01st May 2002
Importance of Accuracy I was
Importance of Accuracy
I was amused to see a full-page ad for my bank, HSBC, on the inside cover of The Economist (print edition) an issue or two ago. It showed two pictures of people clinking beer glasses together, one labeled “USA: Good health” and the other “Hungary: Bad luck.” The headline for the ad is “Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge,” which is their slogan for a new series of similar ads.
Yeah, also never underestimate the imporance of being right.
The ad never makes clear why it is (or rather, was) bad luck to touch glasses in Hungary. I lived there for five years, so I’ll tell you it’s something to the effect that in 1849 a rebellion of Hungarian officers within the Hapsburg army was squelched by the Austrians, and the rebel officers were executed while the Austrians toasted to their demise with beer. As a result, Hungarians vowed not to touch glasses when toasting with beer. (You could still toast with beer, just not touch glasses, tho you could touch glasses with toasting with wine or liquor. It’s complicated being Hungarian.)
But here’s the rub. Round about 1998, an idea started circulating that those who originally called for this ban on clinking glasses said it should last for 150 years. Hence, in 1999, the interdiction would expire. And so it has, more or less. The Hungarian media picked up on the idea at the time, interviewed a bunch of historians and such. Today most young people delight in the irony that they are once again allowed to clink beer glasses, due to a Hungarian reverence for history that exceeds HSBC’s ad agency’s reverence for fact checking, apparently.
I had to dig around on the Web for a while to find validation of this change of events written in English, but I did so at last (scroll to the bottom of the page, or search “beer”).
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