It’s that time again.
Time for beer where beer is due – to a switched-on subscriber who can crack the investment theme that answers a riddle.
But this time, we’re trying something slightly different.
I’m not going to ask you a riddle – it’s just a question. And I won’t be supplying any picture clues either.
Get this right before anybody else, and I’ll send you a bottle of a favourite beer of mine first class:
What made the Foreign Office threaten to kill Americans after World War II?
I want the incident that triggered it, the year it happened, and the reason why.
First person to get all three in an email to me gets the beer: [email protected].
I was very surprised to discover this had even happened in the first place. But just in case it happened more than once (the Foreign Office does have a history of hating Americans – something about the year 1776 I believe), I’m after the earliest post-WWII instance this occurred. I’ve only got so much beer…
The last time I did one of these, one reader complained. They didn’t think these riddles were related to the current investing world – not related to market risks, or opportunities.
But that’s exactly what I’m trying to achieve with these. Though they’re focused on events in the past, those events point to the investment trends of the future.
The key to answering the first “Solve this, and I’ll buy you a beer” was the Hindenburg’s downfall: hydrogen, the energy of the future. Key to the second was Nikola Tesla, who envisioned a world we are slowly getting closer to, thanks to the growth of networks and (hopefully not of the Huawei variety).
What would make the Foreign Office threaten one of our closest allies that it would kill its citizens?
Such an action would trigger an “international incident” to say the least – war, even…
What would the UK government be so afraid of losing..?
You tell me: [email protected].
Moving on…
Churchill’s greatest mistake
Winston Churchill’s impact on the cigar industry has been huge.
If you’re in a tobacconist, or you’re at some swanky joint that has a humidor, you can see him everywhere.
His name is now a category of cigar (known as a “format”). A Churchill is 7 inches long with a 47-ring gauge, first brought out by one of his favourite Cuban brands, Romeo y Julieta. There have since been other formats brought out on top of that which bear his name: you can now get short, wide, and petit “Churchills”.
But despite all of the honours granted to him by the cigar industry, he was a highly uncouth cigar smoker. The man would chew on unlit cigars for hours on end, and dunk them in port and brandy – acts of uncouth barbarianism as far as the cigarati are concerned.
On the topic of “relatively unheard-of” errors made by the man, Nickolai Hubble has come up with a new one. I was interested in his idea, as Churchill’s decision in this area is actually lauded by many as one of his greatest triumphs.
It was Churchill who pushed the Royal Navy to switch from coal to oil power on the eve of the First World War. This was a hugely risky gambit by Churchill, because at the time the UK had no domestic oil supplies, while it did have coal. Adopting oil meant tethering the Royal Navy’s directly to the UK’s access to black gold. Switch off the UK’s oil supply, and Britannia would rule the waves no more.
Churchill’s vision that oil was the future of energy clearly paid off. Indeed, his decision pushed the entire world in that direction.
But as early as the 1870s, a hydrogen-powered motorboat was scooting around a river in St Petersburg. And hydrogen is very abundant around the UK.
Nickolai thinks that if Churchill had tried to push the adoption of hydrogen, he would have saved the world all the tragedies and chaos that have befallen petro states since.
It’s a stretch of the imagination – even for me – that this could have occurred, let alone if Churchill could have made it happen, persuasive as the man was. But just imagine how the 20th century would have played out, if Middle Eastern oil hadn’t been required to power it…
Food for thought.
Back tomorrow,
Boaz Shoshan
Editor, Capital & Conflict
Category: Market updates