JOKES THAT MADE HISTORY

Shannon News, 9 February 1926, Page 4

JOKES THAT MADE HISTORY

ONE OOST 150,000 LIVES. One of the greatest Acts ever passed by Parliament ,the Habeas Corpus Act, had its origin in a practical joke Lord Grey and Lord Norris were named as tellers. The latter was not always attentive to what he was doing, and a very fat peer coming along, Lord Grey counted him as ten. He did this as a jest at first, but seeing that Lord 'Norris had not observed it, he let it paiss, and as the majority for the Bill was under ten, this great measure of liberal reform was passed and not passed! Another fat member once figured in a division in a comical way, although the result was not so (startling. Durihe session of 1875, Dr. Kenealy moved for a Royal Commission to inquire into the conduct of the judges in the Tichborne case. The reisult of the division was announced with grammatical precision by the Whip, "The Ayes to the right is one; the Noes to the left are 448.” The solitary voter in .the Aye lobby was Major O’Gorman, the stoutest M.P. of his day. When asked what took him into the Aye lobby, the major replied: “It’s a hot night; I knew the No lobby would be crowded,, so I turned into the other.” A joke by a postal official caused a flutter of excitement at the French Foreign Office during the war. It appears that four clerks were on duty at Tunis. Haring no duties do perform, one fo them pretended to receive a message to the effect that a French liner used as a transport had becen seized by a German raider. He wrote .out the message, and showed it to his comrades ;aixd after frightening them stiff he confessed it was a joke. The, message was forgotten, and the four went to bed, leaving the form on the table. The man who relieved them, finding it there, and thinking his colleagues had forgotten it, dispatched the message to the resident general’s house. It was not until the following day that the mystery was explained by the confession of the innocent culprit. Many of the men who won the supremacy on the ocean were in the Navy not on their own will, but by means of some joke or ruse pn the part of the press gang. There was a famous instance in the reign of George 11. A live turkey wafa placed on top of the monument, near London bridge and a great crowd gathered to look at it. Then the press gang came along and took all the likely young men in sight! A very grim joke caused a war on one occasion. The ratification of a treaty was in question, and the Turkish Grand Vizier asked the Vene-' tian Ambassador to swear in Moslem fashion upon, the beard of the Prophet, The Ambassador would not. "Venetians wear no beards,” he said. “Neither do donkeys,” replied Urn Turk, and that interchange of "compliments” ecfst 150,000 livesed the caller that someone had taken the bicycle away. The solicitor was sitting in court, when a plain-clothes constable nudged his elbow. “I say,” he said, “some- i one has taken that bicycle away. { Your wife has just told me so.” j The solicitor went to a telephone. ' “Yes, the bicycle is here,” c.ame the voice of his wife over the telephone. “But I didn’t like the look of the j man who called.”