The Other Man in the Iron Mask


100 years ago today, Harry Bensley set off on a strange journey, in order to fulfill the requirements of a wager between John Pierpont Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale. The question was whether a man could walk around the world without being identified. The journey had 15 conditions, including that Bensley had to wear an iron mask from a suit of armor and push a baby carriage! Bensley spent the next six and a half years trying to fulfill the terms of the wager. Link

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Inresponse to Mooncakes question a movie is possibly in the making, although I don't know the full details yet about whether it is going to go ahead or not. I should also mention that Harry Bensley is my great great grandfather.
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Back then £ 21,0000 was $100,000. Today's value, keeping the valuation method above:

$3.1 million using the retail price index
$3.8 million using the GDP deflator
$16 million using average earnings
$18.6 million using per capita gDP
$25.8 million using the GDP
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Sounds like he didn't actually do it, but simply went incognito for a few years to avoid his creditors.
It's like betting you can go around the world as an invisible person - who's to prove you didn't?
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