Not long ago, Rebecca Onion, who writes The Vault, Slate\u2019s history blog, stumbled upon a fascinating chapter in\u00a0palm reading history.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 1938, she discovered, a palm reader named Josef Ranald wrote a book that, among other things, included the handprints of Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler and Italy\u2019s Benito Mussolini. In the book \u2013How to Know People by Their Hands,<\/i>\u00a0Ranald provided his analysis of each leader\u2019s character. He was writing before World War II began, before their true characters had been revealed to the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to sharing Ranald\u2019s readings of the famous trio\u2019s palms, Onion provided some background on the author and palmist. He had served in the Austrian army during World War I. \u201cAn encounter with a palmist while Ranald was in the service irritated him rather than impressing him, and while he got out of a tight spot when a prisoner of war by pretending to read the palms of his captors, he reported that he still saw the practice as a scam,\u201d she says, while admitting that, \u201cSuch admissions of doubt may have been well-designed to gain credibility with his reading audience.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Onion goes on to tell us that, after World War I, Ranald worked as a newspaper correspondent. It was a job that brought him into contact with a large number of people. Apparently, he started reading palms as something of a lark, but because of the large number of readings he did, it developed into something else entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe wrote that he came to see the practice as scientific: he gathered ten thousand such handprints, using sensitized paper (some sheets of which he included in the back of this book, so that the reader could follow his lead),\u201d Onion says. She then quotes him as saying, “With a larger and larger sampling to go by, I felt that I could draw some conclusions from my findings. On the basis of probabilities derived from statistical averages, I could associate certain markings in the hand with certain characteristics in men and women.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Scam or science?\u00a0 Perhaps reading Ranald\u2019s analysis of FDR\u2019s palm will help you decide\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe hand of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,\u201d Ranald wrote, \u201cis almost pure spatulate \u2013 a most unusual thing in this world of mixed and contradictory personalities.\u00a0 This, of course, shows a person of great independence who necessarily expresses himself in action. As you know, advanced and liberal views go with a spatulate hand, and President Roosevelt is now known throughout the world as an exponent of progress.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs to the fingers,\u201d he continued, \u201cthey are quite short and heavy, showing a very broad planning ability, a mind which conceives great projects. Apollo and Mercury are both strong, which tells us that the president is social-minded, that he is of a sanguinary temperament and that he is both a gifted orator and though economic royalists might disagree, an excellent business man. The Saturn finger is unusually short. There is nothing of the recluse or introvert in Mr. Roosevelt. And, compared to the Apollo finger, the index finger is also short. I would say that personal ambition is decidedly not one of the president\u2019s strong traits. His qualities of leadership are, however, displayed by a heavy mount of Jupiter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Need more information before you make your decision on Ranald and his place in the history of palm reading?\u00a0 You can find the rest of his comments on FDR \u2013 as well as his reading of Hitler\u2019s palm (\u201cIt is of the elementary conic or artistic type with tapering fingers and thick, fleshy bases, denoting emotionalism, selfishness, passion.\u201d) and his interpretation of Mussolini\u2019s hand (\u201cHe has the vanity of the conic-handed and the energy and strength of the spatulate with which to satisfy his vanity.\u201d) in\u00a0How to Know People by Their Hands<\/i>, which is available in its entirety at the following link:https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/ \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Whether you believe Ranald passes the\u00a0psychic abilities test\u00a0or not is probably not the most pressing question on your mind today. You may have come to\u00a0Psychics<\/span>\u00a0Directory<\/span>\u00a0looking for a psychic who can help you unravel a romantic impasse or shed light on a dark corner of your past. You may want to take advantage of our\u00a0free psychic hotline.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Man Who Read FDR\u2019s Palm \u2013 and Hitler\u2019s, Too Not long ago, Rebecca Onion, who writes The Vault, Slate\u2019s history blog, stumbled upon a fascinating chapter in\u00a0palm reading history. \u00a0 In 1938, she discovered, a palm reader named Josef Ranald wrote a book that, among other things, included the handprints of Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":927,"featured_media":8436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[7970,7968,7967,7969],"class_list":["post-8435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychics","tag-free-psychic-hotline","tag-history-of-palm-reading","tag-palm-reading-history","tag-psychic-abilities-test","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8437,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435\/revisions\/8437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychicsdirectory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}