Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The World's Greatest Wagers

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Throughout history, people have bet on everything and anything. From the mundane to the extremely important. From casino bets to bets on science, and even the future of humanity.  These bets can serve as vehicles to win or lose tons of money or as a way to prove a point. Other times they are just done on a lark.  Either way, bets, and wagers have literally shaped history.  Learn more about some of the world’s greatest wagers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Throughout history, people have bet on everything and anything, from the mundane to the extremely important, from casino bets to bets on science and even the future of humanity. These bets can serve as vehicles to win or lose tons of money or as a way to prove a point, and sometimes they're just on a lark. Either way, some bets and wagers have literally shaped history. Learn more about some of the world's greatest wagers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where,

well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to nothing much happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. You've probably heard the expression, put your money where your mouth is. It basically means if you hold an opinion, you should make some sort of wager with real consequences to prove it. And the

corollary to this expression is talk is cheap, meaning that there is no cost in expressing an opinion. Making a wager is usually a good thing in that it requires both parties to clarify exactly what they mean and how any disagreement can be resolved. With that, let's look at some of the more famous wagers in history. One of the best-known wagers from ancient history involves Mark Antony and Cleopatra. They made a wager as to who could throw the most expensive banquet. Mark Anthony threw his banquet and then Cleopatra responded in kind by taking an expensive pearl earring off of her ear and dropping it into a cup of vinegar. She let it dissolve and then drank it. In this story, Cleopatra won the bet, but the story may be apocryphal.

The reason is that while vinegar can indeed dissolve a pearl, it isn't something that happens instantly. I actually had to go and check this myself as I figured someone probably made a video doing exactly this, and sure enough, there are videos of people dissolving pearls in vinegar. However, it takes between six and 21 days for a pearl to fully dissolve. So either Cleopatra waited a couple weeks to, to win or bet, or it didn't happen. Believe it or not, one area where wagers have been extremely important is science. Several scientific advancements were made in order to win a bet, and in many cases, the loser of the bet was extremely happy to have lost. One of the most important works in scientific

history was actually created in response to a wager. In 1684, the noted English architect Christopher Wren was having a discussion with the scientist Edmund Halle and Robert Hook, when the subject of Kepler's laws of planetary motion came up. Wren issued a challenge for anyone to prove Kepler using the inverse square law. He offered a rare book as a prize and created a deadline of two months. Halley couldn't solve the problem, so he turned to his friend, Isaac Newton. Newton applied himself to the problem. He didn't solve the problem in two months, but he did eventually solve it several years later,

and the result was the groundbreaking book, The Principia Mathematica. And speaking of Kepler, his laws of motion came about in small part to a wager. Johannes Kepler was an assistant to the astronomer Tico Brahe. Kepler was working on his theories and asked Brahe for data about the orbit of Mars. He bet that he could figure out the orbit of Mars in eight days. He actually lost the bet as it took him eight years, but we did get the laws of planetary motion as a result.

One of the worst scientists when it came to betting was the physicist Stephen Hawking. His colleague John Preskill noted, quote, Although Stephen Hawking is without doubt a great scientist, he is a bad gambler. In 1974, Hawking made a bet with the physicist Kip Thorne about Cygnus X-1, which was a major source of x-rays. Thorne bet that the source of the x-rays was a black hole, and Hawking bet that it was not. Hawking conceded the bet in 1990. He made another bet in 1997. This time he and Kip Thorne bet John Preskill about information losses.

in black holes. Hawking and Thorne said that anything that went into a black hole lost all information. He conceded this bet in 2004. He made another bet in the early 2000s that the Higgs boson particle would never be found. And he lost that bet in 2012. In every case, he was glad to have lost his bets. He said that he made public bets because they brought attention to the scientific problems which he was working on. One of the most famous bets in history was to settle a dispute which had raged for centuries. The question of was, when a horse was running, at any point are all four of its feet off the ground at the same time. The person in question who made the wager was Leland Stanford, the former governor of California

and the namesake of Stanford University. According to legend in 1872, he bet $25,000, that at some point all four legs of a horse were off the ground when it was running, and $25,000 was a lot at that time. To solve the riddle, he hired the English photographer, Edward Mybridge to prove this once and for all. Mybridge developed photographic techniques to take high-speed photos. In 1878, he created a series of 12 high-speed cameras that would trigger when a horse stripped wires along a path. The photographic evidence was conclusive.

A horse did have all four feet off the ground, and Mybridge's photo became one of the most famous photos in history. There have been famous wagers made in the arts as well as the sciences. In the early 1970s, after the breakup of the Beatles, John Lennon was the only former Beatle which hadn't had a number one song as a solo artist. Yes, Ringo had a number one hit before John Lennon did. When he was recording his album, Walls and Bridges, he had Elton John sit in on the recording of whatever gets you through the night.

Elton told John Lennon that he thought the song was going to go to number one, and Lennon disagreed. So, Elton John bet him that if the song were to go to number one, John Lennon would have to do a live concert with him. Lennon hated live concerts, which was one of the reasons why the Beatles stopped performing live. The song did go to number one in the charts, so Lennon honored his end of the bet and appeared on stage with Elton John on November 28, 1974 at Madison Square Garden in New York. It was the last time John Lennon ever appeared live in concert.

A few years later, two filmmakers made a wager that turned out to be worth millions of dollars. Stephen Spielberg was filming Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George Lucas was filming Star Wars. Lucas was very frustrated and depressed about how Star Wars was going when he visited Stephen Spielberg on the set of close encounters. He was blown away by what Spielberg was doing

and told him it was going to be the biggest blockbuster of all time. Spielberg disagreed and thought Star Wars was going to be a much bigger film. So the two made a wager. Spielberg would get 2.5% of the profits of Star Wars and Lucas would get 2.5% of the profits of Star Wars and Lucas would get 2.5% of the profits of close encounters. As it turned out, close encounters of the third kind was a big hit.

But Star Wars was a far bigger hit. It's estimated that Stephen Spielberg has made $40 million off of his wager since Star Wars was released. One of the funniest wagers of all time took place in 18th century England. A rather retunned butcher by the name of Mr. Bullock challenged the Earl of Barrymore to a 100-yard-foot race. The Earl had a reputation of being a superior athlete, so the wager seemed a bit silly, but the butcher made two stipulations. First, he was to get a 35-yard head start, and second, he could pick the course that the race would take place. The race was held in Black Lion Lane in London, which is actually just a narrow alley. When the race started, Lord Barrymower caught up quickly, but because the butcher was so large, he couldn't pass him in the narrow alley, and the butcher ended up winning the bet.

There have been political arguments that have been settled by wagers, the most famous of which was a bet between the economist Julian Simon and the biologist Paul Ehrlich. Erlich believed that more humans led to resource scarcity. Simon believed that more humans led to more innovation. The two men had a public spat which lasted for years. Eventually, Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In 1980, they made a bet. Erlick was allowed to pick any five resources that he thought would increase in price,

over the next 10 years. He selected chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. They purchased, on paper, $200 of each commodity, for a total of $1,000. On September 29th, 1990, the inflation-indjusted prices of the commodities would be recorded. If the price was more than the price in 1980, Simon would pay Erlich the difference, and if the price had gone down, Erlich would pay Simon the difference. Between 1980 and 1990, the planet grew by 800 million people. the most in any decade in history. However, the price of commodities had gone down, and Julian Simon won the bet. Three of the prices of the commodities went down in nominal price,

and all five went down in inflation-adjusted price. Paul Ehrlich paid him $576.7. There's actually a website which is specifically designed for these sort of bets. It's called Longbets.org, and it currently tracks 887 long-term bets many of which have already been resolved. Some bets are not quite so serious. In 2009, Shaquille O'Neal was at the height of his popularity. He bet one of his managers that he could walk up to the White House and get admitted.

He couldn't use any of his connections. He just had to walk up to the entrance and get allowed in. When playing in Washington, Shaq got in a cab, went to the White House and walked up to the gate. Unfortunately, despite everyone knowing who he was, he was not allowed in. He lost the wager, which consisted of 1,000. push-ups. In the movie Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis plays a boxer who bets on himself when he was supposed to take a dive. Something kind of similar happened in 2001. Bernard Hopkins was scheduled to fight Felix Trinidad for the middleweight WBA championship. He was a four-to-one underdog.

As part of the fight, he was paid $100,000 by a Hennah tattoo company to have a Hennah tattoo on his back. He took the entire $100,000 and bet on himself to win. which he did by getting a technical knockout in the 12th round. There are some people who like to gamble a lot. Doyle Brunson is one of the greatest poker players of all time. One of his biggest bets, however, had nothing to do with cards. In 2003, he turned 70 years old and had a problem with his weight. He was approaching 300 pounds and had problems standing up from the poker table.

A group of friends concerned about his weight figured the best way to get him to lose weight was to make a bet with him. They bet him $100,000 at 10 to 1 odds that he couldn't lose 100 pounds within two years. The first year, he lost nothing. And several months into the second year, he lost nothing. And then he went on a diet consisting of nothing but catfish and parmesan cheese and lost the 100 pounds and made a million dollars. And he then proceeded to lose it all at the card table the very night he won it.

On September 24th, 1980, the largest single casino, bet at that time took place at the Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. A totally unknown man by the name of William Bergstrom entered the casino with two suitcases. In one suitcase was $770,000. The other suitcase was empty. The money came from loans that he took out. The empty suitcase was for his winnings. He put everything on the don't pass line at the craps table, which is an even money bet. Benny Binion, the casino's owner, agreed to take the bet. Bergstrom won, and Binion gladly helped him stack his money in the empty suitcase. Bergstrom didn't actually worry about paying off his loans because his plan was that if he lost,

he was just going to kill himself. He traveled around the world for several years and returned to the Binion Horseshoe on March 24, 1984, and did the same thing, this time with $538,000. He won again, and won three more bets on that trip for an additional $117,000. Then in November 16, 1984, he came back to the casino with another suitcase, filled with $550,000 in cash, $140,000 in gold Krugerrand, and $310,000 in cashier's checks, for a cool million dollars. This time his luck ran out, and he lost everything. Perhaps the greatest gambler of all time was the Australian media mogul, Carrie Packard. Packard was a billionaire and probably one of the biggest whales in casino his business.

history. He had casino trips to the United Kingdom in Las Vegas where he won and lost tens of millions of dollars. His gambling exploits were the stuff of legend. The greatest story about Packard involved a trip he made to Las Vegas. And there are many different versions of the story, but supposedly he was playing Blackjack at a table by himself when a man from Texas started bothering him. The Texan was making a big scene and demanded a seat at the table, saying, I'm worth a hundred million dollars. In response, Packer, pulled out a coin from his pocket and told him, oh really, I'll flip you for it.

When confronted with risking his entire fortune on a coin flip, the Texan clammed up and walked away. People can and have bet on anything and everything. Wadering has always been with us, and it probably always will be. So long as people keep wagering, there will probably always be fascinating bets, which will peak our interest.

The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Queege over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Favorite Daily Podcast, New Completionist

Member. This is my favorite daily podcast. Listening makes me want to shout, Shaku! The most disappointing part of joining the Completionist Club was I had no other topics to listen to. Not sure if this has been covered, but could we get an episode on how speakers of the same language use weirdly different terms in different

places, such as how the UK barbecue sauce is called brown sauce. 12 thumbs up. Well, thanks, Quidge. If you have joined the Completionist Club, one option is to go for elite platinum status by listening to every episode. Twice. It has been done.

Also, an episode on how different words are used by different people speaking the same language might be possible. And as for 12 thumbs up, I appreciate it, but you might want to get that checked out. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read in the show.