In college in Washington, DC, in 1987 or so, drinking after hours in a bar (at about 3:30AM) we were having a argument over which was the capital and which was the largest city in Scotland. Not reaching any agreement, the bartender wisely realized that the British Embassy would have a duty officer on, who he called from the bar, and who quite happily answered all of our questions and settled the argument.
Very good! That actually reminds me of a similar story from a very well known sportscaster in my country who specialty was, say, rugby. One night he was on duty when a call came in from someone trying to settle a argument about soccer, something like which team had won the most soccer league titles A or B.
He replied that he wasn't an expert but he was pretty sure it was team A. Silence on the line, then the voice came back asking Is that Joe Bloggs?, he replied that it was and then the voice said and what the fuck would you know about it? and hung up.
This is the origin of the Guinness book of records: Guinness sent it to pubs as a fun advertising gimmick.
In the days of poor information diffusion I guess content marketing was even more important than today: the Michelin Guide was similar: the tyre company wanted to encourage people to drive more, and figured the guide book would not only help with that but people would have the name Michelin in front of them. Hence the star ranking (go if you’re in town; if you’re in the area, worth diverting your trip a bit; worth making a special trip).
I actually used to jokingly call the iPhone “the destroyer of bar bets” but after a year or so on the market those discussions had pretty much died off, so maybe it wasn’t a joke.
