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In 2012, a reference to a fictional event was added to this article which described the film as 'Based on the true story of Olga the elephant rescued from Vienna Zoo in 1944.' This event never happened, there is no evidence of it available on the Web that doesn't reference this article and it has caused confusion on a public internet forum. I am trying to edit this information off of the page but it keeps getting reverted. 86.161.112.189 ( talk) 21:29, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Has Olga the elephant ever existed?
"Olga the elephant" was added to this article on the 3rd of February, 2012, by anonymous IP 213.205.224.77, without any citation. Unsourced anonymous edit
The citation I removed linked to a Google book about cycling. Despite extensive searching, I can find no verified evidence that any "Olga the elephant" existed in 1944.
Until a valid citation is discovered, I am deleting Olga from the article. GalantFan ( talk) 20:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
In fact, not only is there no Olga, but also no Lucy, and Tom Wright never took an elephant out of the zoo. [1] [2] GalantFan ( talk) 21:50, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
"Just to be clear the story of Olga the Elephant is fictional, the Tutor has this story in his opening lecture every year when going over how to reference research papers, with glee. Needless to say none of his students reference Wikipedia anymore, and everytime we see someone do so, we start giggling." [3] GalantFan ( talk) 02:15, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: The problem with what you have just written is circular sourcing. Those places you have found saying Tom was a POW who worked at a zoo got that info from Wiki, where it was invented by vandals. "Had a reply back from Wright's friend. He says that Wright was never a POW!" Then future wiki editors see that fake info that has been copied to other sites and use them as sources. The offline story told in the obituary and alluded to in posts in the WW2 forum is that the result of actually talking to real world acquaintances revealed that Tom was never a POW and the story about Lucy is completely fictional, and Olga never existed either for real or in fiction, besides the invention of Wiki vandals.
I have even found info repeated at popular sites such as IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes that used Wiki articles as a source. That is why I am putting some effort into making Wiki accurate.
To be clear, Lucy the Elephant was never anything but a fictional story and movie, and Olga the elephant never existed, and the Tom Wright who wrote the story and movie was never a POW. GalantFan ( talk) 18:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: It is not clear to me that those liner notes are the originals from 69 or 78.
I do know that from Tom's own obituary in 2002, he was only described the following way, and that forum posts claiming to actually speak to a friend of his claim that he was never a POW. There are two mentions from his obit of events in 1944, and neither time was he a prisoner.
"In 1944 a young Scottish corporal staggered into Brussels a few hours ahead of the liberating army. For weeks he had occupied the no man's land between the advancing allies and the retreating Germans, calling in targets to shell.
When, several months later (still in 1944), he was sent back through Belgium after the defeat of the Germans, he saw posters up on every street corner of the capital - a photograph of an anonymous British soldier liberating the city. A hero. And he realised it was him."
There is the fictional character "Stephen Brooks, a British POW ... tasked with caring for Lucy, an elephant at the Munich Zoo"
"Had a reply back from Wright's friend. He says that Wright was never a POW! The rest of the bio info online is correct except the stuff about Lucy and Wright's capture." GalantFan ( talk) 19:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: Thanks for looking. Yes, the liner notes say Tom was a painter and the elephant story was "concocted". I found two websites that credit the SAME Tom Wright Born: 8 March 1923, Glasgow, with the Hannibal Brooks movie and also the High Road TV series that is mentioned on the obit site. But the obit never calls him a painter, never calls him a prisoner, and never mentions a zoo. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1578668/ http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9ff12d3c
So it looks to me like there is one Tom Wright, and maybe Mr. Winter got the man confused with the fictional character, and the fictional elephant Lucy. GalantFan ( talk) 23:00, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: Unfortunately I can't see the Google books links, you must need a login. Would you be able to copy and paste the text from the 1978 book? "Films of Michael Winner" by Bill Harding, isbn 0584104499. page 51 - that's where the quote above comes from. I can send you/post a scan somewhere if you cant get access to it. here for snippet view
I found a link with Tom a prisoner, and a zoo elephant named Stasi. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/25230/4/kmf-TheBritishWarFilm2links.pdf
Hannibal Brooks (1969, Michael Winner) is based on the war memoirs of Tom Wright, who worked in a German zoo in the 1940s while a prisoner of war, eventually looking after and growing fond of an Indian elephant called Stasi.71 The unpublished manuscript was turned into a story by Michael Winner, who directed a variation of it based on a screenplay by Dick Clements and Ian LaFrenais, starring Oliver Reed as Stephen “Hannibal” Brooks, a POW who looks after an elephant, eventually escaping over a mountain to neutral Switzerland.72 71 Cliff Goodwin, Evil Spirits: The Life of Oliver Reed (London: Virgin Books, 2002), 115. 72 Susan D. Cowie and Tom Johnson, The Films of Oliver Reed (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Pub, 2011), 107
GalantFan ( talk) 23:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Oh, wow, the Munich zoo did in fact have an elephant named Stasi! Found another copy of the same photo, dated both 1960 and 1965. This fits the timeline given by https://www.elephant.se/database2.php?elephant_id=1139 .
GalantFan ( talk) 23:32, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I have found more info about Stasi the elephant. Born in 1934, died in 1968. https://www.elephant.se/database2.php?elephant_id=1139 I have contacted the zoo to see if it is true that it was moved to Switzerland in the war. You can actually read the pages 114-115 from the Reed biography? GalantFan ( talk) 02:05, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the screenshot. I am getting the impression that either Winner and Reed didn't know him very well or the biographers for Winner and Reed weren't interested in Tom. They keep calling him a house painter when he was also a stained glass craftsman, university graduate, poet, playwright, and screenwriter from the early 60s to the early 90s. Maybe house painter was his day-job. GalantFan ( talk) 15:10, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
He went home from the war in 44 or 45, graduated from Glasgow in 63, when he was 40, and did most of his writing starting in the 60s, so he could have been a full-time painter for almost 20 years. I wrote a note to a couple other writers from his shows. Maybe I will hear back. It's a shame that his obit is the only biography written about him, besides his diary that he sent to Winner. GalantFan ( talk) 18:46, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Okay, but if we both indent our comments, that would make it harder to follow. GalantFan ( talk) 23:56, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
The Hannibal Brooks page needs to be semi-protected against anonymous IP edits because this has been going on since 2012 by college professors and students attempting to prove that Wikipedia is unreliable. I think it needs to be permanent because it is clear that the professor is going to continue encouraging his students to vandalize this page every year.
Quora contributor admits that Olga the Elephant is a hoax to troll Wikipedia "Just to be clear the story of Olga the Elephant is fictional, the Tutor has this story in his opening lecture every year when going over how to reference research papers, with glee. Needless to say none of his students reference Wikipedia anymore, and everytime we see someone do so, we start giggling." [4]
It has been discovered that the multiple anonymous IP edits are part of a concentrated attack on Wikipedia itself, to cause disrepute to Wikipedia, which have been organized and encouraged by a tutor at Robert Gordon University in the UK, who has been telling his students for several years that Wiki is an unreliable source and encouraging them to vandalize Wiki to prove it. See: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Wikipedia-dismissed-as-an-unreliable-source/answer/Cai-Esson?ch=10&share=161cecfd&srid=n1aP3
If you will follow the "contribs" links of these anonymous IPs and their WhoIs info, you will see that they all come from the same little area of the UK, and none of them have ever contributed anything but to vandalize this article by reposting the exact same fake information, over and over again since 2012. GalantFan ( talk) 21:40, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I believe the Tom Wright in question, is the same Tom Wright linked to the discovery of a Lucian Freud painting in 2018. [5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.83.191.240 ( talk) 16:27, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
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In 2012, a reference to a fictional event was added to this article which described the film as 'Based on the true story of Olga the elephant rescued from Vienna Zoo in 1944.' This event never happened, there is no evidence of it available on the Web that doesn't reference this article and it has caused confusion on a public internet forum. I am trying to edit this information off of the page but it keeps getting reverted. 86.161.112.189 ( talk) 21:29, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Has Olga the elephant ever existed?
"Olga the elephant" was added to this article on the 3rd of February, 2012, by anonymous IP 213.205.224.77, without any citation. Unsourced anonymous edit
The citation I removed linked to a Google book about cycling. Despite extensive searching, I can find no verified evidence that any "Olga the elephant" existed in 1944.
Until a valid citation is discovered, I am deleting Olga from the article. GalantFan ( talk) 20:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
In fact, not only is there no Olga, but also no Lucy, and Tom Wright never took an elephant out of the zoo. [1] [2] GalantFan ( talk) 21:50, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
"Just to be clear the story of Olga the Elephant is fictional, the Tutor has this story in his opening lecture every year when going over how to reference research papers, with glee. Needless to say none of his students reference Wikipedia anymore, and everytime we see someone do so, we start giggling." [3] GalantFan ( talk) 02:15, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: The problem with what you have just written is circular sourcing. Those places you have found saying Tom was a POW who worked at a zoo got that info from Wiki, where it was invented by vandals. "Had a reply back from Wright's friend. He says that Wright was never a POW!" Then future wiki editors see that fake info that has been copied to other sites and use them as sources. The offline story told in the obituary and alluded to in posts in the WW2 forum is that the result of actually talking to real world acquaintances revealed that Tom was never a POW and the story about Lucy is completely fictional, and Olga never existed either for real or in fiction, besides the invention of Wiki vandals.
I have even found info repeated at popular sites such as IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes that used Wiki articles as a source. That is why I am putting some effort into making Wiki accurate.
To be clear, Lucy the Elephant was never anything but a fictional story and movie, and Olga the elephant never existed, and the Tom Wright who wrote the story and movie was never a POW. GalantFan ( talk) 18:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: It is not clear to me that those liner notes are the originals from 69 or 78.
I do know that from Tom's own obituary in 2002, he was only described the following way, and that forum posts claiming to actually speak to a friend of his claim that he was never a POW. There are two mentions from his obit of events in 1944, and neither time was he a prisoner.
"In 1944 a young Scottish corporal staggered into Brussels a few hours ahead of the liberating army. For weeks he had occupied the no man's land between the advancing allies and the retreating Germans, calling in targets to shell.
When, several months later (still in 1944), he was sent back through Belgium after the defeat of the Germans, he saw posters up on every street corner of the capital - a photograph of an anonymous British soldier liberating the city. A hero. And he realised it was him."
There is the fictional character "Stephen Brooks, a British POW ... tasked with caring for Lucy, an elephant at the Munich Zoo"
"Had a reply back from Wright's friend. He says that Wright was never a POW! The rest of the bio info online is correct except the stuff about Lucy and Wright's capture." GalantFan ( talk) 19:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: Thanks for looking. Yes, the liner notes say Tom was a painter and the elephant story was "concocted". I found two websites that credit the SAME Tom Wright Born: 8 March 1923, Glasgow, with the Hannibal Brooks movie and also the High Road TV series that is mentioned on the obit site. But the obit never calls him a painter, never calls him a prisoner, and never mentions a zoo. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1578668/ http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9ff12d3c
So it looks to me like there is one Tom Wright, and maybe Mr. Winter got the man confused with the fictional character, and the fictional elephant Lucy. GalantFan ( talk) 23:00, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello @ Curdle: Unfortunately I can't see the Google books links, you must need a login. Would you be able to copy and paste the text from the 1978 book? "Films of Michael Winner" by Bill Harding, isbn 0584104499. page 51 - that's where the quote above comes from. I can send you/post a scan somewhere if you cant get access to it. here for snippet view
I found a link with Tom a prisoner, and a zoo elephant named Stasi. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/25230/4/kmf-TheBritishWarFilm2links.pdf
Hannibal Brooks (1969, Michael Winner) is based on the war memoirs of Tom Wright, who worked in a German zoo in the 1940s while a prisoner of war, eventually looking after and growing fond of an Indian elephant called Stasi.71 The unpublished manuscript was turned into a story by Michael Winner, who directed a variation of it based on a screenplay by Dick Clements and Ian LaFrenais, starring Oliver Reed as Stephen “Hannibal” Brooks, a POW who looks after an elephant, eventually escaping over a mountain to neutral Switzerland.72 71 Cliff Goodwin, Evil Spirits: The Life of Oliver Reed (London: Virgin Books, 2002), 115. 72 Susan D. Cowie and Tom Johnson, The Films of Oliver Reed (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Pub, 2011), 107
GalantFan ( talk) 23:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Oh, wow, the Munich zoo did in fact have an elephant named Stasi! Found another copy of the same photo, dated both 1960 and 1965. This fits the timeline given by https://www.elephant.se/database2.php?elephant_id=1139 .
GalantFan ( talk) 23:32, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I have found more info about Stasi the elephant. Born in 1934, died in 1968. https://www.elephant.se/database2.php?elephant_id=1139 I have contacted the zoo to see if it is true that it was moved to Switzerland in the war. You can actually read the pages 114-115 from the Reed biography? GalantFan ( talk) 02:05, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the screenshot. I am getting the impression that either Winner and Reed didn't know him very well or the biographers for Winner and Reed weren't interested in Tom. They keep calling him a house painter when he was also a stained glass craftsman, university graduate, poet, playwright, and screenwriter from the early 60s to the early 90s. Maybe house painter was his day-job. GalantFan ( talk) 15:10, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
He went home from the war in 44 or 45, graduated from Glasgow in 63, when he was 40, and did most of his writing starting in the 60s, so he could have been a full-time painter for almost 20 years. I wrote a note to a couple other writers from his shows. Maybe I will hear back. It's a shame that his obit is the only biography written about him, besides his diary that he sent to Winner. GalantFan ( talk) 18:46, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Okay, but if we both indent our comments, that would make it harder to follow. GalantFan ( talk) 23:56, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
The Hannibal Brooks page needs to be semi-protected against anonymous IP edits because this has been going on since 2012 by college professors and students attempting to prove that Wikipedia is unreliable. I think it needs to be permanent because it is clear that the professor is going to continue encouraging his students to vandalize this page every year.
Quora contributor admits that Olga the Elephant is a hoax to troll Wikipedia "Just to be clear the story of Olga the Elephant is fictional, the Tutor has this story in his opening lecture every year when going over how to reference research papers, with glee. Needless to say none of his students reference Wikipedia anymore, and everytime we see someone do so, we start giggling." [4]
It has been discovered that the multiple anonymous IP edits are part of a concentrated attack on Wikipedia itself, to cause disrepute to Wikipedia, which have been organized and encouraged by a tutor at Robert Gordon University in the UK, who has been telling his students for several years that Wiki is an unreliable source and encouraging them to vandalize Wiki to prove it. See: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Wikipedia-dismissed-as-an-unreliable-source/answer/Cai-Esson?ch=10&share=161cecfd&srid=n1aP3
If you will follow the "contribs" links of these anonymous IPs and their WhoIs info, you will see that they all come from the same little area of the UK, and none of them have ever contributed anything but to vandalize this article by reposting the exact same fake information, over and over again since 2012. GalantFan ( talk) 21:40, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I believe the Tom Wright in question, is the same Tom Wright linked to the discovery of a Lucian Freud painting in 2018. [5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.83.191.240 ( talk) 16:27, 30 April 2023 (UTC)