Friday, 25 July 2014

The Inventor Of The High Five

image credit: Melanie Holtsman

The high five is ubiquitous. It's a gesture that permeates every social environment - the workplace, the bar, the middle school kickball field - and it seems to be appropriate in almost any situation.

Your friend got married? High five. You chugged an entire liter of IPA? High five. Since its inception, the hand-slapping maneuver has taken on multiple iterations and has never fallen out of style. But tracing the origins of the high five reveals a riveting, heroic, dark story that seems to be everything the joyous gesture is not.

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