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
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
By the way, today (January 1 2008) is the 100th anniversary of the start of Bensley's adventure.
And Noelegy, £21,000 at 1907 is now valued:
£1,526,895.66 using the retail price index
£1,907,101.55 using the GDP deflator
£8,019,583.97 using average earnings
£9,330,442.38 using per capita GDP
£12,913,543.88 using the GDP
(source)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/01/nmask101.xml
"Despite more than 20 years of research (his great-grandson) has not found a shred of evidence his ancestor ever left Britain."
Although, they made a mistake in the last paragraph (ancestor vs. descendant).
It's like betting you can go around the world as an invisible person - who's to prove you didn't?
$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