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Those who are at least familiar with the history of the Risings through the Outlander series will know that the term “Jacobite” derives from its Latin origin, Jacobus, meaning Jacob in English, and since Jacob is another name for James, it can be inferred that the Jacobites were fighting on the behalf of James II of England (known in Scotland as James VII).But what was so important about James II?A staunch Catholic and absolutist like his last two predecessors—his brother, Charles II (r. 1660–1685), and his beheaded father, Charles I (r. 1625–1649)—James had the dishonor of sealing the fate of the Stuart bloodline in the British monarchy when he was ousted from the throne on December 11, 1688, without a single drop of blood spilled, by the Dutch Protestant and Prince of Orange, William III, in the wake of the latter’s invasion of England on November 5 (simultaneous to Guy Fawkes Day, a day of Protestant celebration) and the so-called “Glorious Revolution” that ensued. He was then held captive by his newfound usurper (and not to mention nephew!) until William finally released him on December 23, rather than turning him into a martyr like what Oliver Cromwell and his anti-Royalist ilk had made of James’s father during the Civil Wars. Upon release, James fled, for the second time in his life since the regicide of his father, to the familiar safety of Catholic France, there to stay (for now) as an emigre in the court of fellow absolutist, the Bourbon “Sun King” Louis XIV.Only in 1690 would the deposed James ever again leave the comforts of pro-Stuart Europe, this time to make a last, desperate bid of his own, in Ireland, to foment a Catholic revolution against the newly Protestant monarchy with the goal of restoring his lineage to the seat of monarchism in England and, with that, the “God-given” powers of royal seniority over Parliament that began with his grandfather, James I of England (r. 1603–1625; James VI of Scotland, r. 1567–1625). That bold throw of the dice, however, ended in disaster at the Battle of the Boyne, fought on July 1, in which the 36,000-strong Dutch forces commanded by King William—aptly so-named the “Williamites”—roundly crushed James’s greatly outnumbered army.The former English king’s defeated rabble of supporters marked the first-ever “Jacobites” and, as history now makes clear, their thorough beating at the Boyne was not to be the end of their efforts to avenge James’s overthrowing. When James died on September 16, 1701 (at 67 years old), his son, James Francis Edward Stuart (June 10, 1688-January 1, 1766)—given the sobriquet, “The Old Pretender”—took his place as the leader of the House of Stuart for which many more Jacobites would valiantly give up their lives fighting—ill-fatedly, as it would turn out—against the might of the English (later British, after the 1707 Act of Union was signed between England and Scotland) government and its armies.(James “The Old Pretender.”)In 1715 came the second major Jacobite Rising. (The British monarchy by this time in the eighteenth century was ruled by the Protestant, German-derived and -descended House of Hanover, beginning with King George I, who in 1714 succeeded Queen Anne, daughter of James II and hence the last Stuart monarch to sit on the throne.) By this point in its history, the movement to restore the Stuart dynasty to power on British soil had spilled over from Ireland into Scotland. James’s December 22 arrival in pro-Stuart Scottish country—the same bastion of resistance from which his uncle (Charles II) and grandfather (Charles I) before him, respectively, made their stand against their family’s Protestant usurpers—took place on the heels of two, contemporaneous Jacobite reverses at Sheriffmuir (November 13), in Scotland, and Preston (November 14), in England. After Preston, the more decisive of these setbacks, which had forced James’s supporters to retreat back north, the Scottish Jacobite army numbered barely 5,000 men. Opposite this defeated rabble, moreover, were the better-equipped and newly-reinforced government forces led by the British Army’s senior commander, and Scottish nobleman, by the name of John Campbell, the Duke of Argyll and a battle-hardened career soldier with previous field experience in the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) and, just prior to his current assignment of suppressing the Jacobites, in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).Thus, before The Old Pretender could even show up in time to make a difference of any sort (he finally linked up with the Jacobite forces, based in Perth, in January 1716), “The Fifteen” Rising had dissipated, ending in the rebels’ capitulation to Argyll (who then had them summarily executed for treason) shortly after James bid his followers adieu and disembarked back for France.Not four years had passed before yet another Rising, albeit one waged on a comparatively minor scale, broke the peace between England and Scotland, in 1719. (Two years prior, the English Parliament had legislated the Indemnity Act as a measure of pardon toward the surviving Jacobite veterans of “The Fifteen” Rising.) Within that same year, however, the momentum of this third bout of Scottish resistance—this time with European military backing, from Spain—instantaneously ground to a stop after the Jacobite army’s defeat by the outnumbered yet, as usual, better-armed and better-drilled government troops at the Battle of Glen Shiel (fought on July 10).For the next quarter-century, no other Stuart pretender rose up to challenge the legitimacy of the Hanoverian government in London. For a whole quarter-century, the battlegrounds that transcended the border shared by England and Scotland remained lands of peace. What remained masked amid those 25 years of tranquility within Britain, however, were the gathering war clouds that poised themselves over the mainland, ready to precipitate the worst that was yet to come.Enter Charles Edward Stuart (December 31, 1720–January 31, 1788).The Old Pretender’s eldest son, from as early as 1743, when James gave him the title of Prince Regent, Charles—whose name was ultimately to be cast into the history books forever since as “Bonnie Prince Charlie”—took up the mantle of his father and grandfather in redeeming the Stuart name as a symbol of righteous, divinely-bestowed authority. From his birthplace in Rome, where his father had taken up residence under the aegis of Pope Clement XI following the disaster of the 1715 Rising (which had estranged him from his allies in Scotland and France, the latter especially after the death that same year of Louis XIV), Charles—proudly taking the sobriquet, “Young Pretender”—set sail with his father on the beginning of his journey toward Scotland and revolution.In 1744, with Britain and most of the other major European powers already four years preoccupied by the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the middle-aged James Stuart traveled to France (then ruled by Louis XIV’s successor, Louis XV), where military support for a new Jacobite Rising was promised to him in the form of preparations for a cross-Channel invasion of England. Before the famed 1745 Rising—otherwise remembered (in a similar fashion as its 1715 predecessor) as “The Forty-Five”—could materialize, however, all prospects of a French invasion coinciding with a Jacobite advance on London from the north were dashed by severe weather resulting in heavy gales that decimated the invasion fleet, though not irreparably. Even when the fleet managed to recoup, a strengthened Royal Navy presence in the Channel waters had effectively shut out any Jacobite hopes of foreign intervention against the Hanoverian regime (now with George I’s son and heir, George II, on the throne).With or without French help, Charles proceeded to land in Scotland and rallied support from the various, pro-Stuart Highland clans. Come August 19, the 1745 Rising had kicked off with a bang. From their initial headquarters at Glenfinnan, where the Royal standard of the Stuarts was raised (an action reminiscent of Charles’s great-grandfather Charles I’s raising of the Royal standard at Nottingham that ignited the First Civil War in England), Bonnie Prince Charlie and his kilted, sword-brandishing army of some 2,500 men stormed the city and Scottish capital of Edinburgh (on September 17)—leaving only Edinburgh Castle in the British government’s control—and then proceeded to rout a smaller government force (some 2,190-strong) at the Battle of Prestonpans (on September 21) in a sweeping Highland charge of broadsword and ax (the Japanese banzai charge of the eighteenth century).From Prestonpans, Charles and his Jacobite army of now 6,000 men—Highlanders of Catholic and, most surprising, Protestant affiliation—marched further south, like those before who marched under the Stuart banner, into England with the hopeful intent of stemming the Georgian royal line in 1745 and, in its place, reinstating that of James II. The resulting incursion into English territory saw the Bonnie Prince go farther than any of his fellow Jacobites had gone before, at Derby. Such an unprecedented distance covered by any invading Scottish army in history, coupled with the fact that no government forces stood in Charles’s way toward London had even prompted the King himself to begin preparations for abandoning the country. The English military situation on the war-torn European mainland, too, caused morale in England to fear for the absolute worst. (On May 11, the Hanoverian army commanded by Prince William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and George II’s son, was soundly beaten by the French forces of Louis XV’s talented general, Marshal de Saxe, at the Battle of Fontenoy in what is now Belgium.)(Equestrian statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie in Derby.)By December 5, however, fortunes had turned for both sides. The invading Jacobites under Charles, despite all their successes over the past four months, suddenly realized that additional support was not coming their way in England—neither in terms of a French landing or local Jacobites. On the Hanoverian side, meanwhile, the return of the Duke of Cumberland (a battle-hardened, albeit largely unsuccessful, veteran of other battles on the Continent, including the British victory at Dettingen, on June 27, 1743, in which George II himself made an appearance as the last British monarch to lead an army on the field) from the war in Europe had given the disoriented British Army the revival in leadership and fighting spirit that it had so appallingly lacked since “The Forty-Five” began. Under Cumberland’s direction, the King’s forces re-bolstered in numbers and then marched north to confront Charles and his Jacobites.With the wrath of the Hanoverian government coming for them in full strength, on December 5 the Bonnie Prince’s followers unanimously decided to retreat back into Scotland. Once back north of the Anglo-Scottish border, the Jacobites made an about-face maneuver toward the first troops of the pursuing government army and, at the Battle of Falkirk Muir (January 17, 1746), scored yet another victory for their cause.But at Falkirk (the same battlefield on which, in 1298, the Scots received one of the worst defeats in their history, at the hands of King Edward I), Charles was not fighting Cumberland. That ensuing clash—the last one of the last Jacobite Rising—would take place deep in the Highlands, at Culloden, three miles east of Inverness, on April 16. There, on that boggy patch of earth, against the superior numbers of the enemy (Cumberland boasted 8,000 men, 10 cannons, and 6 mortars, compared to Charles’s 7,000 men and 12 cannons), the Jacobites and their struggle of more than half a century to restore the Stuart name would give their last breath.(Charles inspiring his troops on the Culloden battlefield.)By 1100 hours, when both armies pitched themselves on the field, the downfall of the Bonnie Prince and his cause began in earnest when a combination of rain, sleet, and Cumberland’s artillery threw the Jacobite lines into disarray. With little firepower of their own to inflict on the government troops (despite the fact that all but one-fifth of the Jacobite fatalities carried broadswords; the rest armed with modern firelocks of French and Spanish origin), the Jacobite Highlanders, after enduring nearly an hour of fatal, relentless barrage by cannonball and mortar shell, finally made the headlong charge, clan by clan, that would make Culloden famous.(The troop dispositions and movements at Culloden.)From the Jacobite right flank, Charles’s troops rushed forward into the teeth of Cumberland’s bayonets and the belching fire of round- and grapeshot from his muzzles. Despite the boggy and, soon enough, body-strewn terrain of no-man’s-land, most of the broadsword- and shield-wielding Highlanders managed to reach—and, to many’s surprise, breach—the front rank of the Hanoverian lines, inflicting heavy losses on Cumberland’s leading regiments and even succeeding as far as taking possession of one of the enemy colors (standards). Slowly the British army’s left flank caved in against the steel and mad furor of its Scottish attackers. (The fighting at Culloden proved just as much a tragic manifestation of internecine rivalry in Britain as it did an affair of bloodshed between Scots and Englishmen, as Cumberland’s forces comprised of Scottish regiments loyal to the Crown; on the Jacobite side, moreover, was a regular infantry brigade of Irish emigres dispatched to Charles’s army by the French Army.)(The most recognized illustration of the Culloden battle.)For a few, precarious moments, it seemed as if the Jacobites were on the threshold of another Prestonpans. In those few moments, it looked as if Cumberland’s army was about to fall apart like a house of cards. Luckily for the once-humiliated commander at Fontenoy, there were experienced, successful officers among his ranks on the endangered Hanoverian left flank. As the Jacobites continued to surge ever deeper into Cumberland’s formation, ultimately breaking through his front line and then clashing with the second, they soon found themselves in a situation akin to what befell the Roman legions of old at the Battle of Cannae (216 B.C.)—envelopment from their flanks and rear, thus creating a tight ring of slaughter.Cumberland, while certainly no Hannibal based on his previous track record on the battlefield, truly shined during the final, decisive phase of Culloden. Realizing the Jacobites had fallen into a trap, he immediately pressed on such an opportunity by deploying forward the cavalry—his 10th Dragoons—against the Jacobites’ left flank that was still making its way toward the Hanoverian lines due to the much boggier ground on that side of the battlefield. By that point in the battle, everywhere along the Jacobite front was disintegrating into chaos. Last stand after bitter last stand was made by those of Charles’s units to whom escape from the wall of government muskets was no longer feasible. Some of Cumberland’s troops, to be sure, took casualties of their own in quashing the pockets of enemy resistance. Toward the battle’s end, when the remaining Jacobites finally routed, Cumberland had sent in his other troop of horse, the 11th Dragoons, to run them down on a basis of “no quarter” issued by the commanding general. (The Bonnie Prince himself, all the while, stood idle so far away from the battle lines that his army was almost completely out of his sight, before eventually fleeing for his life when all truly seemed lost.)(The unfolding clash between the tartan-wearing Jacobites and the red-coated Hanoverian forces, with Cumberland (center, on the white horse) seen ostensibly in the foreground while, in the distance, the Jacobites’ right wing can be seen charging and engaging the Hanoverian left, and Cumberland’s horsemen (to the left of the foreground and in the center of the background) can be seen counter-charging the Jacobites from the front and flank.)The human toll of Culloden, after merely an hour’s time, was as expected: between 1,500 and 2,000 killed or wounded on the Jacobite side, while only 50 killed and less than 300 wounded from the Hanoverian army. Though prisoners were undoubtedly taken by Cumberland’s men—somewhere around 150 Jacobites and around 220 of their foreign allies—no mercy was spared to any who Cumberland deemed a traitor to His Majesty and the Crown and government he served. The wounded, for instance, were sentenced to death wherever they lay. (One British officer and aide-de-camp, the later famous James Wolfe, hero of the 1759 Siege of Quebec during the French and Indian War, refused to execute a helpless Jacobite Highland soldier—named Charles Fraser, who was instead shot by Cumberland upon Wolfe’s refusal, ensuring the two British officers’ remembrance in Scotland, respectively, as the villain and the hero in the 1745 Rising.)(James Wolfe, already a veteran of battles in Continental Europe (e.g., Dettingen) and Scotland (e.g., Falkirk) by the time of Culloden, won an everlasting place in the hearts of Scots for his act of insubordination against Cumberland’s order to shoot all wounded Jacobites, an action which was reciprocated later during his wartime service in Canada, when he assumed command of the extremely loyal Royal Highland Fusiliers.)Cumberland’s cold-blooded shooting of the wounded Fraser, however, marked only the beginning of the end for the Jacobite movement and the Highland clans that supported it. A second Indemnity Act was passed by Parliament in 1747, pardoning all Jacobites who fell prisoner to the Hanoverian government army, though it offered little protection to those who managed to escape for their homes after defeat at Culloden. Cumberland—aptly nicknamed thereafter as “The Butcher”—proceeded to lay waste to Highland culture in the wake of crushing the rebel clans’ armies and sending the Bonnie Prince retreating back into exile, first to France and then finally back to Italy. (Charles ultimately reunited with his hometown of Rome, where he would die of a stroke at the age of 67, eighteen years after the death of his father.) All throughout the Highlands, government retribution came in many forms—from the banning of tartan to the wholesale ethnic cleansing, through scorched-earth tactics or forced removals, of that part of Scotland. (Mass swathes of Highlanders would emigrate the country altogether and seek refuge and better lives in North America.)The eventual death of the childless Young Pretender marked the death, too, of Jacobitism itself. With peace between England and Scotland anew once and for all, Culloden signified the last pitched battle to be fought on the whole of the British Isles. While Anglo-Scottish unity existed in other, non-political ways before Culloden, particularly via the incorporation of Scots regiments in the British Army, the final quelling of Jacobite resistance in 1746 ensured—at long last—a bloodless future within what was, on the British mainland at least, a United Kingdom.

One hundred and eleven lesser known facts about the Olympics:1) When Canadian Tom Longboat collapsed in the heat after 20 miles of the 1908 London Games marathon, South African prison officer Charles Hefferon took the lead and was coasting to victory until, with one-and-a-half miles remaining, he accepted a victory glass of champagne and a pat on the back from a well-wisher. The bubbly caused him to vomit, and Hefferon was overtaken by Italian baker Dorando Pietri, who entered White City Stadium in such a state of disorientation he began running the wrong way and had to be turned around by officials. Needing to run 385 yards for triumph, he collapsed five times in the last 200 yards and was carried over the line on a stretcher. Pietri was disqualified.GettyMarathon men: Alfred Shrubb of Great Britain, Tom Longboat of Canada, John Hayes of the USA, winner of the 1908 London Olympic Marathon, and Dorando Pietri2) The 1500m victory of Luxembourg's Josy Barthel at the 1952 Games was so unexpected officials had not brought along the score to the tiny state's national anthem. With Barthel waiting on the podium, the band were forced to improvise and did well enough - or, indeed, badly enough - for the runner to bury his head in his hands and begin to weep.3) The 400m final at the 1908 London games was ordered to be re-run because American John Carpenter blocked Wyndham Halswelle - a move legal in the States but outlawed in Britain. Carpenter was disqualified and the other two finalists, both Americans, refused to re-race, so Halswelle jogged alone round the track and took gold.4) Australia's Henry Pearce stopped rowing in his 1928 Amsterdam games quarter-final to allow a family of ducks to pass safely in front of his boat. He still won the heat and took gold in the final.5) American Fred Lorz's marathon victory in the 1904 St Louis games was overturned when it was revealed he had hitched a lift in a car for most of the distance before racing to the finish from four miles out.6) Modern games founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin introduced an arts competition at the 1912 Stockholm Games. The gold meal winner for literature was... Baron Pierre de Coubertin.Founder: Pierre de Coubertin won a gold medal for literature7) Hungarian pistol shooter Karoly Takacs was denied a place at the 1936 Olympics because he was only an Army sergeant and not an officer. The ban was lifted but Takacs then had his shooting hand - his right - badly maimed when a grenade exploded in it during military training. Undaunted, he learned to shoot left-handed and won Olympic golds in 1948 and 1952.8) The 2012 Aquatic Centre, built for £269m, has been designed in the shape of a stingray - the fish branded "rank and disagreeable" in Francis Day's 1884 opus The Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland.Stingray: The fish's body and wings inspired the Aquatics Centre architects9) Contrary to the version of events portrayed in the film Chariots Of Fire, devout British sprinter Eric Liddell did not arrive at the 1924 Paris games to find out he would be asked to run on a Sunday. Liddell already knew and had withdrawn from the tournament before he travelled. He also did not take the place of a friend in the 400m, which he won with an Olympic record time.10) Johnny Weismuller, who won a combined five swimming golds at the 1924 and 1928 games, never lost a race. He later starred in 12 movies as Tarzan and used his famous ululating cry to win over Cuban rebels who attempted to kidnap him during a round of golf on the island in 1958.Swim king: USA's Johnny Weissmuller11) Hawaiian swimmer Duke Paoa Kahanamoku – nicknamed The Human Fish - went on to appear in 28 Hollywood movies, including the 1955 Henry Ford classic Mister Roberts.12) Though modern Olympians shoot at clay pigeons, contestants in the 1900 Games took aim at real birds. More than 300 were killed, 21 of them by winner Leon de Lunden of Belgium.13) Steeplechasers at the 1932 Games had to run an extra lap on top of their normal 7.5 when an official lost count.14) Russian Martin Klein was too exhausted to compete in the 1912 Greco-Roman wrestling final after his semi-final with Finland's Alfred Asikainen took 11 hours.15) American Robert LeGendre smashed the world long jump record at the 1924 Games, but his 25ft6ins leap was only part of a pentathlon competition in which he finished third. The long jump gold was won by someone else with a leap of 24ft5ins.Multi-talented: Robert Legendre's giant leap16) Bad weather meant the final two events in the London 1948 London Olympics were held at dusk, with athletes illuminated by car headlights.17) Olympic organisers have provided free condoms to athletes in the Olympic Village ever since the 1992 Games in Barcelona. Randy athletes used all 70,000 at the 2000 Games, leading to organisers supplying nearly twice that amount four years later. After a drop-off to just 100,000 free condoms at Beijing 2008, 150,000 will be handed out at London 2012.18) At the request of the Soviets, there were three different Olympic Villages at Helsinki 1952 - one for men, one for women and one for athletes for Iron Curtain countries.19) Understandably eschewing the lap of honour, London 1908 Marathon winner JJ Hayes was carried around White City stadium on a table.20) James Connolly, triple jump winner at Athens 1896, was refused leave from his studies at American university Harvard to take part. He had to drop out of his course and also had his wallet stolen in Naples less than 24 hours before the event. He later refused an honorary degree from his alma mater.Drop-out: James Brendan Connolly was America's first gold medalist21) The USA won basketball gold at Berlin in 1936, beating Canada by the unusually low score of 19-8. The game was played outside on a sand court in driving rain, making dribbling impossible. By contrast, the USA v Mexico semi-final in the next Olympic basketball tournament, held in London 1948, produced 111 points.22) Thirteen American students completed a three-week journey to take part in the 1896 Games. However they had not taken into account the difference between the Greek and Julian calendars and instead of having 12 days to prepare they arrived the day before the Games began.23) American Margaret Abbott won women's golf gold at the Paris 1900 games in bizarre circumstances. On holiday in the French capital with her mother to visit the World's Fair which was running concurrently, she took part in what she thought was merely a golf tournament to celebrate the Fair and left for the USA not knowing she had become the first-ever American gold medallist.24) Bill Nankeville, father of the comedian Bobby Davro, finished sixth for Great Britain in the 1500m at the 1948 London games.25) American long jumper Meyer Prinstein was prevented from taking part in the final round of the 1904 St Louis Olympics because his college objected to one of their students competing on the Sabbath - even though Prinstein was Jewish.26) Because of segregation in the USA, returning 1936 Olympic hero Jesse Owens had to travel in a Waldorf-Astoria goods lift to reach the official reception before a ticker-tape parade in his honour.Fastest: Jesse Owens crosses the line to break the 100m world record27) Each country's national anthem will last a maximum of a minute if played during a medal ceremony. Bad news for Uruguay, whose anthem is six-and-a-half minutes long.28) But not for Uganda, whose anthem lasts only nine bars.29) Swimming at Athens 1896 involved the competitors being taken out in boats and then asked to paddle the required distance back to shore30) The London Olympic site will feature more than 500 bird boxes and 150 bat boxes to help maintain the local wildlife. But they will not be opened until after the Games, lest the winged beasts disrupt athletes' preparations.31) Aussie swimmer Dawn Fraser, who won freestyle golds at three consecutive games, was given a 10-year ban in 1964 after drunkenly swimming a moat to steal an Olympic flag from outside Emperor Hirohito's palace. She was named Australian of the year.Banned: Dawn Fraser wins the 1964 100m freestyle final in 59.5 seconds32) The 1900 Paris Games included a long jump for horses and a high jump for horses. Extra Dry won the former with a leap of 6.10m, beating Oreste, who finished joint-first in the latter.33) Contestants at the Ancient Games at Olympia competed in the nude.34) Two real-life duels were fought as as result of disputes over scoring during the fencing competition at the 1924 Games.35) Docked two points for headbutting his opponent during a bantamweight bout during Seoul 1988, hometown boy Byun Jung-Il lost a 4-1 decision by the judges. He protested by sitting down in the ring and refusing to leave, eventually getting up 67 minutes later after match officials turned out the lights and left him in darkness.Sit in: Byun Jung-Il of South Korea stages a silent sit down protest at the 1988 Seoul Olympics36) Spain's left-wing government intended to hold a rival Olympics in 1936, in protest at the Games being held in Nazi Germany, and recruited 6,000 athletes to take part. However the Spanish Civil War broke out the day before they were due to begin in Barcelona.37) The London Olympic Park spans 500 acres - the same size as the Alton Towers theme park.38) More than 100 toads and 2,000 newts were saved from the Olympic Park site during construction.39) Takeichi Nishi, a Japanese show jumping gold medallist at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, died in 1945 at the battle of Iwo Jima, where he commanded the 26th Tank Regiment while wearing riding boots and jodphurs and carrying a whip.40) Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands asked for the 1928 Games to be rescheduled to fit in with her holiday in Norway. She failed.Demanding: Queen Wilhelmina wanted the Games rescheduled41) A total of 34 runners failed to complete the 1912 marathon in Stockholm. One, Francisco Lazaro, died during the race but a day later it emerged another runner was still unaccounted for. It emerged that Japan's Shizo Kanaguri, in a state of exhaustion, had stumbled off the course and into the garden of a family who were holding a picnic. They gave him raspberry juice and then put him to bed. When he awoke several hours later, shamed at his performance, he caught a train back to Stockholm and then a boat to Japan without telling anyone.42) Hitler only attended one football match at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and would have been unimpressed to see Germany lose 2-0 to Norway. However he did call for a quarter-final rematch after Peruvian fans allegedly invaded the pitch following their victory against Austria. The Peruvians went home in protest and Austria won silver.43) Great American Olympian Carl Lewis was booed before a 1993 NBA game between the Chicago Bulls and New Jersey Nets for an off-key rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. Having broken off halfway through to promise the crowd he would "make it up to you", he butchered the rest of the anthem and exited to catcalls.44) London's commitments as 2012 hosts include building a dance café and a flower shop in the Olympic Village.45) Italian marathon runner Carlo Airoldi walked to the 1896 games, covering 70km per day from Milan, passing through Austria and Turkey to reach Athens. At the end of his 28-day journey, has was informed that having accepted a prize for winning a Milan-to-Barcelona race, he was no longer an amateur and could not compete.46) Tough Australian quarantine rules meant that all the equestrian events at the 1956 Melbourne Games were held 9,700 miles away in Stockholm.47) Spectators were unable to watch the conclusion of the 1956 water polo match between Hungary and the USSR. Played out as Soviet tanks entered Budapest to put down an attempted revolution, police were forced to clear the arena when the Soviets' Valentin Prokopov punched Ervin Zador, causing blood to pour from his eye, and fans responded by jumping from the stands to the edge of the pool to spit at Prokopov and his team-mates. Hungary won 4-0.48) Streaking will be an expensive business at London 2012. Anyone caught will be fined up to £20,000.49) Cassius Clay - later Muhammad Ali - was so nervous about flying to Rome for the 1960 games that he bought a parachute from an army surplus store and wore it throughout the flight, often getting up to pray in the aisle.50) Ethiopia's Abebe Biikila won the 1960 Rome marathon barefoot because no pair of running shoes from official manufacturers adidas could be found which would comfortably fit his feet.Sole victor: Ethiopian athlete Abebe Bikila runs barefoot for victory in the Rome 1960 Olympic Games marathon51) American Billy Mills was so unfancied to win the 10,000m at Tokyo 1964 the US team's manufacturers denied him a pair of official running shoes, saying they were only to be used for potential winners. Having shattered his personal best by 46 seconds to claim gold, he was approached at the finish line by a Japanese race official who simply asked, "Who are you?" Mills was then denied a lap of honour because 37 others had yet to finish the distance.52) The infamous London 2012 logo, designed by Wolff Olins for a very reasonable £400,000, has been likened to "Lisa Simpson giving London a blow job".53) Britain's Ann Packer had planned to go shopping on the day of the 800m final at Tokyo 1964 but changed her mind after fiance Robbie Brightwell finished out of the medals in his 400m final. She won gold.54) Disqualified for interfering with an opponent in his 1956 steeplechase win, Chris Brasher appealed and a three-hour inquiry meant the medal ceremony was postponed until the next day. His appeal successful, Brasher went on a celebratory bender with the British press and later admitted he had received gold "blind drunk, totally blotto, with an asinine grin on my face, breathing gin fumes over the French member of the International Olympic Committee".55) Bob Beamon prepared for his 1968 world record long jump of 8.90metres - which stood for 23 years - by having a few shots of tequila the night before the event, followed by sex with his girlfriend Gloria.56) Mark Spitz had planned to shave off his famous moustache the night before his first swim at the 1972 Games in which he won seven golds. But he changed his mind after kidding Russian competitors that it made him swim faster because it kept water away from his mouth. “Next time, all the Russian swimmers had moustaches,” he said.Signature: US swimmer Mark Spitz and his distinctive moustache at the 1972 Olympics57) Waldi The Dachshund, created for the 1972 Munich Games, was the first Olympic mascot. He appeared in a variety of colour schemes, but none included red or black because those were the colours of Hitler's Nazis.58) Waldi proved so popular the 1972 Marathon route was arranged in the shape of his body.59) The most famous of all Colemanballs - "and there goes Juantorena down the back straight, opening his legs and showing his class" - wasn't said by David Coleman. Fellow BBC commentator Ron Pickering was responsible as the Cuban won 800m gold in the 1976 Montreal Games.60) Thirteen high-tech filters have been installed at the London 2012 Aquatic Centre to ensure the pools do not smell of chlorine.61) Every female competitor bar one at the 1976 Olympics had to undergo a sex test. The exception was Britain's Princess Anne.62) Today's athletes follow a strict nutritional plan and watch what they eat, but before the Olympics in ancient Greece athletes mostly ate cheese.63) When a rainstorm put out the Olympic flame during the 1976 Games in Montreal, organisers watched horrified as a helpful official quickly re-lit it with his cigarette lighter. They then snuffed it out again and re-lit it with a backup torch lit from the original flame.64) For the first time in Olympic history, Romania's Nadia Comaneci scored a maximum 10.0 in the uneven bars at Montreal 1976. Scoreboards were unable to cope and so displayed the score as 1.0.65) Heathrow Airport has built a special Games terminal for athletes departing from the London 2012 Games. It has 31 check-in desks and seven security lanes66) Ladbrokes are offering competitive odds of 2012-1 for the Loch Ness Monster to be spotted in the Thames during the London Olympics. Anyone seeking a dafter bet can take Paddy Power's 100-1 on Liverpool's Andy Carroll to score the winner in the Men’s Olympic Football final.67) Having won decathlon gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Daley Thompson was asked by a US television crew to describe how he felt. Thompson went on to explain his euphoria to US viewers, saying: "I haven't been this happy since my granny caught her tit in a mangle."68) Thompson, wearing a T-shirt reading 'Is The World's Second-Greatest Athlete Gay?' - a presumed reference to the sexuality of American Carl Lewis - then told the British press that he would like to father a baby with Princess Anne.Monte FrescoProvocative: Daley Thompson celebrates after his gold medal success69) Organisers of the 2004 Athens Games were sued by a heritage society over mascots Athena and Phevos. Claiming they "savagely insulted" Ancient Greek culture, Dr Pan Marinis said the mascots "mock the spiritual values of the Hellenic Civilization by degrading these same holy personalities that were revered during the ancient Olympic Games".Insult: A heritage group sued over the 2004 mascots70) Despite winning bronze in the 10,000m at Munich 1972, Miruts Yifter was jailed for three months on his return to Ethiopia for failing to turn up for the 10,000m final. He blamed his coaches for delivering him late to the start line. Ethopia boycotted the 1976 Games but he won 5,000m and 10,000m gold at Moscow 1980.Jailed: But Miruts Yifter won in Moscow71) Before the 1984 Los Angeles Games, McDonald's ran a scratchcard promotion called 'When the US Wins, You Win'. Customers were given a card with the name of an event hidden underneath foil and told they would receive a free Coke if it matched an event in which the USA won bronze, free fries if they won silver and a free Big Mac if they won gold. Unfortunately, McDonald's bosses had based their expectations on the 1976 games, in which America won 94 medals, 34 of them gold. The Communist Bloc's boycott of the 1980 games ensured the USA won 174 medals, 83 of them gold, and McDonald's lost millions.72) A City of London police team beat the Liverpool Police to win the tug of war competition at the 1908 Olympics. The USA had pulled out at the quarter-final stage, protesting that the Liverpudlians had spikes on their service boots.73) Mala Sakonninhom of Laos recorded the staggering time of 15.12 seconds in the women's 100m at Seoul 1988 - roughly the same, according to experts, as an averagely talented high schooler would have managed. Florence Griffith Joyner somehow shaved over four and a half seconds off that time to win the final.74) Eleven years after his drugs shame at the 1988 Olympics, disqualified 100m gold medallist Ben Johnson was hired by Colonel Gadaffi as a fitness coach for his son Al-Saadi, who was attempting to build a career as a Serie A footballer with Perugia. Gadaffi Jnr managed one substitute appearance before failing a drug test.75) The traditional release of live doves at the Olympic opening ceremony was abandoned after Seoul 1988, when around 10 chose not to swoop majestically across the skies but instead to settle on the rim of the Olympic cauldron just as it was being lit and were instantly burned to death.76) Though cricket was included in the 1900 Paris Games, only two teams entered: Great Britain and a French team entirely comprised of British Embassy staff. Britain won.77) Barcelona's Olympic Stadium was built in 1927 as part of the bidding process for the 1936 Games, which were awarded to Munich, and had to wait 65 years before it eventually hosted the Games.78) Six of the eight contestants in the women's 800m in Amsterdam 1928 collapsed of heat exhaustion at the finish line and the event was not run again until 1960.79) During the test basketball event in London this year the Chilean national anthem was played for the Chinese team.80) Australia's Fred Lane is the only winner of an Olympic 200m obstacle race. In Paris 1900 he successfully negotiated a course which asked competitors to climb over a pole and clamber across a row of boats before swimming under another row of boats to reach the finish.81) Derided by Simpsons creator Matt Groening as "a bad marriage of the Pillsbury doughboy and the ugliest California Raisin", Atlanta 1996 mascot Whatizit, later renamed Izzy, remains unloved even by its creator John Ryan. Of the amorphous blue character sometimes called 'The Sperm in Sneakers', he said: "As a professional I wish it was something I had on the top of my CV... but it's the red-headed stepchild. I hope I have something else that I will be known for before I die."82) The 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games mascot, "Whatizit?"83) The 1996 opening ceremony which featured a moving appearance by Muhammad Ali also featured 500 cheerleaders and 30 pick-up trucks, leading to Atlanta being dubbed The Bubba Games.84) Among lost property left behind at the Barcelona 1992 Games was a cheque for $40,000 and eight certificates guaranteeing that the bearer was female.85) During the gruelling men's individual cross country race at Paris 1924, held in 40C heat on a course which went past a factory billowing out smoke, British contestant Arthur Sewell became so disoriented he started running in the wrong direction. Pointed the right way by a helpful official, he promptly collided with another runner and had to retire. Sergio Aguillar of Spain did not finish after falling and hitting his head on a distance marker, while Finland's Heikki Liimatainen got within 30m of the finish line before turning off the course unexpectedly, convinced he had completed the race.86) The 2,818 apartments in the Olympic Village come complete with 5,000 toilet brushes.87) Equatorial Guinea swimmer Eric Moussambani Malonga - nicknamed Eric The Eel after swimming his 100m heat at the Sydney 2000 Games in 1:52:72 - was determined he would not again be an object of national ridicule in 2004. Having trimmed his personal best to 57 seconds, only nine seconds behind the world record time, he was not allowed to compete in Athens because officials mislaid his passport photograph.88) The Olympic Velodrome was the first Olympic Park venue to be completed, as far back as February 2011, and for around £93million, slightly under budget. After the Games, the 6,000-seat venue will be run under a joint agreement by British Cycling, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, the National Cycling Centre in Manchester and the Glasgow-based Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome.89) The London Philharmonic Orchestra took 50 hours of studio time to record the national anthems of all 205 competing nations at the 2012 Games.90) Boris Onischenko was kicked out of the 1976 Montreal Games' modern pentathlon after it was discovered his fencing epee had been modified so he could close a circuit within it, and thus score a point, without actually hitting his opponent. The former KGB half-colonel might have got away with it had suspicious Jim Fox not leaned back during one of his charges and seen Boris's tally increase by one despite not coming within six inches of the British captain. Boris was later dubbed 'Disonischenko'.Disonischenko: Soviet athlete Boris Onischenko cheated91) Having been disqualified from his taekwondo men's +80-kg bronze medal bout for taking too long to be treated for a foot injury, Cuban Angel Valodia Matos shoved the match referee out of the way in order to kick Swedish judge Chakir Chelbat in the head. Reflected Cuban coach Leudis Gonzalez: "The judge was too strict."He had to forego his bronze medal for the act.92) George Eyser won six medals, three golds, two silvers and a bronze, during a single day of the 1904 Olympics, despite having a wooden left leg. He lost his real one when it was run over by a train.93) Mongolia's only female marathon runner, Luvsanlkhundeg Otgonbayar, triumphed in the race for the wooden spoon at Athens 2004, finishing over an hour behind Japanese winner Mizuki Noguchi and half an hour behind the second-slowest competitor. "I felt like I was running very fast," she explained.94) In the 2001 BrassEye 'Nonce Sense' episode, future London 2012 committee chairman Lord Sebastian Coe was fooled into holding up 'before' and 'after' pictures of a paedophile which actually showed two different people - the members of 1980s hitmakers Hall & Oates. He also advised viewers to listen to the anti-paedophile message contained within a song he billed as "Keep Away From The Funny-Eyed Guy, by DJ Bob Hoskins Going Mental In A Dustbin".95) Four-time gold medallist Greg Louganis stunned many when he came out as gay in 1995, though possibly not those who had been party to his pre-dive ritual of singing Diana Ross' Believe In Yourself, taken from The Wiz - a musical film version of The Wizard of Oz in which Miz Ross played Dorothy.96) London 2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville have been hailed as "patronising, cretinous infantilism" and "appalling computerised Smurfs for the iPhone generation" by the influential design critic Stephen Bayley.97) Betty Robinson, 100m winner at the 1928 Amsterdam games, was in her cousin's biplane three years later when it crashed in Chicago. She was pulled from the wreckage with no pulse by a bystander who, believing her dead, put her in the boot of his car and drove her to a local mortician. In fact, Robinson was alive and after waking from a seven-month coma, recovered sufficiently to compete at the 1936 Berlin Games.98) Upset when his mount Ranchero refused at three jumps in the 1968 Mexico Games' modern pentathlon, knocking him out of medal contention, West Germany's Hans-Jurgen Todt leapt out of the saddle and began slapping the fussy horse. Team-mates had to restrain him.99) Southampton hosted motor boating events at the 1980 Games. Unfortunately, bad weather meant six of the nine events were cancelled, denying spectators the exciting prospect of watching craft whose average speed reached an astonishing 19mph.100) Possibly the all-time greatest Olympic performance came from Tunisia's modern penthatletes in Rome 1960, who failed to score a single point. All three contestants in the show jumping event fell off their horses before being removed from the shooting competition for firing dangerously close to the judges. One of them nearly drowned during the swimming. Finally, only one team member had experience of fencing, so the Tunisians sent him out again and again for the individual heats, cautioning him not to remove his mask. The ruse was discovered and they were disqualified.Bonus:Gandhi once covered the Olympics as a newspaper reporter. The 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. It was right during his civil disobedient prime. But he did.The Olympic rings cover every flag in the world. They picked yellow, green, red, black and blue because at least one of those five colors appears in every flag in the world. (The five rings also allegedly represent the five continents of the world. But wait, you're saying, aren't there seven continents? Yes. But the Olympic committee has spun things to try to appease everyone. The way they've condensed the world into five continents: America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania. Sorry, Antarctica. And apparently, we're now continent mates with Uruguay and Colombia. Cool.)Black athletes didn't win the marathon until 1960. It's impossible to picture now, but a black athlete didn't win the marathon until Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia did it in 1960. And he did it barefoot.. At this Olympics, Usain Bolt set a new world record, running the 100 meters in 9.69 seconds. And he kinda slowed down at the end..There's no count on just how many black athletes have broken the 10 second mark, but it happened first in 1968, and seems to have happened (at least) several hundred times since.Gold medals haven't been pure gold in 96 years. The 1912 Olympics was the last time that gold medals were solid gold. Ever since, they've been silver with gold plating.The equivalent of a bronze medal.The top prize at the first modern Olympics was the silver medal. In 1896 in Athens, first place winners got a silver medal and an olive branch. Second place got a bronze. Third place got nothing.In 1900, in France, winners got paintings instead of gold medals. Gold, silver and bronze medals weren't given out until the third modern Olympics, in 1904. The French gave winners paintings because they believed they were more valuable.The first Olympic drug suspension wasn't until 1968.At the 1968 Mexico City games, Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish pentathlete, was suspended because he tested positive for a banned substance. That substance: Alcohol. He drank several beers before the pentathlon... which was against the rules... so he was suspended.Frankly, he should've been applauded for attempting to do the pentathlon drunk. 99.999999999% of the world couldn't even do it sober.China didn't win its first medal until 1984. when Xu Haifeng won gold in the 50 meter pistol event. It's hard to believe now, since China seems to be a medal-winning monolith.The Olympics once lasted 187 days. In 1908, the London Olympics went on for 187 days... they started in April and didn't end until October.There's a 62-year age difference between the oldest and youngest Olympians ever. The youngest Olympian ever was Dimitrios Loundras, a Greek gymnast in the 1896 Athens Olympics. He was 10. The oldest Olympian ever was Oscar Swahn, a Swedish shooter in the 1920 Antwerp, Belgium, Olympics. He was 72.Sources:1. London 2012 Olympics Weird of the rings: 100 bizarre facts about the Olympic Games2. 11 Really Strange Olympics Facts

My vote goes for Peter Thiel - Wikipedia who gave the world Donald Trump - Wikipedia as the current USA president.Peter Thiel sold out the USA and the world by supporting Trump in hopes of increasing his personal influence and his networth.Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains HimselfPeter Thiel, a staunch supporter of the president-elect, at his condo on Union Square in Manhattan.Donald Trump has “a phenomenal understanding of people,” Mr. Thiel says.Let others tremble at the thought that Donald J. Trump may go too far. Peter Thiel worries that Mr. Trump may not go far enough.“Everyone says Trump is going to change everything way too much,” says the famed venture capitalist, contrarian and member of the Trump transition team. “Well, maybe Trump is going to change everything way too little. That seems like the much more plausible risk to me.”Mr. Thiel is comfortable being a walking oxymoron: He is driven to save the world from the apocalypse. Yet he helped boost the man regarded by many as a danger to the planet.“The election had an apocalyptic feel to it,” says Mr. Thiel, wearing a gray Zegna suit and sipping white wine in a red leather booth at the Monkey Bar in Manhattan. “There was a way in which Trump was funny, so you could be apocalyptic and funny at the same time. It’s a strange combination, but it’s somehow very powerful psychologically.”At the recent meeting of tech executives at Trump Tower — orchestrated by Mr. Thiel — the president-elect caressed Mr. Thiel’s hand so affectionately that body language experts went into a frenzy. I note that he looked uneasy being petted in front of his peers.“I was thinking, ‘I hope this doesn’t look too weird on TV,’” he says.I ask if he had to twist arms to lure some of the anti-Trump tech titans, like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.“I think, early on, everybody was worried that they would be the only person to show up,” Mr. Thiel says. “At the end, everybody was worried they would be the only person not to show up. I think the bigger tech companies all wanted to get a little bit off the ledge that they had gotten on.“Normally, if you’re a C.E.O. of a big company, you tend to be somewhat apolitical or politically pretty bland. But this year, it was this competition for who could be more anti-Trump. ‘If Trump wins, I will eat my sock.’ ‘I will eat my shoe.’ ‘I will eat my shoe, and then I will walk barefoot to Mexico to emigrate and leave the country.’“Somehow, I think Silicon Valley got even more spun up than Manhattan. There were hedge fund people I spoke to about a week after the election. They hadn’t supported Trump. But all of a sudden, they sort of changed their minds. The stock market went up, and they were like, ‘Yes, actually, I don’t understand why I was against him all year long.’”Talking about how the Billy Bush tape was not so shocking if you’ve worked on the Wall Street trading floor, Mr. Thiel says: “On the one hand, the tape was clearly offensive and inappropriate. At the same time, I worry there’s a part of Silicon Valley that is hyper-politically correct about sex. One of my friends has a theory that the rest of the country tolerates Silicon Valley because people there just don’t have that much sex. They’re not having that much fun.”I note that several Silicon Valley companies have pre-emptively said they will not help build a Muslim registry for the Trump administration. Will Palantir, the data-mining company of which Mr. Thiel was a founder, and whose clients include the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., be involved in that? (Palantir’s C.E.O., Alex Karp, sat in at the Trump tech meeting.)“We would not do that,” Mr. Thiel says flatly.When I ask him if he can explain to Mr. Trump that climate change is not a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, he offers a Chinese box of an answer: “Does he really think that? If he really thinks that, how would you influence that? If he really thinks that and you could influence him, what would be the best way to do it?”One could have predicted Mr. Thiel’s affinity for Mr. Trump by reading his 2014 book, “Zero to One,” in which he offers three prongs of his philosophy: 1) It is better to risk boldness than triviality. 2) A bad plan is better than no plan. 3) Sales matter just as much as product.But he was portrayed as an outcast in Silicon Valley and denounced as a jerk for supporting Mr. Trump and giving him $1.25 million. “I didn’t give him any money for a long time because I didn’t think it mattered, and then the campaign asked me to,” he says.His critics demanded to know how someone who immigrated from Frankfurt to Cleveland as a child could support a campaign so bristling with intolerance. How could a gay man back someone who will probably nominate Supreme Court justices inclined to limit rights for gays and women? How could a futurist support a cave man who champions fossil fuels, puts profits over environmental protection and insists that we can turn back the clock on the effects of globalization on American workers?“There are reduced expectations for the younger generation, and this is the first time this has happened in American history,” Mr. Thiel says. “Even if there are aspects of Trump that are retro and that seem to be going back to the past, I think a lot of people want to go back to a past that was futuristic — ‘The Jetsons,’ ‘Star Trek.’ They’re dated but futuristic.”It is a theme he has struck before, that Silicon Valley has not fulfilled the old dreams for bigger things. “Cellphones distract us from the fact that the subways are 100 years old,” he says.An article entitled “Peter Thiel Is Poised to Become a National Villain,” in New York magazine, suggested he looked like he is enjoying that role.He says he isn’t. Yet the billionaire views the visceral torrent against him with his usual rationality, surveying the scene deliberately, like the chess prodigy he once was. “I was surprised that it generated as much controversy as it did,” he says. “There was a push to remove me from the board of Facebook, which is kind of crazy, since I’m the longest-serving director there after Zuckerberg.”He recalls that he went through a lot of “meta” debates about Mr. Trump in Silicon Valley. “One of my good friends said, ‘Peter, do you realize how crazy this is, how everybody thinks this is crazy?’ I was like: ‘Well, why am I wrong? What’s substantively wrong with this?’ And it all got referred back to ‘Everybody thinks Trump’s really crazy.’ So it’s like there’s a shortcut, which is: ‘I don’t need to explain it. It’s good enough that everybody thinks something. If everybody thinks this is crazy, I don’t even have to explain to you why it’s crazy. You should just change your mind.’”On the Russian hacking, Mr. Thiel says: “There’s a strong circumstantial case that Russia did this thing. On the other hand, I was totally convinced that there were W.M.D.s in Iraq in 2002, 2003.”The reaction from the gay community has been harsh, with one writer in The Advocate going so far as to suggest that Mr. Thiel was not even a gay man, because he did not “embrace the struggle.”“I think Trump is very good on gay rights,” Mr. Thiel says. “I don’t think he will reverse anything. I would obviously be concerned if I thought otherwise.”I ask if he’s comfortable with the idea that Vice President-elect Mike Pence, regarded in the gay community as an unreconstructed homophobe, is a heartbeat away from the presidency.“You know, maybe I should be worried but I’m not that worried about it,” he replies. “I don’t know. People know too many gay people. There are just all these ways I think stuff has just shifted. For speaking at the Republican convention, I got attacked way more by liberal gay people than by conservative Christian people.“I don’t think these things will particularly change. It’s like, even if you appointed a whole series of conservative Supreme Court justices, I’m not sure that Roe v. Wade would get overturned, ever. I don’t know if people even care about the Supreme Court. You know, you’d have thought the failure to have a vote on Merrick [Garland] would be a massive issue. And somehow it mattered to Democrats, but it didn’t matter to the public at large.”Would he like to get married and have kids?He looks a bit startled by the question, then says: “Maybe.”I ask him if he worries about the bromance with Vladimir V. Putin and Mr. Trump’s bizarre affinity for dictators. “But should Russia be allied with the West or with China?” Mr. Thiel says. “There are these really bad dictators in the Middle East, and we got rid of them and in many cases there’s even worse chaos.”ImageBody-language experts puzzled over the president-elect’s caress of Mr. Thiel’s hand during the tech meeting at Trump Tower. ‘I was thinking, “I hope this doesn’t look too weird on TV,”’ Mr. Thiel said.CreditPool photo by Albin Lohr-JonesSo he doesn’t worry about Mr. Trump sending an intemperate tweet and spurring a war with North Korea?“A Twitter war is not a real war,” Mr. Thiel says.If the worst fears of annihilation seem plausible, Mr. Thiel can always invest more in his libertarian fantasy of a new society of Seasteads: islands at sea with their own rules, starting with a French Polynesian lagoon. “They’re not quite feasible from an engineering perspective,” he says. “That’s still very far in the future.”He does think, though, that human violence is more of a risk than a pandemic or robot army. “It’s the people behind the red-eyed robots that you need to be scared of,” he says.Mr. Thiel is focused on ways to prolong life. He was intrigued by parabiosis, a blood regeneration trial in which people over 35 would receive transfusions from people aged 16 to 25 — an experiment that Anne Rice gave a thumbs up to.“Out of all the crazy things in this campaign, the vampire accusations were the craziest,” he says, adding that while blood transfusions may be helpful, there may be harmful factors and “we have to be very careful.”“I have not done anything of the sort” yet, he says about parabiosis. And because of the publicity, he says, he is now sifting through hundreds of proposals he has received from parabiosis ventures.Mr. Thiel has, however, used human growth hormones and he has signed up for cryogenics. “We have to be more experimental in all our medical procedures,” he says. “We should not go gently into that good night.”I ask why everyone in Silicon Valley seemed so obsessed with immortality.“Why is everyone else so indifferent about their mortality?” he replies.He has invested in many biotech companies and has been advising the Trump transition team on science. “Science is technology’s older brother who has fallen on hard times,” he says. “I have some strong opinions on this. At the F.D.A. today, aging is still not an indication for disease. And you’re not allowed to develop drugs that could stop aging. We have not even started yet.”Given the passion of his friend Mr. Musk for colonizing Mars, has he influenced Trump’s thinking about NASA?“It’s this very large agency that has kind of lost its way over the last 30 to 40 years,” Mr. Thiel says. “When we went to the moon, it took less than a decade from the time Kennedy announced it to the time we got there. Mars is harder but surely possible.”He says Mr. Trump’s foes want to cast the president-elect “as this uniquely evil person, Trump as Hitler; that doesn’t strike me as remotely plausible.”Over a four-hour dinner of duck and chocolate dessert — a surprisingly sybaritic meal for a man who admits he is prone to weird diets — Mr. Thiel shows, again and again, how he likes to “flip around” issues to see if conventional wisdom is wrong, a technique he calls Pyrrhonian skepticism.“Maybe I do always have this background program running where I’m trying to think of, ‘O.K., what’s the opposite of what you’re saying?’ and then I’ll try that,” he says. “It works surprisingly often.” He has even wondered if his most famous investment, Facebook, contributes to herd mentality.When I remark that President Obama had eight years without any ethical shadiness, Mr. Thiel flips it, noting: “But there’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”When I ask if he is concerned about conflicts of interest, either for himself or the Trump children, who sat in on the tech meeting, he flips that one, too: “I don’t want to dismiss ethical concerns here, but I worry that ‘conflict of interest’ gets overly weaponized in our politics. I think in many cases, when there’s a conflict of interest, it’s an indication that someone understands something way better than if there’s no conflict of interest. If there’s no conflict of interest, it’s often because you’re just not interested.”When I ask if Mr. Trump is “casting” cabinet members based on looks, Mr. Thiel challenges me: “You’re assuming that Trump thinks they matter too much. And maybe everyone else thinks they matter too little. Do you want America’s leading diplomat to look like a diplomat? Do you want the secretary of defense to look like a tough general, so maybe we don’t have to go on offense and we can stay on defense? I don’t know.”When I ask about the incestuous amplification of the Facebook news feed, he muses: “There’s nobody you know who knows anybody. There’s nobody you know who knows anybody who knows anybody, ad infinitum.”Mr. Thiel and Mr. Trump are strange bedfellows, given that much of Mr. Thiel’s billions came from being one of the original investors in Facebook and Mr. Trump recently said it’s better to send important messages by courier. (“Well,” Mr. Thiel notes, “one does have to be very careful with what one says in an email.”)The 70-year-old president-elect rose by wildly lunging with his Twitter rapier in an “unpresidented” way in the first campaign that blended politics, social media and reality. But the 49-year-old social-media visionary rarely updates his Facebook page and doesn’t tweet, “because you always want to get things exactly right” and “if you start doing it, you have to do it a lot.”As Silicon Valley has devolved into a place that produces apps like one that sends the word “Yo,” Mr. Thiel worries its thinking is “not big enough to take our civilization to the next level.”When I ask if it is true that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, wasn’t invited to the Trump tech meeting because the Trump camp was angry that Twitter wouldn’t let the Republican nominee create a “Crooked Hillary” emoji, Mr. Thiel replies that “there were people upset about that,” but that he set up the meeting according to the market caps of the bigger tech companies.“I think the crazy thing is,” he says, “at a place like Twitter, they were all working for Trump this whole year even though they thought they were working for Sanders.”Mr. Thiel says he fell into his role in the Trump candidacy.“It was one of my friends who called me up and said, ‘Hey, would you like to be a delegate at the Republican convention?”’ he recalls. “I said: ‘Actually, I kind of would. I think it would be fun to go.’ Then, two weeks before the election, they talked to me about speaking at the convention.”I note that the audience in his hometown, Cleveland, gave him a great reception when he appeared as only the third openly gay speaker at a Republican convention.“I’m not sure that my speech was that good,” he says. “I do think a lot of other speeches were just very bad.”He had his first conversation with the man whom he sometimes calls “Mr. Trump” at the convention, when the Manhattan mogul told the San Francisco mogul, “You were terrific. We’re friends for life.” Mr. Thiel never did go to a Trump rally or watch a whole video of one. “I would think they were very repetitive,” he says.He says that at the tech meeting, Mr. Trump showed “a phenomenal understanding of people. He’s very charismatic, but it’s because he sort of knows exactly what to say to different people to put them at ease.”ImageMr. Thiel in the lobby of Trump Tower in November.CreditEduardo Munoz/ReutersI ask him if Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are similar.“I’m going to get in trouble, but they are, actually. They’re both grandmaster-level salespeople and these very much larger-than-life figures.”He recalls a story from his and Mr. Musk’s PayPal days, when Mr. Musk joined the engineering team’s poker game and bet everything on every hand, admitting only afterward that it was his first time playing poker. Then there was the time they were driving in Mr. Musk’s McLaren F1 car, “the fastest car in the world.” It hit an embankment, achieved liftoff, made a 360-degree horizontal turn, crashed and was destroyed.“It was a miracle neither of us were hurt,” Mr. Thiel says. “I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, which is not advisable. Elon’s first comment was, ‘Wow, Peter, that was really intense.’ And then it was: ‘You know, I had read all these stories about people who made money and bought sports cars and crashed them. But I knew it would never happen to me, so I didn’t get any insurance.’ And then we hitchhiked the rest of the way to the meeting.”Mr. Trump, with his litigious streak and his pugilistic attitude toward the press and his threat to change the libel laws, naturally admired Mr. Thiel’s legal smackdown of Gawker. The tech titan was disturbed by the “painful and paralyzing” stories published on the gossipy website and other blogs under the Gawker banner, including a 2007 post that originally appeared on Valleywag blithely headlined “Peter Thiel Is Totally Gay, People.”So he secretly financed the lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea (the real name of the wrestler Hulk Hogan) against Gawker for posting an excerpt from a sex tape showing Mr. Hogan with a friend’s wife. A court ruled in Mr. Bollea’s favor, in a judgment of $140 million, which drove the site into bankruptcy. (The Gawker founder Nick Denton, who is also gay, described Mr. Thiel to Vanity Fair as “interesting — and scary.”)“It basically stands for the narrow proposition that you should not publish a sex tape,” Mr. Thiel says. “I think that’s an insult to journalists to suggest that’s journalism now. Transparency is good, but at some point it can go in this very toxic direction.”Just as there was “a self-fulfilling Hillary bubble” where “everybody was just too scared to say this was a really bad idea” to support this “very weak candidate,” Mr. Thiel believes Gawker manufactured “a totally insane bubble full of somewhat sociopathic people in New York.” When the case went to court in Florida, he contends, the culture that “you could do whatever you wanted and there were no consequences” was exposed.Savoring his victory, dismissing those who think the way to deal with vile and invasive stories is to grow a thicker skin, Mr. Thiel dressed as Hulk Hogan for the “Villains and Heroes” annual costume party last month, hosted on Long Island by the Mercer family, who were big Trump donors. He shows me a picture on his phone of him posing with Erik Prince, who founded the private military company Blackwater, and Mr. Trump — who had no costume — but jokes that it was “N.S.F.I.” (Not Safe for the Internet.)“There’s some resonances between Hogan beating Gawker and Trump beating the establishment in this country,” Mr. Thiel says. Hulk Hogan was “this crazy person” who didn’t seem like the best plaintiff, but “he didn’t give up.”Using two wrestling terms he learned, Mr. Thiel says that many people assumed Mr. Trump was “kayfabe” — a move that looks real but is fake. But then his campaign turned into a “shoot” — the word for an unscripted move that suddenly becomes real.“People thought the whole Trump thing was fake, that it wasn’t going to go anywhere, that it was the most ridiculous thing imaginable, and then somehow he won, like Hogan did,” Mr. Thiel says. “And what I wonder is, whether maybe pro wrestling is one of the most real things we have in our society and what’s really disturbing is that the other stuff is much more fake. And whatever the superficialities of Mr. Trump might be, he was more authentic than the other politicians. He sort of talked in a way like ordinary people talk. It was not sort of this Orwellian newspeak jargon that so many of the candidates use. So he was sort of real. He actually wanted to win.”I ask Mr. Thiel about a prescient theory he proffered when I had dinner with him at the convention — again, flipping conventional wisdom — that Hillary was making a mistake by being too optimistic.“If you’re too optimistic, it sounds like you’re out of touch,” he says. “The Republicans needed a far more pessimistic candidate. Somehow, what was unusual about Trump is, he was very pessimistic but it still had an energizing aspect to it.”He says he has no plans to buy a place in Washington. “One of the things that’s striking about talking to people who are politically working in D.C. is, it’s so hard to tell what any of them actually do,” he says. “It’s a sort of place where people measure input, not output. You have a 15-minute monologue describing a 15-page résumé, starting in seventh grade.”While many predict that Mr. Trump will crash and burn, Mr. Thiel does not think he will regret his role.“I always have very low expectations, so I’m rarely disappointed,” he says.I ask him how Mr. Trump, who is still putting out a lot of wacky, childish tweets, has struck him during the transition. Isn’t he running around with his hair on fire?“The hair seems fine,” Mr. Thiel says. “Mr. Trump seems fine.”