I'm thankful for the critical thinking and media literacy training I gained in high school.
Being the age I am, I can't thank my schooling for my digital literacy. The internet became "a thing" after I finished high school.
This is a perfect example of where I might have ended up looking like a fool if I'd believed the first link I found online.
Not that the internet was trying to mislead me, but it would have led me to provide at least a title or caption that would have been factually incorrect.
Instead, I thankfully learned more about and wrote more about this fellow, which (as I might have mentioned before) is one of the reasons I love photography.
If you Google "szarvas gabor" - as I did - the first result that appears is a Wikipedia entry for a Hungarian middleweight weightlifter. And while he may be worthy of a statue - I don't know - I mentally questioned whether this was the depiction of a weightlifter, looking at how he was presented.
If the man in this statue was a sportsman, it seemed much more likely he was a toreador (despite being Hungarian) than a weightlifter.
Even ignoring the slightness of the bust, you would imagine a weightlifter would be commemorated in some sort of full-length statue showing off his physique? Or, at least, shirtless displaying his pecs? And um, maybe it shouldn't be armless if he's a weightlifter? Or is that just me?
Thankfully, I didn't take Google's first search result as gospel.
In a new browser tab, I Googled "szarvas gabor statue". A Trip Advisor entry signposted me to another fellow who happened to have the same name.
I returned to my original search results and clicked the next link.
Though in Hungarian, Chrome's translation option (and photos on the page) allowed me to confirm this was the Szarvas Gábor I was seeking.
It did, however, poorly translate the first sentence of the entry to tell me he was not only a linguist but the creator of Hungarian agriculture. Not having been born until 1832, I found that slightly questionable...
It turns out the translation should read "a linguist, the creator of Hungarian language education", which makes far more sense.
The translation of the Wikipedia entry also tells me "he published humorous writings under the pseudonym Pap Rika" and paints him a little like a grammar nazi.
He sounds like my kinda guy!
Even if (or especially because) he's well-known enough for a statue but not enough to be the first result in a Google search.
You win some, you lose some, eh?