# Historic examples of "Fools! I'll show them all!" or "With Blackjack, and Hookers!" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2012, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573 "2012-06-09T01:18:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/21 "2012-06-09T22:30:00Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > Heres a local one, from my point of view. > > An entrepreneur here in Ireland called Sean Quinn, started as pretty much a one man band, but grew his business rapidly with some very shrewd dealings. He was involved mainly in quarrying and construction, road building, and related types of work. As his business grew he required ever larger quantities of cement, which he had been sourcing from what at the time was the dominant supplier in Northern Ireland, Blue Circle cement in Co Tyrone. > > However, this was a time in Northern Ireland when sectarianism was rampant, and as far as the protestant ownership of Blue circle were concerned the catholic, GAA supporting Sean Quinn was pretty much dirt on their heels, for all that at this stage we could well have been their biggest customer. > > Disgusted with the level of service he was receiving, Quinn showed exactly why he eventually became a self-made billionaire. His reaction was to say “fuck’em”, and open his own cement company, Quinn Cement, part of what eventually became the Quinn-group. > > At a stroke not only did Blue Circle lose their biggest customer, but they gained a massive rival, and it was not very long before it was Quinn Cement that were now the largest supplier of cement products in Ireland. > > Quinn repeated this trick a few years later. Unhappy with the service and supply from the nationalised Northern Ireland electricity board, Quinn erected a series of wind turbines on the Fermanagh - Cavan border, and proceded to not only power his own factories, but to sell electricity back to the previously arrogant NIE. > > [http://www.quinn-group.com/index.cfm](http://www.quinn-group.com/index.cfm) an inspiring success story to be sure, but Blue circle didn’t question Quinn’s theories of cement making, did they? Seems more about overcoming religious intolerance\* than in disputing Quinn’s invention or creation of new cement making technology. \*Protestant v. Catholic in Ireland involves far more than mere religious differences. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/22 "2012-06-09T22:38:24Z")
> [@David42](#): > > Even if we take that away he still showed the world that no, you don’t drop off the edge of the world into the pit of the stomach of the wurm of the world’s end. Nobody at the time thought the world was flat. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/23 "2012-06-10T05:32:27Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > [The Map That Changed the World: Winchester, Simon: 9780060931803: Amazon.com: Books](http://www.amazon.com/The-Map-That-Changed-World/dp/0060931809) > > Link to Simon Winchester’s book The Map that Changed the World about the man who documented the geologic stratification of the Earth’s crust in the UK and its implications for geologic time - he was ostracized for years by his British scientist peers. William Smith. He wasn’t ostracized because they thought he was wrong, though. Rather, other, better established, scientists plagiarized his work so that, for years, he received little credit and was unable to make money, as he had hoped, by selling the geological map that he had created, because plagiarized versions were undercutting him. This could happen because Smith and the other geologists of the time were _not_ peers. He was a man of humble origins who had worked his way up to being a civil engineer, and the geological establishment, consisted of upper-class gentleman-scientists who could not take someone who had risen from the lower classes seriously. (The story did have a happy ending, though. In the end his achievement was recognized and he got a pension from the King.) ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/24 "2012-06-10T05:54:50Z")
[U.S. Grant](http://www.granthomepage.com/grantchronology.htm) ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/25 "2012-06-10T05:58:08Z")
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was ridiculed about his discovery of his eponymous limit (concerning the maximum mass of a white dwarf star) by Sir Arthur Eddington. Chandrasekhar eventually won the Nobel Prize for this work. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/26 "2012-06-10T06:58:25Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > The Boy Scouts produced machine guns? Wow, Scouting changed a lot before I joined. BSA referring to “Birmingham Small Arms”, the well-known arms and motorbike manufacturer in the UK. It took a lot of 😕 and Googling before working out that’s what you were referring to, by the way. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/27 "2012-06-10T07:31:26Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > BSA referring to “Birmingham Small Arms”, the well-known arms and motorbike manufacturer in the UK. > > It took a lot of 😕 and Googling before working out that’s what you were referring to, by the way. Aahhh! :smack: Light dawns - I was wondering where the Boy Scouts came in. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/28 "2012-06-10T13:17:41Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Firstly, Galileo. He was right about the whole Earth revolving around the sun thing, but he still found himself in front of the Inquisition and forced to recant. He’s now regarded as the father of modern science. Injured pride also brought Darwin a lot of grief for his theory. When a book called “100 Authors Against Einstein” was published, his version of maniacal laughter was to reply, “If I’m wrong, one would be enough”. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/29 "2012-06-10T14:10:41Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > No, but there is the [Boys anti-tank rifle - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_anti-tank_rifle). I dunno what they make for girls. Female tanks, obviously. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MkIVFemaleTankAshfordKent.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MkIVFemaleTankAshfordKent.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![wbeaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/439d5e/32.png) [@wbeaty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wbeaty)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2012, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/30 "2012-06-11T19:26:49Z")
STM Microscope widely ridiculed [Science news, Oct 24 1998](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22atom+tinkerer%27s+paradise%22) "Maybe it was too big—or too small—a leap for his colleagues to fathom. Whatever the reason, the hostility of fellow surface scientists was unvarnished when James K. Gimzewski spoke at a 1985 surface-physics meeting about viewing a single molecule with a new type of instrument—the scanning tunneling microscope. “They laughed me off the stage. It was new and they hated it,” he says. Microscopists were no more welcoming, says Gimzewski, a physicist at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon, Switzerland, where the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) was invented by his colleagues. Heinrich Rohrer, who was to share the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with IBM colleague Gerd Karl Binnig for his part in the invention, “asked me go to Australia and give a lecture at an international conference on microscopy. All the TEM [transmission electron microscope] guys were shouting and laughing off their heads,” Gimzewski recalls. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2012, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573/31 "2012-06-11T23:26:31Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > William Smith. > > He wasn’t ostracized because they thought he was wrong, though. Rather, other, better established, scientists plagiarized his work so that, for years, he received little credit and was unable to make money, as he had hoped, by selling the geological map that he had created, because plagiarized versions were undercutting him. This could happen because Smith and the other geologists of the time were _not_ peers. He was a man of humble origins who had worked his way up to being a civil engineer, and the geological establishment, consisted of upper-class gentleman-scientists who could not take someone who had risen from the lower classes seriously. (The story did have a happy ending, though. In the end his achievement was recognized and he got a pension from the King.) Thanks for a better synopsis. And yes he got his recognition in the end, relevant to the OP. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-examples-of-fools-ill-show-them-all-or-with-blackjack-and-hookers/624573.md?page=1)