Horace De Vere Cole
William Horace de Vere Cole (5 May 1881, Ballincurrig, Co. Cork, Ireland – 25 February 1936, Paris, France) was an eccentric prankster and poet, born in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom. His most famous trick was the Dreadnought Hoax on 7 February 1910 when he fooled the captain of the Royal Navy warship HMS Dreadnought into taking Cole and a group of his friends, including Virginia Woolf, for an Abyssinian delegation.
Read more about Horace De Vere Cole: Pranks
Famous quotes containing the words vere and/or cole:
“You haf slafed your life away in de bosses’ mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an’ vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an’ the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.