From barry@hal.COM Sat Mar 25 21:01:04 GMT 1995 Article: 18498 of rec.juggling Path: hal.COM!hijinks.hal.COM!not-for-mail From: barry@hal.COM (Barry Bakalor) Newsgroups: rec.juggling Subject: Magnus Nicholls centennial Date: 25 Mar 1995 12:56:51 -0800 Organization: HaL Computer Systems, Inc. Lines: 49 Message-ID: <3l202j$n17@hijinks.hal.COM> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: hijinks.hal.com In article , Andrew John Conway wrote: > Not unless you make them very skinny. Then you get what is popularly known > as a 'stick'. Don't laugh, that's what Rastelli and Nicholls juggled. Speaking of Nicholls, an important event is taking place next week, which I fear may go unnoticed: the 100th anniversary of the birth of Magnus Nicholls, one of the greatest and most important figures in the history of juggling. It is believed that a performance by Nicholls in Italy was the first exposure that the young Enrico Rastelli ever had to the art of highly technical juggling. Nicholls was just two years older than Rastelli, but started juggling at a younger age. In his early teens he was travelling through Europe as part of a minstrel troupe, when Rastelli first saw and became entranced with his skillful manipulations. It is likely that Nicholls was the first to juggle 5 clubs, made of thin but solid white pine, though his work with plates, cups, and candelabras led to his most spectacular tricks. It may also have been the growing rivalry between Nicholls and Rastelli at the start of Rastelli's professional career that led them both to be possessed with the need for learning the most difficult of tricks. Rastelli felt he had to answer the frequent claims in the press that Magnus Nicholls was the greatest juggling artist in the world, and this led directly to Rastelli's tireless pursuits of high numbers, and his eventual stature as the accepted greatest juggler in history. We will never know how far Nicholls might have gone in his rivalry with Rastelli had he not sustained the injury that ended his all too brief but inspirational career. If anyone has any information about this little known chapter in our juggling heritage, this would be an excellent time to share it with the rest of the juggling world. Happy birthday, Magnus! barry Juggling Information Service http://www.hal.com/services/juggle/ ftp.hal.com:/pub/juggle E-mail: juggle@hal.com, FILE-SERVICE in Subject, HELP in body -- Barry Bakalor HaL Computer Systems barry@hal.com 1315 Dell Avenue 1722 Cheney Drive Manager, Campbell, CA 95008 San Jose, CA 95128 Integration & Tools 408-379-7000x1491 408-293-7279