Czechs' national anti-hero who, for example, missed discovering North Pole by 20 feet...
PILSEN, Czech Republic -- Zdenek Sverak, dressed in a professorial gray suit with red club tie, nodded a greeting to the sold-out crowd in a municipal theater here and began his lecture about Jara da Cimrman, the greatest Czech of all time.
Cimrman nearly made it to the North Pole before any other human, according to Sverak, but missed the mark by about seven meters, or 20 feet, because he encountered hostile natives. He invented the telephone and dynamite, though others took the credit. He even made the first light bulb but got to the patent office five minutes after Thomas Edison patented his own invention and thus missed another opportunity for worldwide fame...
Before long, the audience was giggling and then guffawing at Sverak's deadpan delivery because Jara da Cimrman, an unrecognized genius of the late 19th century, has never existed outside Sverak's and his associates' fertile minds.
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
Cimrman nearly made it to the North Pole before any other human, according to Sverak, but missed the mark by about seven meters, or 20 feet, because he encountered hostile natives. He invented the telephone and dynamite, though others took the credit. He even made the first light bulb but got to the patent office five minutes after Thomas Edison patented his own invention and thus missed another opportunity for worldwide fame...
Before long, the audience was giggling and then guffawing at Sverak's deadpan delivery because Jara da Cimrman, an unrecognized genius of the late 19th century, has never existed outside Sverak's and his associates' fertile minds.