[1]Nowhere Man:

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cimrman_autobusta.jpg Image:
    [2]Wikimedia Commons

    The greatest Czech citizen is a man who doesn't exist. Jára Cimrman
    was dreamed up as a modest caricature of the Czech people for a 1966
    radio program, but he's been adopted as a sort of fictive national
    hero. By general agreement he's an accomplished author, detective,
    poet, inventor, mathematician, playwright, sportsman, philosopher,
    traveler, teacher, and composer; in a 2005 television competition he
    would have been voted "The Greatest Czech" but was disqualified for
    not existing. No one quite knows what he looks like, but his
    accomplishments are listed on an immortal [3]Wikipedia page:
    * He proposed the Panama Canal to the U.S. government while composing
      a libretto for an opera about it.
    * Fleeing arctic cannibals, he came within 7 meters of reaching the
      North Pole.
    * He invented yogurt.
    * He created the first puppet show in Paraguay.
    * He corresponded with George Bernard Shaw for many years, without
      receiving a response.
    * He constructed the first rigid airship using Swedish steel and
      Czech wicker.
    * He reworked the electrical contact on Edison's first light bulb and
      found a sublet for Gustave Eiffel.
    * He suggested that Mendeleev rotate his first draft of the Periodic
      Table.
    * He devised the philosophy of externism, the opposite of solipsism.
      In solipsism, the observer exists and the outside world does not.
      In externism, the outside word exists but the philosopher does not.

    When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he found three
    missed calls from Cimrman.

  (Via [4]Futility Closet)
  Also on:

  [5]Twitter
    __________________________________________________________________

  My original entry is here: [6]Nowhere Man. It posted Sun, 22 Jul 2018
  01:25:32 +0000.
  Filed under: personal,

References

  1. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FutilityCloset/~3/u6F3OFZMVJE/
  2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cimrman_autobusta.jpg
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jára_Cimrman
  4. http://feeds.feedburner.com/FutilityCloset
  5. https://twitter.com/TokyoGringo/status/1020843158232616960
  6. https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=1314

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