Hello, Damn Interesting listeners. Just a quick note.

This episode is coming out on the 6th of September 2025.

20 years ago today, we published our first Damn Interesting writing.

We'd be tickled if you could go find this article on damn interesting.com

and leave us a nice birthday message in the comments.

Anyway, here's the show.

This is damn interesting.

In the village of Bellews Town, about 15 miles north of Dublin, Ireland, they still talk about

what Barney Curley did back in 1975. It all happened during a horse

race on the hill of Krukafutta. It was just an amateur jockey race on a lazy summer day in a

sleepy remote town. It wasn't meant to be anything special. The last thing anyone expected

was to witness the making of history. The race in

question occurred on the 26th of June 1975. Barney Curley, our protagonist, if you could call him that,

owned one of the horses running later that day. But at the race course, as preparations were being made,

Curley was nowhere to be seen.

And not because he wasn't in attendance,

it was because he was taking great pains to stay out of sight.

If the trackside bookmakers caught wind

that he was at Bellews town that day,

or if they discovered that he was the owner of one of the horses, they would be on

full alert and take precautions with the wagers and odds. Curley had earned a reputation in horse

racing circles. He was known to engage in some gambling shenanigans from time to time. But the

...