Hugh Troy
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Hugh Troy Junior (1906 - 1964) was a US painter who is more famous for his pranks.
Hugh Troy was a son of a Cornell University professor, and himself attended the university from 1922 to 1927. Some of the practical jokes he pulled are still talked about. One of them included using a wastebasket made of a rhinoceros foot to make what appeared to be rhinoceros tracks across campus and to the lake that was the source of drinking water for the area. Reportedly, many people stopped drinking the water until Troy revealed the prank with an anonymous letter.
Once Troy took the galoshes of one lecturer and painted human feet on them. Then he covered his handiwork with a paint that would wash off. When the lecturer used the galoshes in the rain, he looked like he was walking with bare feet.
While working as the student sports reporter at Cornell, Troy invented a character named "Johnny Tsal". Tsal was a poor wretch of a character who would inevitably finish last in whatever race that Troy was assigned to cover. 'Tsal,' of course, was 'last' spelt backwards. Troy said he invented this perpetual loser so that he wouldn't have to feel bad about reporting someone's defeat.
In New York, Troy would visit Central Park carrying a park bench he had bought. Police, suspecting he was trying to steal it, arrested him with a number of times. He always presented the bill of sale and was released. Eventually police declared Central Park off limits to him.
On 1935 there was an exhibition of the works of Vincent Van Gogh in New York's Museum of Modern Art. Troy took a piece of corned beef, carved it into a shape of an ear and put in on display with a plate that declared it was the ear Van Gogh had cut off in 1888. People flocked to see it until museum authorities removed it.
During the World War II, Troy got fed up with military bureaucracy. He invented a new form for reports on the use of flypaper and sent it off. The story goes that Pentagon demanded that other units send theirs as well.
Hugh Troy made his living as an illustrator for books and magazines. He died in 1964.