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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

15. The Rhino Candidate

Brazil’s biggest city, Sao Paolo, was reeling under a series of scandals in the 1950s. Corruption was rampant, garbage went uncollected, sewers overflowed, inflation was rising, and supplies of basic foodstuffs were dwindling. As City Council elections neared in October of 1959, voters had to choose from amongst 540 candidates, ranging from the uninspiring to the outright criminal.

Faced with such dismal options, some students decided: “Better elect a rhinoceros than an ass“. Their candidate of choice was a five-year-old female black rhinoceros named Cacareco, residing in the local zoo.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.