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From: nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar)
Subject: Craig Shergold strikes in Kennewick, WA, USA
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1992 22:31:19 GMT
This particular Craig Shergold story has a nice bit of pathos in it..
>From The Oregonian, Wednesday January 8, 1992, page C8 (off AP):
"Class collects 57,555 cards - all in vain"
Kennewick, Wash - a class of eight graders collected 57,555 business
cards to help a seriously ill British boy set a world record.
It was a mistake.
It turns out 12-year-old Craig Shergold of Carshalton, Great
Britain, was collecting get-well cards, not business cards. Craig set
the record and has since recovered from his illness.
Too bad the students in Sharon Davies' class at Finley High School
never got the message.
"I think it's stupid. We collect all these business cards, and it
turns out nobody wants them," student Kyle Humphrey said.
The eighth-graders collected five giant garbage bags worth of cards,
no two alike.
There are ones in Braille, on microfilm and in Norwegian. Some look
like envelopes, others like chemical waste drums. They're printed on
paper, wood, and metal.
Their collection started with a chain letter sent to Bill Davies'
fax machine at the Boise Cascade Container Corp. plant in Wallula.
The letter said Shergold had cancer and that he wanted to be
included in the Guinness Book of World Records for "the largest number
of business cards" ever collected by one person.
Davies mentioned it to his school-teacher wife, and her students
started their three-month project.
Shergold did make it into the record book for receiving 33 million
greeting cards.
Meanwhile, the class is stuck with 57,555 business cards, whcih
unfortunately isn't one for the books, according to Guinness editor
Mark Young.
"It's a terrific effort on their part, but all in vain I'm afraid,"
he said.
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This is one of the funnier Shergold stories I've read, both for the
mutation from get-well cards to business cards, and for the sheer
pathos in the quotes "'I think it's stupid'" and "'terrific effort ...
all in vain'".
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nelson@reed.edu \/ Do what thou wilt. It's not just a good idea, it's the law