Instead of trying to score, they would force overtime. By tying the scores. Ergo  scoring  on themselves.

Barbados - Grenada 1994 - YouTube

      "But so what?" You may be asking. "Supposing that they score in overtime, the score will still only be 3-2, and they still don't advance, right?" Well you obviously don't know much about the Caribbean Cup scoring policy. It states, for some strange reason, that overtime goals counted as double.

      So then all hell broke loose. As much as Barbados needed overtime, Grenada needed to prevent it. Even if it meant losing. So then they started trying to score in their own goal, hoping to lose the game by only one goal, meaning of course that they would advance to the next round. So Barbados ended up defending both sides of the field, as well as trying score on themselves again. 

      This four-minute farce finally ended when Barbados scored (miraculously on the other team), winning 4-2. Thereby advancing to the next round. Where they were promptly and brutally defeated.

      Now I see why soccer is the most popular sport in the world. No wait, actually I still have no idea.
     

Cuffed Sleeves and Malpractice

            Not much else can ruin your day quite like getting getting guts and various other bodily fluids all over the sleeves of your sharpest looking suit.

Second only to being seen crying while watching Twilight. 

          Much like you, the dapper surgeons of the 19th century decided that bloody sleeves must become a thing of the past. So, instead of discovering new medicines or groundbreaking surgical techniques, the 19th century surgeons invented custom-tailored suits which allowed them to roll up their sleeves for impromptu surgery. And thus cuffed sleeves, or "surgeon's cuffs," were born.

Because a true gentleman doesn't even take off his jacket when he's cutting
into dudes. 

          Since being a surgeon was such a prestigious title, many common folk started purchasing cuffed jackets to look educated and cool. Soon tailors started just slapping vestigial buttons on the sleeves of suits, even though they served no purpose other than looking like a 19th century surgeon. Which I'm sure everyone still aspires to.

"Stab wound? No problem! Look at my sleeves!"

Internet Scam of the 19th Century

     You may be familiar with the Nigerian email scam. If you are not, a strongly suggest you continue reading. If you already know about the scam, then uhh, still keep reading anyway. Okay, so the Nigerian scam (also called the 419 scam, or the advance-free fraud) most often takes the form of an email from an unknown party claiming that if the reader wires them a certain amount of money, they will soon be generously rewarded with even more money than was wired. There are many different stories behind the unknown party's need for money, some with an incredibly intricate plot. A common one is that a member of Nigerian royalty needs your money to gain access to a fortune, which he would more than happily share with you once he attains it.

Nobody believes me... 

       In case you hadn't guessed, the scam ends with you loosing money and never receiving a part of a fortune. And you feeling like an idiot for the rest of your life. 

       Similar scams have been around much longer than you may think. Like, even before the internet. 

Figuratively forever ago. 

       The Spanish Prisoner letter scam was one of a few money scams from as far back as the 18th century. Reaching it's peak in the 19th century, the confidence trickster tells his victim (the mark) that he is (or is in correspondence with) a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity. Some versions had the imprisoned person being an unknown or remote relative of the mark.  Supposedly the prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and is relying on a friend (the confidence trickster) to raise money to secure his release. The confidence trickster offers to let the mark put up some of the funds, with a promise that he will be financially rewarded when the prisoner returns, and perhaps also by gaining the hand of a beautiful woman represented to be the prisoner's daughter. After the mark has turned over the funds, he is informed that further difficulties have arisen and more money is needed. With such explanations, the trickster continues to press for more money until the victim is cleaned out or declines to put up more funds.

"Don't you ever ask me how I lost all my riches again!"

      The amount of effort put into the scams back then is astounding. For an example of a Spanish Prisoner letter, you can click on this link. 

      The moral of the story is don't give people your money.