Tag: Texas
Joke Of The Day: Hard Drinkers
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A Texan walks into a pub in Ireland and clears his voice to the crowd of drinkers. He says, “I hear you Irish are a bunch of hard drinkers. I’ll give $500 American dollars to anybody in here who can drink 10 pints of Guinness back to back.”
The room is quiet and no one takes up the Texan’s offer. One man even leaves. Thirty minutes later the same gentleman who left shows back up and taps the Texan on the shoulder. “Is your bet still good?” asks the Irishman. The Texan says yes and asks the bartender to line up 10 pints of Guinness. Immediately the Irishman tears into all 10 of the pint glasses, drinking them all back to back. The other pub patrons cheer as the Texan sits in amazement. The Texan gives the Irishman the $500 and says, “If ya don’t mind me askin’, where did you go for that 30 minutes you were gone?” The Irishman replies, “Oh…I had to go to the pub down the street to see if I could do it first.”
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American History: The Texas Giants
The four Shields brothers, of White Rock, Texas, were billed as being between 7 feet 8 inches and 8 feet 0 inches tall, but in reality none of them exceeded 7 feet 0 inches. They were between 6 feet 8 inches and 6 feet 11 inches when they joined a Barnum & Bailey sideshow around 1880. They were also known as The Texas Giants.
Shadrick Archibald Shields (a.k.a. Shade Shields at 6 feet 8 inches), Augustus Orion Shields (a.k.a. Guss Shields at 6 feet 9 inches), John Franklin Shields (a.k.a. Frank Shields at 6 feet 10.5 inches), and Jack Robinson Shields (a.k.a. Jack Shields at 6 feet 11 inches) each made about six dollars a day as ‘The Texas Giants.’ Three of the brothers returned to Texas after 10 years, but Shade trouped on into the 1890s. At one point, he and his tall, Irish wife, Annie (formerly knownn as Annie O’Brien, wife of Patrick O’Brien), were billed as ‘The Texas Giant and Giantess.’ After Shade retired, he and Guss ran a saloon in Greenville. But in his last years, recalling the magic of the big top, Shade spent most of his time on Missouri riverboats with his good friend and fellow circus veteran, 36-inch-tall Major Ray, who had formed one half of ‘the smallest married couple in the world.’
One of the newspaper clippings below writes of 7 real Shields Brothers (with a claimed combined height of over 50 feet!). The 1870 census even lists 8 Shields brothers and their approximate birth years:
James Shields – 1839
Robert Shields – 1842
Thomas J Shields – 1844
Josiah P Shields – 1848
Augustus O Shields – 1851
John F Shields – 1853
Shadrick A Shields – 1857
Jack R Shields – 1859
Only 4 of them were tall enough to tour as giants. The line-up of the ‘Shields Brothers’ varied to include other tall men from that period. Other tall man that regularly posed as one of the 4 brothers were Ben Brown and George Sturgis.
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