|
?:reviewBody
|
-
We can't all be famous, but many people who aren't have tried the next best thing: associating themselves with someone famous. Others, denied the opportunity even to hobnob with anyone of renown, have taken the process a step further and manufactured such associations themselves. A particularly prevalent genre of brush with fame legends involves those who claim to have had chance encounters with notable personages during their formative years, contributing something — an idea, a suggestion, or maybe just a helping hand — that had a lasting impact and aided those later-famous people in becoming successful in some artistic, scientific, or political endeavor. After all, the early lives of people who later become famous are often not well documented, making it difficult to dispute a claimant's tale of a chance encounter way back when. Not surprisingly, Walt Disney is the subject of several such legends, in this case one having to do with the site of his birth and the origin of his given name. In 1982, the Robinson Argus newspaper, based in Robinson, Illinois, published a local resident's recollection of the putative circumstances surrounding Walt's birth: It's a charming story, but the logical holes in its premise and timeline are legion: So, we leave off where we began, by noting that people sometimes manufacture their own brushes with greatness, as was evidently the case here. To mangle a familiar phrase: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some fabricate greatness out of whole cloth.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}