Today in 1901, a story in the Chicago Tribune presented a teenager named May Kaarlus as perhaps the greatest trick shot billiard player in the whole world.
And she really could play as well as the paper said, though the career of this pool table prodigy went on to take a surprise turn.
She was born Mary Van Doren, and her father Charles was known professionally as Professor Kaarlus.
He was a trick shot billiard specialist, which meant that instead of competing against other billiard players on the circuit, he would travel from town to town giving talks about billiards and making some astounding and surprising shots.
For extra effect, he would reportedly sometimes play with a 100 pound weight on his back.
Before she was a teenager, Mary was taking lessons from her dad, and after about four years of practice she became a trick shot player as well, performing as May Kaarlus.
By all accounts, she was an exceptional player; she played with an extra large cue, bigger than what many pros used, so she was strong.
Plus, she was ambidextrous and could play with either hand equally well, so she could make shots from just about anywhere on the table.
And this was a sixteen year old girl making waves in a game that was almost exclusively played by men.
She was a sensation right out of the gate; the newspapers not only wrote about her skill, they published diagrams of her trick shots.
One article described her as the most talked-about young woman in New York.
That was in 1901; but only a few years later, she was almost completely out of the newspapers.
May Kaarlus had become famous almost out of nowhere, and just as quickly she was out of the spotlight.
In 1917 a short piece said she had “retired to private life,” and her name didn’t appear again until her father passed away in 1921.
We don’t have many details, but it seems May Kaarlus didn’t want to be a pro billiards player.
An article in 1915 said that the most notable thing about her playing was “she lacked enthusiasm and seemed always to be working against her wishes.”
So, essentially, she put an end to May Kaarlus and went back to being Mary Van Doren.
Though her talent as May Kaarlus was so substantial, here we are over a century later still talking about her.
It’s National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, though really not everything is meant to be covered in chocolate.
Back in 2020, there were a bunch of articles about a baker named Gareth who sent his friend Trish some hot chocolate bombs for the holidays.
Except that Trish was not familiar with the concept of a hot chocolate bomb, and texted back to say that when she put the bombs in the bath, it got stuck in her hair and took forever to wash out.
To be very clear, it was not a bath bomb.
Year 1901 – Lil’ Miss May Kaarlus (Chicago Billiard Museum via Facebook)
Baker left cracking up after pal mistakes chocolate gift he made for bath bomb (The Mirror)