Futility Closet - 004-Mystery Airships, Marauding Lions, and Nancy Drew

Episode Date: April 7, 2014

In 1896 a strange wave of airship sightings swept Northern California; the reports of strange lights in the sky created a sensation that would briefly engulf the rest of the country. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll examine some of the highlights of this early "UFO" craze, including the mysterious role of a San Francisco attorney who claimed to have the answer to it all.We'll also examine the surprising role played by modern art in disguising World War I merchant ships and modern cars, discover unexpected lions in central Illinois and southern England, and present the next Futility Closet Challenge.

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the popular website that catalogs more than 7,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 4. I'm Greg Ross, the creator of Futility Closet, and with me is my wife and co-host, Sharon. In today's show, we'll investigate a mysterious airship sighted over San Francisco in 1896, explore the camouflage patterns used by World War I merchant ships and modern cars,

discover unexpected lions in central Illinois and southern England, and present the next Futility Closet challenge. In our listener mail this week, several people asked us if we can add Futility Closet to Stitcher. It's been submitted and we expect to have it up by the time this episode comes out. Also in the last episode, we talked about Transamerica, which is the free online tool offered by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories to let you track your progress across the United States virtually as you're exercising, rocking, walking, running, or biking. That was up at the time we posted the episode, but apparently it was down for a couple days after that immediately. But I'm just letting people know it's up again now and available if you want to use it. The address again is exercise.lbl.gov.

One of our stories last week was about Lillian Alling, the woman who was so unhappy with her life in New York City in 1926 that she resolved to walk back home to Russia. Most of the research for that story came from the 2011 monograph on Lillian by Susan Smith Josephy. This week we received this note from Susan. Hi there. I just listened to your podcast about Lillian Alling and other far walkers. Nice piece and thanks for the shout out. It's been a few years since I've written the book about Lillian and I always hoped that somewhere someone would send me some new information. Some people have contacted me with a few tidbits, but nothing startling. I even shared it with a friend of mine who lives in Siberia and he asked around to archives, etc. But no one in Russia had heard of Lillian. Makes sense, though, because of the political climate of the time. So for now, Lillian

must remain the mystery woman. In my research on preparing that piece, Susan really was the foremost authority on Lillian Alling, so that's got to be the last word, at least for now. No one knows what became of her. She got as far as Alaska, but we don't know if she actually made it to Russia. Susan does say that she's updating the book and is always looking for more information. So if there's anyone out there who has any clues or more information about Lillian's fate, please send them to me and I'll forward them to her. Thanks to Susan for writing in. If you have any questions or comments, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com or leave a comment in the show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com.

This week I want to talk about a wave of airship sightings that unfolded across the American West between 1896 and 1897. These weren't thought to be alien spacecraft. These weren't thought to be alien spacecraft. They were just people imagined what they were seeing were actual lighter-than-aircraft that some inventor somewhere had come up with and was testing out. That wasn't a crazy thing to think at that moment in the late 1890s. The Wright brothers were still about seven years in the future, and we did have airships that were steerable at that point. They just were kind of unwieldy and hard to navigate,

so it wouldn't be crazy to think that someone was developing something that could be a bit more manageable and better useful as a means of transportation. The waves started pretty low-key over Sacramento on November 17th. Someone had thought they might have seen a light moving over the city at a height of about a thousand feet. It's about as low-key an observation as you can possibly have. I might have maybe seen something that looked bright. Yeah, and we've all had that. I mean, people looking back at that time period, it seems more than likely what they were seeing was Venus or possibly nothing at all. But that's not very scary in itself. But the two themes we'll see in this story is a combination of deliberate hoaxers and yellow journalism can fan even something that small up in a short amount of time into a real craze. The hoaxers came first.

A man named R.L. Lowry, a former street railway employee, said he was standing near the Sacramento Brewery when, quote, My attention was directed skyward by hearing a voice up there call out, Throw her up higher, she'll hit the steeple, evidently mistaking the tower of the brewery for a church steeple. Then I saw the light. It seemed like a light within a globular glass covering that magnified it. Above the light I saw two men seated as though on bicycle frames and working with a bicycle movement. I heard one of them say, We will get to San Francisco about half past twelve, but not mentioning whether midnight or afternoon. San Francisco about half past 12, but not mentioning whether midnight or afternoon.

Above these two men, who seemed to be working their passage, was a kind of mezzanine box capable of holding two or more people, but I saw no others. Above this was a cigar-shaped body of some length. There were wheels at the side, like the side wheels on Fulton's steamboat. So already you've got this enormous exaggeration and sensationalism, just for the sake of, I think, seeking attention in newspapers, which were more than willing to reprint something like that. And the newspapers, that's the other sad part of this story. The San Francisco newspapers, most of them at least reported on this, and a couple of them pretty shamelessly played it up. One in particular, known as the San

Francisco Call, is really at the center of this story. It ran a story on November 23rd, which is less than a week after that initial observation about the light in the sky. We get headlines like this. This is six days later. A winged ship in the sky. It cleaves the air with pinions like a huge condor. All Sacramento sees the new wonder.

The copy reads, For several days there have been persistent reports that a huge airship has been seen in the vicinity of Oakland, Sacramento, and San Francisco. The call has contained daily and exclusive accounts of the appearance, and now there is an avalanche of testimony to the effect that many persons of truthful reputations have seen something like a huge

seraph in the air, spreading its electric pinions and soaring faster than a giant condor of the Andes. So numerous have been the reports that the possibility of aerial navigation is now the absorbing theme of the age. That's less than a week after someone saw a light in the sky. It's true that more and more people were reporting seeing something,

but it seems like with the combination of hoaxing and just general, this was just pervasive in the air at the time, people were increasingly suggestible just because it was being talked about. But the newspapers were no help at all in trying to make this more hard-headed and skeptical. The most interesting figure in the whole part unfolding of this in Northern California was an attorney named George Collins, who came forward at about this time to say that all these reports were actually true and that he had met the inventor who was about to unveil this magical new airship. And Collins really fascinates me because I cannot understand the psychology for him doing this. He made very specific claims. I think if I were just seeking attention or something,

I might approach the newspapers and suggest mysteriously that I knew what was going on, but I'd try to give as few specifics as possible. You'd want to just sort of string them along. You wouldn't want to say anything that they could easily disprove. Exactly. And he did the very opposite. He made very specific concrete claims. He said the inventor was a wealthy 47-year-old Maine resident who relocated to Oroville, California and spent $100,000 creating a metal airship driven by electricity and compressed air, which was almost sufficiently advanced to patent now. He said, quote, the reports from Sacramento the other night were quite true.

It was my client's ship that inhabitants saw. In another six days, several defects will be done away with, and it is then his intention to fly right over San Francisco, which never happened. The other thing about Collins, I mean, that makes it bewildering, is he was an attorney living and working in the community and presumably relied for his livelihood on his reputation among the people there. So it's hard to see why someone

who already had a career, particularly as an attorney, would seek to do this. And I don't have an answer to that. I can't see that he benefited in any way. He certainly got attention, I think more than he bargained for. But I don't think he made any money off of this. And in fact, after he got a storm of press attention, when the promise deadline came and went, he just kind of fades out of the picture. I don't, I don't know why he claimed to be representing the inventor when he knew he couldn't deliver on these promises. And to say something as specific as he was going to come forward in six days. I mean, that's like the only gets a six days in the limelight before he's going to beight before he's going to be shown to be a fraud, right?

Instead of saying, well, maybe sometime in the next six months. And he knew that. He must have known that as soon as he said it. There's one odd way to make sense of this, which only makes sense if you're willing to suspend your disbelief entirely and believe all the published accounts as they're written. leave all the published accounts as they're written. The San Francisco call, when it published each of these inflammatory stories, would tend to publish an illustration of this big, fanciful airship of some description up in the sky. And on November 19th, it published one of these that had,

it's kind of a distinctive shape. It's a sort of semi-spheroidal envelope with these four large prominent propellers arranged around the perimeter. And that matches quite closely an illustration from Scientific American that had been published 10 years early in 1886, long before any of this craze had happened. What Scientific American was doing was reporting on a patent that had just been published by an inventor named Moses Cole, who was, there's nothing sensational about Cole's work. He was just working, as a lot of people were, on an actual airship. He called it his an aerial vessel. But it's just interesting that his published patent design matches so closely this purported airship in the San Francisco newspaper 10 years later. So the question is, why might that be? I think likely the truth is that during this whole San Francisco UFO

craze, the editor of the call stuck his head into an artist's office one day and said, hey, we're doing another story about these airships. Can you give me a picture for the front page? And the artist said, sure, what does an airship look like? And the editor handed him a copy of Scientific American saying, here's a picture of one, just do something like this. I think that's more than likely what happened. But if you're willing to suspend your judgment entirely, it's possible to think that everything the lawyer said was true. In other words, Moses Cole had published his patent in 1886 of this promising, apparently, airship. And this mysterious, wealthy Maine patron had gotten wind of that and contacted him.

And the two of them had set up some kind of lab in Oroville, California, and working quietly so as not to arouse attention until they had something that they could patent. Worked for 10 years until they had a working prototype and then started flying that around California just to try it out. And that's when all these sightings were made that would explain why the patent uh design matches the illustration in the call but then you'd have to ask what happened

to the inventor and what happened to the airship exactly it's a great story right up till that important point because nothing happened there's no payoff payoff. There's no punchline. There's no final chapter. Nobody ever saw this supposed airship. No one ever saw it. The inventor never comes forward. The airship never materializes. The whole thing just kind of fades away. But that is one way

if you're really willing to bend your disbelief. That's one way to make sense of it. More than likely, there's no physical evidence. It seems very likely that the whole thing was just hysteria and maybe Venus and just a lot of inflammatory journalism. So the whole thing eventually blew over in San Francisco in a few months. But it spread east after that. It was sort of a wave going west

to east across the United States in 1897. Just a couple examples of that. It has very much the same flavor. And one thing that I love about this is it all has this sort of steampunk flavor of high-tech and low-tech at the same time. No one's talking about lasers because no one knew what a laser was in 1897, but they talk about rope ladders and lanterns and steam engines and it all has this really sort of quaint feel to it but the other guy said like wheels like on a paddle boat yeah yeah because that's the technology they were familiar with so even in their sort of imaginations of these science fiction inventions they all had this sort of really old timey feel to them. Anyway, this is from Iowa, the Des Moines leader, April 11th, 1897. Some hoaxers built a 36-foot airship out of canvas and wood,

roped it off, and told people not to touch it, which immediately attracted 5,000 people. The hoaxers said they had come from San Francisco. And one of the crew said a man had fallen overboard just before landing. And the good people of that town organized a search party to search the river before realizing that, quote, the entire affair was just a joke. So this sort of thing was happening all across the U.S., and in reading most of the accounts we have about this whole wave of sightings are news accounts, newspaper accounts. And many of them are so sensational that it's hard to tell whether it's an accurate report

of a hoax or whether the editors themselves were participating or had dreamed it up themselves because all we have is the account. Here's one from Merkle, Texas on April 26th, 1897 that has the same steampunk feel to it. And a lot of it has this kind of nautical feel, like this one involves a boat anchor hanging from the airship. Some parties returning from church last night noticed a heavy object dragging along with a rope attached. They followed it until in crossing the railroad it caught on a rail. On looking up, they saw what they supposed was the airship. It was not near enough to get an idea of the dimensions. A light could be seen protruding from several windows, one bright light in front like the headlight of a locomotive.

After some ten minutes, a man was seen descending the rope. He came near enough to be plainly seen. He wore a light blue sailor suit, was small in size. He stopped when he discovered parties at the anchor and cut the ropes below him and sailed off in a northeast direction. The anchor is now on exhibition at the blacksmith shop of Elliott and Miller and is attracting the attention of hundreds of people. So it's hard to know if that was invented entirely by newspaper editors. I guess there was an anchor involved, so there must have been some hoaxers involved too, but all we have is a news account, so it's hard even to piece apart what actually happened. But eventually the the whole wave, as it had in San Francisco, just kind of ran its course and after a few months

just petered out and disappeared. And as I say, there's no evidence at all that anyone had seen anything. It was probably all just hysterical. But it's interesting how quickly it blew up in Northern California and how it spread across the U.S. In looking back on it, I think it's sort of a reflection of the evolution of communications technology. If a craze like that had arisen in San Francisco, say, 50 years earlier, I don't think it could have spread as readily eastward because we didn't have the technology for news

to travel that well. So it would have stayed more localized. I imagine it would have been a nine days wonder maybe in town, but it wouldn't spread to Iowa or Texas like that, I don't think. And certainly today, news can travel around the world quite easily, but so can the debunking that inevitably follows if it's just a hoax, at least for sort of hard-headed, rational people. But in the 1890s, it seems, rumors always traveled faster than truth. But I think in the 1890s there was a particularly interesting window where it had quite a head start. We'll have a link to our post about the 1896 airship sightings, an image of the San Francisco Coles front page during the sensation,

and a link to Moses' Coles patent in the show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com. On March 31st, we ran an item on Futility Closet about how the town of Dollhart, Texas, is closer to six other state capitals than to Texas' own capital of Austin. That's true, but Zach Pauley and John Nettles wrote in to let us know that's not the record. It turns out that Mountain City, in Tennessee's far eastern corner, is closer to seven other state capitals than to its own state capital of Nashville.

And Ewing, in Virginia's far western corner, is closer to eight. The capitals of Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, both Carolinas, and Georgia than it is to Richmond. If you go even a little further west to extreme western Virginia in the Cumberland Gap region, you'd then be closer to Montgomery, Alabama than to Richmond, raising your whole total to nine. So if you go far enough west into the Virginia Panhandle, you're actually closer to nine other state capitals than you are to your own capital. Yeah, it just shows how the states are kind of funny-shaped. That's kind of impressive, because there are only 50 states. That's a very high record.

That's interesting. Also, on April 1st, we ran an item on so-called Dazzle Camouflage, which was a scheme to disguise merchant ships during World War I. Basically, I'll put an image in the show notes so you can view the original post. It wasn't imagined that painting ships would make them somehow invisible, but if you paint them with these big sort of jagged zebra-striped shapes, they thought that it might confuse enemy rangefinders well enough

to make it hard for them to understand what type of ship they were seeing or what its orientation was or how fast it was moving, and so that might somewhat improve their chances of surviving an attack. It's not clear really how well that worked, but it was an interesting attempt, and the ship certainly looked striking. The reason I posted it is that it also has an interesting intersection with art history, because the endeavor was sort of overseen by an artist named Edward Wadsworth, who was a cubist and participated in a relatively short-lived movement called Vorticism. And he went on still to paint some of these ships in dry dock. He was just really sort of taken with these bold arrangement of colors that the ships sported.

So it was kind of an interesting intersection of military history and art. When I published that on April 1st, Ron Hughes wrote in to point out that the same thing is being done with modern cars, and this was all new to me. If you run a car manufacturer and you're designing a new model, journalists and car enthusiasts are always trying to get a look at it before you've officially unveiled it. In fact, apparently there are people called spy photographers who make a living of doing exactly that, of trying to get shots, photographs of cars before they've been formally released. And that's a problem for the manufacturers because you get to the point with your new car

when you're designing it that you want to take it out on public roads to test it, and you know you've got these photographers lying in wait for you. So one sort of tactic they've used to get around that is to apply vinyl wrappings to the cars, basically applying a finish to the cars that looks like a boldly patterned color, coloring. So again, this doesn't, just as with the ships, it doesn't make it look as if the car isn't there, but it sort of obscures its shape and features well enough that even if someone does manage to take a photograph that they won't be able to tell very much about what the final new car is going to look like. I have an account from the New York Times in 2010 where they say, other patterns attempt to visually break up the forms of the cars with bold charges

that suggest World War I dazzle ships, painted with large jagged shapes to avoid detection by German submarines. So it's just an interesting kind of echo of that in modern times that you can still use these bold shapes to try to diminish people's discernment of a moving vehicle. I wonder if the car manufacturers, like if somebody knew about the dazzle ships in World War I, and so they were purposefully mimicking it, or if they just came up with it again on their own. Either one of those would be an interesting, I don't know what the answer is. Another thing, just in reading up on this from what Ron sent me,

it looks like there's some evidence that one of the goals they hoped for with these vinyl wraps was that it would interfere with the infrared signals sent by the autofocus technology in some cameras. In other words, either because of the color or the pattern of the shapes on it, they felt that it would confuse some of the range-finding sensors in cameras. I don't know nearly enough about photography to know if that worked. But at least one of these so-called spy photographers says it doesn't work at all, if that's what they meant. She says, they haven't interfered with my camera's focusing abilities.

It seems the camouflage changes every year. I can't wait to see what they come up with this year. So apparently, if that was the goal, they're not reading it. So if nothing else, it's at least amusing, right? Yeah. And the cars are entertaining to look at. I'll put up some photos in the show notes. And thanks, Ron, for sending that. For years now in my notes, there's been an item that I've never chased down about an episode that happened in central Illinois in July

1917 there was a millionaire who lived there on a state of hundreds of acres in central Illinois southwest of Monticello and he had the millionaire's name was Robert Allerton and he had a butler named Thomas

Gullet who was out in the middle of July in 1970 picking flowers in the garden when he was attacked by a lion. And I read that and put it, it was interesting enough to put in my notes, but I thought, I guess my mind is open about this, but it sounds very much like the sort of thing that isn't true. But I was at UNC this week researching some other things, and something possessed me to look it up, and I found there are some news accounts about this, which are entertaining in themselves. This is from the Chicago Daily Tribune of July 16, 1917. 300 picked men out of 1,000 who volunteered beat forests and thickets on the Robert Allerton estate near here today

in vain search for a lioness, which has been seen several times in the last week. Within two hours after the hunters had passed the beast, oh sorry, within two hours after the hunters had passed, the beast was seen emerging from the thicket that the men believed they had beaten thoroughly. Since the lioness attacked Thomas Golop, a butler at the Allerton home, last week, the whole countryside has been in a state of terror. The excitement can be measured by the fact that one man before daylight this morning mistook the lamps of an automobile for the gleaming eyes of the lion and fired a high-powered rifle into the radiator of the machine. So you can find, what I've basically found here is little snapshots of it, but they don't agree with each other and they never do find the lion.

I'll tell you what I've got. There's another one. This sounds like a terrible idea. Basically, I don't think the butler was badly hurt, but he went inside and had what must have been a very interesting conversation with Allerton about what had just happened as he was picking flowers. And then the whole countryside was apparently in uproar for at least a week or two while they tried to figure out how to find a lion on this big estate, apparently 600 acres of which are covered with dense timber, so you couldn't just track it down. At least they didn't know how to do that in Platt County, Illinois. So they tried some other

things. This is from the Washington Post, July 24th. Robert Allerton, Platt County millionaire, is going to try a new way to capture the lioness roaming his estate and spreading terror through the neighborhood. Mr. Allerton is going to try to lure it out of the hiding place by means of a mate. This sounds like a terrible idea. The introduction of a male lion into the forest would be noticed at once by the lioness. The people in charge of the bait lion would have him tied and permit him to roam around until he meets the escaped lioness. Then the hunters will pull him, the bait lion, in slowly, and the idea is that the lioness will follow. I can't tell if they ever did that. I hope to God they didn't.

They thought the lioness was just really lonely. And there's two things that lead me to believe that the whole thing just, there never was a lion. One is that, this is odd, in the Chicago Daily Tribune, there's an account titled, Allerton's Lion and Dog Fight Until Both Die. Henry Eartherton, tenant on one of the Robert Allerton farms,

reports that while he was hoeing yesterday, he heard a dog barking and looked around just in time to see the much-talked-of lion passing him. A big collie dog was at the heels of the lion, which was headed for the timber on the banks of the Sangamon River. The dog and the lion engaged in a fierce struggle in which both were killed. The lion's body fell into the water and drifted down the stream. Eartherton hurried to the spot, which was covered with blood, and proceeded down the stream to a place where he could wade in and drag the lion to shore. He is now taking steps to claim the reward. The

problem with that is that this story is datelined July 20th, which is earlier than the whole business about finding a male lion to try to lure her out of the woods. And the fact that there's a reward involved makes that story, at least to my mind, seem really fishy, like he was just trying to

come up with some way to present a fake dead lion to get some reward. I'm also wondering if it would be possible for a collie to kill a lion. Right. Can a dog kill a lion at all, and can a dog and a lion kill each other simultaneously in this very convenient way? I don't know.

So the whole thing kind of blew over. The last thing that makes me think that maybe there was never a lion at all is in the story about getting the male lion, they have an interview with the entertainingly named Cy DeVry of the Lincoln Park Zoo, who was being asked to supply one. And one of the things he says is, I don't know about it yet. This lion scare seems to be growing lately. What if it ain't a lion but a goat that's gone wild and roaming the woods? What good would it do to bring a lion down there to lure a goat out?

Which is a very sensible observation. So the fact that he's even capable of thinking it's a goat means that I'm not sure anybody actually clearly ever saw a lion. Although that would mean that the butler who was picking flowers was mauled by a goat. Yeah, I've seen claims for it. I mean, this might be a goat. I've seen other claims that it was a large dog. But if you're picking flowers on a millionaire's estate, how confused do you have to get to

think it was a lion? I mean, if you get attacked by anything, is a lion going to be the first, you know, thing that you imagine? Although maybe you don't want to admit you were attacked by a goat, so a lion sounds much more heroic. That makes a lot of sense. So that's a mystery. We don't, I mean, if anyone ever found out, it was never published, at least not that

I could find. We don't know. Maybe there's still a lion wandering around Illinois right now. Anyway, this whole thing put me in mind of another episode from much earlier that is actually well-documented, and it's pretty dramatic. This is in southern England from 1816, October 20th. A male coach was making its way past Salisbury when it met with a strange adventure. This is from the Edinburgh Annual Register. At the moment when the coachman pulled up to deliver his bags, one of the leaders,

meaning one of the leading horses, was suddenly seized by a ferocious animal. This produced great confusion and alarm. Two passengers who were inside the mail got out, ran into the house, and locked themselves up in a room above stairs. The horses kicked and plunged violently, and it was with difficulty the coachman could prevent the carriage from being overturned. It was soon perceived by the coachman and guard, by the light of the lamps, that the animal which had seized the horse was a huge lioness. A large mastiff dog came up and attacked her fiercely, on which she quitted the horse and

turned upon him. The dog fled, but was pursued and killed by the lioness within about 40 yards of the place. That's another dead dog connected with a lion. Yes, but this one didn't manage to kill the lion. No, and this really happened because they caught the lion in this case. Oh, this one really happened. Yeah, I have a painting of it, actually, up on the site. I'll include a link to the notes.

She was hunted into a hovel under a granary where, quote, her howlings were heard to the distance of half a mile. I feel bad for this lion. Anyway, they captured her again and brought her back to a cage. She escaped from a menagerie. And then the annual registrar's account says the horse, when first attacked, fought with great spirit, and if at liberty

would probably have beaten down his antagonist with his forefeet, but in plunging he embarrassed himself in the harness. The ferocious animal missed the throat, the jugular vein, but the horse is so dreadfully torn he's not expected to survive. So I feel bad for both of them. I happen to know, though, and this is another obscurity from my notes,

that the horse did survive, and I know that because of a terrible, terrible poem that was published in 1844 about this whole event. I don't know much about the poet. This came out in, the poet's name is F. Childs, and it was published in a collection called The Spinster at Home in the Close at Salisbury. And I can't read the whole poem, but I'll put it up in the notes. Here's the important part. On Britain's fair isle, what a marvelous sight!

Men could hardly believe that their eyes saw aright, on perceiving a lioness, making approach with her uttermost speed right towards the male coach. One powerful spring and her terrible fangs, bringing all their acute, insupportable pangs. It sounds like Dr. Seuss. That's the problem. In the throat of the leader are instantly sheathed and though not without effort the animal breathed, he uttered a scream so discordant and shrill as sent back to each heart the life's blood with a thrill. So apparently what happened, if you read the rest of the poem, is they put this, the horse survived. It was mauled pretty badly.

Then in order to make money, they put the horse on display with the lion because people were willing to buy tickets, I guess. To see a mauled horse. Yeah. I feel bad for the horse. I feel bad for the lion. But that's at least one instance of a surprising lion attack that's actually pretty well documented. I'll put notes to the original post, and I'll post the whole poem in the show notes.

If anyone out there knows anything more about Robert Allerton or this mysterious Illinois lion, I'd love to hear about it, and I'll certainly let people know in a future episode if we get any more details. You can write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com, or post a comment in the show notes. And now for the weekly challenge. Each week we give you a creative challenge, and you can compete for a copy of our book. Last week's challenge we asked for so-called near misses. For example, Tarzan of the Larger Primates, The Sun Comes Up 2, One If By Land and Two If Not, and Mrs. Butterfly. We had a lot of fun reading the entries that we got this week. Here were some of our favorites.

From Daryl, we got To Mame a Mockingbird, Ivan the Temperamental, and W for Vendetta. Daniel sent in Romeo and Julie, Microsoft Portholes, and Face Pamphlet.

Jim gave us We Think These Truths Are Pretty Self-Evident, we think these truths are pretty self-evident. And Trey said, give me liberty or kill me. I love all of those, but I think I'm going to choose to maim a mockingbird. I think that's great. So well done, Daryl.

If you send us your mailing address, we'll send you a copy of the Futility Closet book. For this week's challenge, I want to do Tom Swifties. I don't think these have been popular since the Hoover administration, but I've always been a fan of them, and I think the good ones are really good. If you don't know what a Tom Swifty is, it's basically a pun based on attribution of dialogue.

For example, I can't drink any more pineapple juice, Tom said dolefully. I'll take the prisoner downstairs, Tom said condescendingly. And I'd drop the toothpaste, Tom said crestfallen. In looking into this, I found inevitably there was a canonical list of these things on the internet, and some of them get quite elaborate. I've brought back the lorry I borrowed, Tom said, truculently. Get it?

Truck, lorry, yes. And she wore a smoke-colored dress at dinner, Tom said, ingratiatingly. Ingratiate. So, send us your best ones of those, and we'll see if we can top those. In looking into this, it had never occurred to me to inquire why these things are called Tom Swifties, because I didn't know. And it turns out that this links back to the Stratomire Syndicate, which I'd written about

back in, I think, 2010. I'll link to the post. Basically, if you grew up in the 20th century, you grew up as a kid with a lot of very familiar characters in books. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, the Bobsy Twins, the Rover Boys. Those were all created by one guy, Edward Stratemeyer, which is amazing. So all these author names that you thought had written these books don't exist. There's no such person as Carolyn Keene or Franklin W. Dixon

or Laura Lee Hope or Victor Appleton. Those are all pen names of one man who, in a 47-year career, used 83 pen names and produced or plotted 900 stories for kids. It's amazing because he's one of the best-selling authors of all time. He sold 200 million books in all these series, but most people have never heard of him. He started out in the early 1900s and was so successful in writing books himself that he started what has to be called a syndicate. It's known now as the Stratemeyer Syndicate. That's

kind of an unlovely term for it, but that's what it was. He got to the point where he wouldn't write the books himself, but he'd write up a two or three page outline with the characters and the major incidents and then hand that off to some anonymous writer who would agree to write up the whole manuscript and turn that in for editing. The writers never got credit because they were published under pen names, and they agreed not to reveal the pseudonym or to use it anywhere else. So the whole thing was not shadowy,

but it was kept sort of deliberately quiet that these weren't written by the people who were purported to be writing them but it's an amazing story the other thing is that for someone who's so gigantically successful in publishing, very little is known about

Stratemeyer, I mean there's I'll put the reference I've used in the show notes there are some biographies of him, but even in those, it's just a few pages of what's known about his life. So it's kind of funny that someone so successful can be so obscure at the same time. Anyway, Tom Swifties are called Tom Swifties because one of these series was based on a boy

who had all these amazing technological adventures whose name was Tom Swift, and the anonymous writer who wrote those up apparently couldn't be satisfied with using the word said to attribute dialogue, and so he kept varying it elegantly all over the place with a lot of adverbs, and that became such a mannerism that people were sort of poking fun at it with these things by deliberately making outrageous puns using adverbs in dialogue attribution. So that's where it comes from. So come up with your own Tom Swifty and send it to us by Friday, April 11th.

We'll read our favorites on the show, and the winner will receive a copy of the Futility Closet book, where you can learn more about Ben Franklin's methods for multiplying good deeds, Robert Benchley's excuses for missing deadlines, and the meaning of Decemnovenarianize. Well, that's it for this episode. You can see our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com, where you can leave comments or feedback, ask questions, and see the links and images mentioned in today's episode. You can also

email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you enjoy Futility Closet, be sure to look for the book on Amazon.com, or check out the website at FutilityCloset.com, where you can browse over 7,000 time-killing posts. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, you can tell your friends about us, leave a review of the book or podcast on Amazon or iTunes, or click the donate button on the sidebar of the website. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Futility Closet is a member of the Boing Boing family of podcasts. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week.