The Invention of the Necktie by Isidore (Izzy) Abrahami (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📖

THE INVENTION OF THE
NECKTIE

By: Isidore (Izzy) Abrahami

Unlike with any other invention in the world, the necktie has been invented and reinvented many times in its thousand year marathon throughout the annals of human history. And it's one of the quirks in the chronicles of Mankind that the necktie's turbulent route is still very much kept secret.
We have in our possession a document signed by 249 heads of state and dated March 22, 1992, in which the politicians ratify the terms of a previous agreement of 320 years ago, to continue the policy of secrecy and not to disclose the facts concerning the tumultuous, ever-changing invention of the necktie and it's diversified uses, for the next five hundred years.
The document, page 311, paragraph 932, states: “The uncovering of the truth concerning the invention of the necktie will put the world's ruling systems and each one of the politicians in a crash course with the people, beside inflicting an irreparable damage to our most fortunate taxing system.”
Many courageous researchers before us have attempted to uncover the secrets surrounding the invention of the necktie with little success. The breakthrough in our investigation came with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In one of the most concealed chambers in the cellars of the by now defunct KGB, we managed to uncover an unusually guarded and highly sensitive dossier, consisting of twenty seven thousand documents, marked: THE NECKTIE FILES.
Many documents from among the “necktie files” shed a disturbing light relating to the facts surrounding the invention of the necktie and its peculiar uses until this very day.
This is the first time ever that the full story of the invention of the necktie and its subsequent evolution is fully revealed.
The detailed documentation found in among the “necktie files” conclusively proves that the origin of the necktie, as opposed to the theory held by Mr. Yves St. Lauren which postulates that the necktie has never been invented, but found, is traceable to the Treaty of Mersen signed between Charles the Bald, Louis the German and Charles the Fat in 870 A.D..
Except for unifying the European Principalities in order to facilitate the collection of taxes, the three rulers forged a new decree intended to sow fear and intimidate the European population into total submission.
This new law made it compulsory for all males above the age of six, except for nobility, to wear a piece of rope around their necks. The rational for such law forwarded by the three politicians was that it would save much of the tax payers' money spent by the cumbersome procedures in the hanging of the wrongdoers. This, they claimed, would be achieved as the offender would be hanged on the spot with his own rope for which he himself had paid. The decree also specified the measurements of the rope. It had to be more than half a centimeter thick and no less than one meter long.
This law caught the rest of the politicians' imagination and within a year it spread like a wildfire and was adopted by every politician all across the continent.
It was a time in Europe and in the British Isles that no man, except for nobility and for a few Teutonic Knights errant, dared to be seen in public without wearing the rope around their necks.
The person who would put the decisive stamp on the necktie and would turn it from a symbol of degradation to a symbol of honesty and nobility, as we know it today, was a small-time thief by the name of Alfonso Faber, a son of a farmer who lived in the tiny English village of Battle. The year was 1066.
Alfonso Faber conceived of a genius idea. His idea was to weaken his rope in a way that nobody would notice. And so, if he's caught and hanged and his rope is weak enough to break, he would have a chance to escape death.
On Oct. 14, 1066, with the Norman's invasion of the English South coast, Alfonso Faber, who dodged the military draft and was hiding in a small hut in the shores of Hastings town, observed that the wooden arrows that have fallen into the water and were nibbled by fish, looked exactly like pieces of rope. Picking a few of them he realized that contrary to their original firmness they would tear easily.
Once Alfonso Faber grasped the correlation, and once the sounds of war have faded, he acquired a few pieces of rope and a small rowing boat and went out to sea to test his idea. As a bait, he glazed the rope with fish paste, which was the common meal of the masses at the time, dropping it into the water. It worked miracles. The fish nibbled the rope exactly according to the rope's pattern and no one could discern that the rope has been ‘treated’ by fish.
It took Alfonso Faber two weeks and twenty pieces of rope to find out as of how long he has to leave the rope under water in order to weaken it enough so that it would break at exactly his weight.
Except for two cryptic documents found in among the "Necktie Files" written some 824 years later by the young Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in 1890, in which he claims that Alfonso Faber subconsciously desired to be caught and hanged in order to test his invention, no other facts exist to substantiate such theory.
The confirmed fact is that two years after his experimentation, Alfonso Faber was caught in the open bazaar in Battle stealing a pair of live fish. As he was hanged on the nearest tree with his own rope, the rope broke.
The exact date was Oct. 30, 1068.
It was the first time in the history of the known world that anything like that has ever happened.
Scores of messengers were sent to consult with the most powerful politicians of the “New World” as of what should be the proper conduct in the case of Alfonso Faber.
The messengers were to meet with Pope Gregory in Rome who was busy at this time to excommunicate King Frederick I, (Barbarossa, i.e. Red Beard), with the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne in Germany all of whom were preoccupied with carrying vicious battles against each other and against Pope Innocent IV, William of Holland, the Synod of Lyons in France, and against the Lesser tenants-in-chief of the three minor houses of Luxemburgs, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns.
A secret paper headed “The Neck-Rope Pact” which we found intact in among the "Necktie Files", and signed by all the above mentioned politicians, gives a clear picture of what has come to pass in these encounters.
The paper's first paragraph proclaims: We the divine authorities agree to the following:
1. We were presented with an exceptional opportunity to make
use of the case of Alfonso Faber in convincing the masses of
the existence of divinity among us; only God could have made
the rope of Alfonso Faber break.
2. Therefore, we order to spare his life in addition to beatify
and sanctify him. From this moment on, he will be known as
Saint Alfonso Faber. And as Saint he becomes immortal.
3. Our mandate gives us the power to make it a law of the world
that any Man, Woman or Child, except for those of noble
lineage, who gets the divine privilege of setting an eye on
Saint Alfonso Faber, to pay us, God's representatives on
Earth, a tax of seventy two gram of gold as a recognition of
God's powers in sparing Alfonso Faber's life and beatifying
him to a Saint. This tax will be known as “The Neck-Rope Tax.”
Upon hearing of the verdict from his prison warden, Alfonso Faber, the once small-time thief, couldn't be happier. He was informed of his Sainthood, released and was given money and food.
Alfonso Faber couldn't know of what had happened and whom he should thank for his good fortune.
Within a month the laws set in “The Neck-Rope Pact” were widely known, accepted and ruthlessly reinforced.
People became divided. Part of those who came face to face with the newly declared Saint wearing his broken rope around his neck grudgingly paid the Neck-Rope Tax. Others pretended not to see him, risking their lives. And still others migrated to the mountainous regions where the chances of Saint Alfonso Faber showing up there, were pretty slim.
The records of this period disclose that each month up to twenty one thousand men, women and children were hanged or incarcerated in Europe on charges of evading the Neck-Rope Tax.
We can presume that Alfonso Faber felt awful. Being street-smart, he realized that he has been made an instrument for the extortion of new taxes, for dividing the population and for sowing fear into the public at large.
The circumstantial evidence we possess shows that the politicians' enforcement agencies wouldn't let him stay home but force him to travel to various villages and towns, stroll in market places and attend festivities where large crowds of people have been assembled. After all, the Neck-Rope Pact specifically ordered that Saint Alfonso Faber should be seen by as many people as possible.
On the other hand we have a solid proof that he was revered by many who in former times had scorned him.
But there was another group of people who found a unique way of defying the new tax laws; they themselves began to wear broken ropes around their necks. And because not too many people knew Alfonso Faber personally, they could pass for the Neckrope Saint, as he came to be known, and who by the politicians' decree didn't have to pay taxes.
Here we have to differ with many previous theories which hold that the invention of the necktie as we know it today is solely due to Saint Alfonso Faber. With all due respect, he was only a small and unaware pawn used by the politicians for their own ends which hardly had anything to do with the evolution of the necktie.
There's nothing that could contradict our findings which places the invention of the necktie as we know it today on the shoulders of the politicians who were the original signatories to The Neck-Rope Pact, and, as our findings will show, on the long line of politicians who have been ratifying the Pact till this very day.
With the death of the immortal Saint Alfonso Faber in the village of Yde in the Dutch province of Drenthe in 1101, the Synod of the European politicians issued a decree which was to elect a new Saint and bestow upon him the divine ascendancy, and for the sake of immortality,