Tom Sopwith and the McCandles Effect

This is Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith.

18 January 1888 – 27 January 1989

He was commonly known as Tom Sopwith, from both his given name and his initials. He was a yachtsman, motorcyclist, and all-round sportsman, but he is best remembered as the founder of the Sopwith Aviation company. He first flew (and crashed) in 1910, but as early as 1912 he was making aeroplanes for the British military. His company's most famous machine was the Sopwith Camel, designed by Herbert Smith. Some 5,747 Camels were built in World War I. They were Britain's most successful fighter, accounting for 1,294 enemy planes destroyed. 

A Sopwith Camel at the Udvar-Hazy Museum.

For various economic and technical reasons Sopwith Aviation became Hawker Aircraft in 1920, though Sopwith continued on as chairman of the board. He remained a consultant to Hawker Siddeley Aviation until 1980.

He was an Olympic caliber ice skater, a maker and racer of motorcycles, and even challenged for the America's Cup yacht races in 1934 and 1937.

In 1989, I was 30 years old, and a long time aviation buff. When I heard Sopwith had died January 29, I was amazed. I had no idea he had lived so long. It was like hearing Orville Wright or Hugo Junkers had died--here was a pioneer of aviation who'd made it to 101 years old. What advances were made during that long life!

When a famous person retires, or goes quietly out of fashion, yet lives another 30-40 years in obscurity, popular consciousness loses track of them. Their demise can be a total surprise. Subsequently I've experienced this surprise many times, most recently when I learned singer Connie Francis had passed away July 16, 2025. She was 87, a not uncommon age for people to reach these days. 

There ought to be a name for this kind of revelation. One ongoing trend consists of naming these social effects after famous people. There's the Mandela Effect, where popular memory incorrectly assume facts about eminent people--the concept comes from many people thinking South African activist and politician Nelson Mandela "died in prison" when he did no such thing. 

Then there's the Streisand Effect:

"The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information.

"The term was coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick after Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California, inadvertently drawing far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph." [from wikipedia.org]

I'd like to contribute to the social lexicon by proposing "the McCandles Effect," which occurs when someone is found to be alive when common knowledge assumed they were dead, or when a celebrity does pass away and most people weren't aware they had lived so long. The name derives from the 1971 John Wayne western "Big Jake." Wayne plays Jacob McCandles, a wandering gunman who was once a noted, wealthy rancher. In the course of the movie he confronts several bad guys, killing or facing them down. Each time he's met with the incredulous question, "Who are you?"

"Jacob McCandles."

Puzzled baddie: "I thought you was dead."

McCandles: "Not hardly!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzgxqWVzvIg

This may be a variant of the Mandela Effect, but it's distinctive enough to deserve a label of its own.