Famous Historical Pipe Smokers

[jpmcwjr]

I beg your pardon, that’s Meneer Kruger. 🫡

Not of German ancestry? I can't make out the emoij, so don't know if you're light hearted or no.

 

[MisterBadger]

Not of German ancestry? I can't make out the emoij, so don't know if you're light hearted or no.

Of Dutch descent, but an Afrikaaner. Cape Dutch. Hence 'Meneer'.

 

[Sobrbiker]

Not of German ancestry? I can't make out the emoij, so don't know if you're light hearted or no.

Considering he was Dutch, and Transvaal Boers spoke Afrikaans, that probably explains the references to “meneer” vs “herr”.

 

[JoburgB2]

Not of German ancestry? I can't make out the emoij, so don't know if you're light hearted or no.

Yes of course, lighthearted, always! Meneer is the Afrikaans equivalent of Herr and Mister. Sorry jpmcwjr, I wasn’t being serious.

 

[Kspipe]

Tatanka Iyotake ('Sitting Bull'). Here's an apocryphal story about his pipe-smoking I gleaned off the web:

"...in 1872, the Lakota warriors attempted to block construction of the railroad near the Yellowstone River. The U.S. Army was there to provide protection for the railroad and a battle ensued. As the battle turned into a standoff, the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse displayed his bravery by riding in front of the soldiers armed only with a spear. Then Sitting Bull stepped forward. He put his rifle on the ground and walked towards the line of soldiers with his pipe.

The soldiers began firing. With bullets kicking up the dirt around him, Sitting Bull sat down and shouted back to his fellow warriors, "Whoever wishes to smoke with me, come." Only four men, including Sitting Bull's nephew White Bull, sat with him as bullets buzzed past their heads and hit the ground at their feet and legs. The four men anxiously smoked as fast as they could, but noted that Sitting Bull "just sat and looked around and smoked peacefully."

After smoking the pipe, Sitting Bull calmly picked up a stick and cleaned out the pipe bowl before standing up. He then turned, and at a leisurely pace, walked back towards home as the bullets hit the dirt behind him. The Lakota warriors were in awe that not one bullet struck him during the entire episode and he had shown no fear. As White Bull later recalled, this was the "most brave deed possible" and "counted more than counting coup."

(Source: Philbrick, Nathaniel. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. New York: Viking, 2010).
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There’s an episode about this very thing. On the get piped podcast. I just listened to it while at work catching up on the older episodes. Worth a try if you like that sort of thing

 

[MisterBadger]

Boris Karloff (William Henry Pratt) 1887-1969: born in Peckham, south London, of Anglo-Indian descent, emigrated to Canada in 1909 and bummed around doing odd jobs until he discovered a talent for acting - first on the stage, when in 1911 he adopted the stage name Boris Karloff, and later in cinema, where his best-known role is as the monster in the film 'Frankenstein' (1931), by which time he had already acted in no fewer than 81 other films. Thereafter, horror became his principal genre. He returned to England in 1959 and continued his career in cinema until just a few months before his death. Here, he appears to be smoking a Lovat. He had a pet pig called Violet and a tortoise called Lighting Bill, but I haven't been able to find out what tobaccos he smoked.