World Leaders in 1942

[snopes]

[Tootsie Plunkette]

Shouldn't that be C-H-R-M-S-T?

[Tarquin Farquart]

"Il Duce" is a bit of a stretch isn't it?

[CSGirl]

Well.... yeah. The first set and the second set are each always going to equal 1942... so the sum will be twice 1942. And they will all be the same.

[snopes]

Technically, Stalin "took office" (as general secretary of the Communist Party) in 1922. It was Lenin's death in 1924 that provided him with the opportunity to really start outmaneuvering his rivals and consolidating power for himself.

- snopes

[CSGirl]

Originally Posted by snopes

Technically, Stalin "took office" (as general secretary of the Communist Party) in 1922. It was Lenin's death in 1924 that provided him with the opportunity to really start outmaneuvering his rivals and consolidating power for himself.

It doesn't make a difference for the equation though. 1922 + 20 years in office still = 1942. Are you trying to deny teh conspiracy?!?

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Tootsie Plunkette

Shouldn't that be C-H-R-M-S-T?

No, it should be C-D-R-I-S-T. The name of the leader of Germany was "Der Fuehrer."

- snopes

[Tarquin Farquart]

What does the conspiracy mean though? That all the world leaders in 1942 add up to 1 Christ? I don't get it...

If I was really bored, I'd do it for 2007 and see how many Christs we're worth today.

[Bonnie]

Here's the version sent in by Paul G. Brewster to the editors of The California Folklore Quarterly. It was published it in the July 1945 issue (Vol. 4, No. 3) ...

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l275/BonnieTB/CFQ.jpg

[Bonnie]

From Jerry Kluttz's "The Federal Diary" column ("Federal Workers Amazed by War Brainteaser"), The Washington Post, 11 July 1944, Pg. 3.

An intriguing brainteaser, said to have been worked out by a mathmetacian [sic] with a flair for soothsaying, has Federal workers flabbergasted. Here it is.

[Then he describes the table above and how to work the math.]

Add these important dates and figures in the lives of these important men and you'll get an identical answer, the mystic 3888. Yes, it's amazing. Now our unknown mathematician looks into a crystal ball and he writes: "To get the date the war will end take one-half of 3888, which is 1944, and to find the month, the date, and the house, take one-half of 1944 -- and that equals 9-7-2, the ninth month, the 7th day at 2 o'clock, September 7." Now take the first letter of each name in the above order and you'll have the name of the real ruler of the world despite all the strong men -- C-H-R-I-S-T. Make yourself a chart and baffle your friends.

-- Bonnie

[snopes]

Here's another example, from the Burlington [North Carolina] Daily Times-News, 21 August 1944:

[ganzfeld]

That's nothing. If you rearrange the letters in
Abe, Blair, Bush, Hu, Putin, Sarkozy
you can get
Oink, baa, Shrub! A pushy ruble zit.
(I don't know what that means but I ran out of my allotted "daily anagram search time" -- also known as "restyling her a macadamia".)

- Gland Fez... er, I mean, Ganzfeld

[Bonnie]

I think coming up with the date of the end of the war and the name of the "supreme leader" were later additions.

Columnist Lee Shippey, writing for The Los Angeles Times, included this trick, which hinged on arriving at 3886, in his column that appeared on 18 October 1943 ("Lee Side of Life," Pg. A4). The leaders, listed in the following order, are Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Hirohito (which makes it hard to arrive at "C-H-R-I-S-T"). He notes that, "[o]f course, one has to shut his eyes to a few things, like the omission of Chiang Kai-shek and other allied leaders."

A version from May, 1944, which lacks the table itself, appeared in The Lethbridge [Alberta] Herald (there, The Halifax Herald is credited as the source). The editor mentions that "we note the omission of Chiang Kai-shek of China and Tojo of Japan -- but perhaps the compiler was concentrating solely on the 'duration of the war' in Europe." In fact, Mussolini is missing too. Since Il Duce and Tojo don't appear, there's no additional step of putting together the names of the leaders and coming up with the ultimate leader. (From "Statistics Prove Anything," 15 May 1944, Pg. 4.)

Neither column refers to how to arrive at the precise date on which the war will end.

Finally, the author of a later piece that appeared in The Charleroi [Pennsylvania] Mail ("Town Topics," 29 August 1944, Pg. 2) notes that "[w]hen I first saw these figures a year ago they 'proved' that the war was going to end in 1943 . . . On July 15, 1943, we used a sample of the statistics, and then tried to show the fallacy by adding our cat to the list of such notables." He further notes that "[w]e can't see why our cat, who has a big fund of premonition or something shouldn't also be able to foretell the war's end":

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l275/BonnieTB/Cat.jpg

-- Bonnie

[Open Mike Night]

I believe this list was shortened. The original had:

Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, Il Duce, Tojo, Oscar Camona, Newall, Alexander Hor Rathuen, Chaing Kai Sheck, Refik Saydam, United Kingdom's George V, Tiso, Christian X and Haakon VII.

Which lead to the embarrasing

C-H-R-I-S-T O-N A C-R-U-T-C-H

[Eve MG]

Kurt Vonnegut mentioned this in one of his books, too. As others have said, it's pretty contrived. Like those magic number puzzles where you add up a bunch of numbers and "magically" get your age or your phone number in the end.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by Open Mike Night

I believe this list was shortened. The original had:

Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, Il Duce, Tojo, Oscar Camona, Newall, Alexander Hor Rathuen, Chaing Kai Sheck, Refik Saydam, United Kingdom's George V, Tiso, Christian X and Haakon VII.

Which lead to the embarrasing

C-H-R-I-S-T O-N A C-R-U-T-C-H

Oh, you totally missed the message on that one. It reads: CHURCH CON ARTIST.

(Or maybe "It's Cantor Church!"? After all, math is the answer.)

[robbiev]

Originally Posted by Open Mike Night

C-H-R-I-S-T O-N A C-R-U-T-C-H

Talk about irony. If Christ was on a crutch, how come he couldn't heal himself?

Don't worry:

If you don't restrict yourself to the first letter of each name, there's:

     winSton churchill
        Adolf hitler
roosevelT
 benito Amilcare mussolini 
   staliN
prime miNister tojo

Or even:

winston churchill Kg
                 hItler
          roosevelT
              beniTo mussolini
                stAlin
                  Hideki tojo

A "I can haz wurld leeder" Jay

Originally Posted by Eve MG

Kurt Vonnegut mentioned this in one of his books, too. As others have said, it's pretty contrived. Like those magic number puzzles where you add up a bunch of numbers and "magically" get your age or your phone number in the end.

This was in Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus from 1990. I just finished reading it yesterday.

[FloridaGirl]

Why 1942? What was special about that year? Why not 1941 (when the US entered the war, and I'm only using that because this came from American papers) or 1945?

Well, actually, I guess it couldn't be 1945 because Roosevelt was dead. Go figure.