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we sold London Bridge to the yanks who thought they were buying Tower Bridge......FOOLS....as if we would sell Tower Bridge.
not sure sorry
what thingummy said. London Bridge is just up river from Tower Bridge. The guy bought London Bridge, and the Corporation of London gladly sold it to him - it was boring. They built a new one - even more boring - in its place. But Tower Bridge - the cute one in the postcards - stayed put.
The guy who bought it got a shock when he unpacked it. It was an American millionaire, year 1969 I think; can't remember who or where the bridge ended up.
This is in reference to a few con men who succeeded in "selling" such famous landmarks as buckingham palace, London, the Tower of london, The Eiffel tower (Paris), famous works of art, and many more to naive rich people, often American, who had the romantic image of impoverished European gentry in their heads from romantic fiction and movies.
The phrase refers to gullibility or naivity in someone
It means whatever " That " is, a statement, a report, a story.... is utterly unbelievable, with the likelihood so rare that it resembles somebody selling a bridge.
The history of this expression goes back to the early 1900's at the peak of the immigration into the US from Europe. There were lots of scams that were designed to get whatever money these people had saved to bring into the new country, and the one to sell the Brooklyn Bridge or a piece of the bridge was the most well known.
Back in the 1970s, conmen went in for scams selling London bridges - usually they would pretend to have authority to sell Tower Bridge. To cap it all, some American did actually buy the original London Bridge - which wasn't particularly attractive, but IMO culturally wrong to do.
it is almost as bad as selling the Ponte Vecchio in Florence would be.
thank goodness for the decency of a German WWII officer who defied orders telling him to blow it up.
anyhow, only an idiot would be taken in by a conman selling a land-mark - hence the expression about selling somebody a bridge.
You can also read the link below which is a great explanation for your question.
London Bridge
A shrewd Confidence trickster apparently sold London Bridge to an American, who believed he was buying TOWER Bridge.
Didn't the US millionaire put his London Bridge in the Arizona Desert?
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