Futility Closet - 016-A Very Popular Sack of Flour

Episode Date: June 30, 2014

In 1864 Nevada mining merchant Reuel Gridley found a unique way to raise money for wounded Union soldiers: He repeatedly auctioned the same 50-pound sack of flour, raising $250,000 from sympathetic donors across the country. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll discover the origins of Gridley's floury odyssey. We'll also hear H.L. Mencken's translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English and try to figure out where tourism increases the price of electricity. Sources for our story on Reuel Gridley and the flour auction: Ralph Lea and Christi Kennedy, "Reuel Gridley and a Sack of Flour," Lodi [Calif.] News-Sentinel, Sept. 30, 2005. Mark Twain, Roughing It, 1872. Here's his monument, in the Stockton Rural Cemetery in California: Image: Wikimedia Commons The empty flour sack is in the collection of the Nevada Historical Society. "The Declaration of Independence in American," by H.L. Mencken, from The American Language, 1921: When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody. All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else. That any government that don't give a man these rights ain't worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any goverment don't do this, then the people have got a right to can it and put in one that will take care of their interests. Of course, that don't mean having a revolution every day like them South American coons and yellow-bellies and Bolsheviki, or every time some job-holder does something he ain't got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons and Bolsheviki, and any man that wasn't a anarchist or one of them I. W. W.'s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain't hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won't carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it, and won't stand it no more. The administration of the present King, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it he always tried to get away with it by strong-arm work. Here is some of the rough stuff he has pulled: He vetoed bills in the Legislature that everybody was in favor of, and hardly nobody was against. He wouldn't allow no law to be passed without it was first put up to him, and then he stuck it in his pocket and let on he forgot about it, and didn't pay no attention to no kicks. When people went to work and gone to him and asked him to put through a law about this or that, he give them their choice: either they had to shut down the Legislature and let him pass it all by him-self, or they couldn't have it at all. He made the Legislature meet at one-horse thank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that hardly nobody could get there and most of the leaders would stay home and let him go to work and do things as he pleased. He give the Legislature the air, and sent the members home every time they stood up to him and give him a call-down. When a Legislature was busted up he wouldn't allow no new one to be elected, so that there wasn't nobody left to run things, but anybody could walk in and do whatever they pleased. He tried to scare people outen moving into these States, and made it so hard for a wop or one of them poor kikes to get his papers that he would rather stay home and not try it, and then, when he come in, he wouldn't let him have no land, and so he either went home again or never come. He monkeyed with the courts, and didn't hire enough judges to do the work, and so a person had to wait so long for his case to come up that he got sick of waiting, and went home, and so never got what was coming to him. He got the judges under his thumb by turning them out when they done anything he didn't like, or holding up their salaries, so that they had to cough up or not get no money. He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they wanted to or not. Without no war going on, he kept an army loafing around the country, no matter how much people kicked about it. He let the army run things to suit theirself and never paid no attention whatsoever to nobody which didn't wear no uniform. He let grafters run loose, from God knows where, and give them the say in everything, and let them put over such things as the following: Making poor people board and lodge a lot of soldiers they ain't got no use for, and don't want to see loafing around. When the soldiers kill a man, framing it up so that they would get off. Interfering with business. Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not. When a man was arrested and asked for a jury trial, not letting him have no jury trial. Chasing men out of the country, without being guilty of nothing, and trying them somewheres else for what they done here. In countries that border on us, he put in bum goverments, and then tried to spread them out, so that by and by they would take in this country too, or make our own goverment as bum as they was. He never paid no attention whatever to the Constitution, but he went to work and repealed laws that everybody was satisfied with and hardly nobody was against, and tried to fix the goverment so that he could do whatever he pleased. He busted up the Legislatures and let on he could do all the work better by himself. Now he washes his hands of us and even declares war on us, so we don't owe him nothing, and whatever authority he ever had he ain't got no more. He has burned down towns, shot down people like dogs, and raised hell against us out on the ocean. He hired whole regiments of Dutch, etc., to fight us, and told them they could have anything they wanted if they could take it away from us, and sicked these Dutch, etc., on us without paying no attention whatever to international law. He grabbed our own people when he found them in ships on the ocean, and shoved guns into their hands, and made them fight against us, no matter how much they didn't want to. He stirred up the Indians, and give them arms ammunition, and told them to go to it, and they have killed men, women and children, and don't care which. Every time he has went to work and pulled any of these things, we have went to work and put in a kick, but every time we have went to work and put in a kick he has went to work and did it again. When a man keeps on handing out such rough stuff all the time, all you can say is that he ain't got no class and ain't fitten to have no authority over people who have got any rights, and he ought to be kicked out. When we complained to the English we didn't get no more satisfaction. Almost every day we warned them that the politicians over there was doing things to us that they didn't have no right to do. We kept on reminding them who we were, and what we was doing here, and how we come to come here. We asked them to get us a square deal, and told them that if this thing kept on we'd have to do something about it and maybe they wouldn't like it. But the more we talked, the more they didn't pay no attention to us. Therefore, if they ain't for us they must be agin us, and we are ready to give them the fight of their lives, or to shake hands when it is over. Therefore be it resolved, That we, the representatives of the people of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, hereby declare as follows: That the United States, which was the United Colonies in former times, is now free and independent, and ought to be; that we have throwed out the English Kings and don't want to have nothing to do with him no more, and are not in England no more; and that,being as we are now free and independent, we can do anything that free and independent parties can do, especially declare war, make peace, sign treaties, go into business, etc. And we swear on the Bible on this proposition, one and all, and agree to stick to it no matter what happens, whether we win or we lose, and whether we get away with it or get the worst of it, no matter whether we lose all our property by it or even get hung for it. Sources for the gruesome story of the Smalls lighthouse: Douglas Bland Hague, Lighthouses of Wales: Their Architecture and Archaeology, 1994. Christopher Nicholson, Rock Lighthouses of Britain, 1983. Nicholson writes that Howell's "ordeal had affected him so greatly it was said that some of his friends did not recognize him on his return." Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

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 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to episode 16. I'm Greg Ross, the creator of Futility Closet, and with me is my wife and co-host Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll learn how a single sack of flour raised $250,000 to help wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, hear H.L. Mencken's translation of the Declaration of Independence into American vernacular, and try to figure out where tourism increases the price of electricity.

and try to figure out where tourism increases the price of electricity. Friday's Independence Day, and so I've got a couple more or less patriotic items, I suppose, this week. The first concerns Rule Gridley, who sort of stumbled backward into history through a chance suggestion he made in 1864. Gridley had been born in Missouri with Mark Twain. They were students together there. But in the early 1860s, they both found themselves in central Nevada, where silver had just been struck, just been discovered there. Twain was a journalist in Virginia City there, and Gridley went to a town, a little town called Austin, and became a merchant there, serving the silver miners.

a little town called Austin, and became a merchant there serving the silver miners. Anyway, what happened, the odd happenstance was that in the spring of 1864, as the Civil War was continuing in the eastern states, this little town of Austin had a municipal election for mayor. Will Gridley was a Democrat, and he had a friend who was a Republican, so Gridley proposed this good-natured wager between them. The deal was this, that if the Democrats won, his friend would have to march through the town to the tune of Dixie carrying a 50-pound sack of flour. And if the Republican won, Gridley would carry it in the other direction to the tune of John Brown's body. It was about, I think, a mile and a half, a mile and a quarter. So as it happened, the Democrat lost, but Gridley kept his end of the bargain. He decorated the sack with red, white, and blue ribbons and flags and marched the mile and a

quarter accompanied by his 13-year-old son who was carrying a flag and presented these formally to his friend, fulfilling the conditions of the deal. And afterward, they all retired to a saloon to quench their thirst. And as they were talking there, his friend now had 50 pounds of flour that he didn't particularly need and asked what he should do with them, and Gridley suggested auctioning it and sending the proceeds to the new U.S. Sanitary Commission, which had been established three years early and basically existed to provide aid to wounded Union soldiers. So they did that at his suggestion. The town was flush with wealth from the silver mine,

and everyone was wanting badly to support the Union cause. So as they all began to bid, the bidding went higher and higher, and eventually the winner bought a 50-pound sack of flour for $250, which is a lot of money today and was almost a fortune in 1864. Mark Twain actually writes about this. As I say, he was a journalist in a neighboring town, and he tells this whole story in his book, Roughing It. When the man was asked, the man who had bid 250 bucks and won this sack of flour was asked where he wanted it delivered. He said,

nowhere. Sell it again. And that's how this whole odd enterprise got started. They just kept bidding for this sack of flour, this arbitrary... Just reselling and reselling it. And then whoever won it would just immediately contribute it and they'd start another auction and raised $8,000 in one day selling the same sack of flour over and over. In the same town? In the same town. Other neighboring towns then got wind of this and wanted to participate.

So Gridley wound up carrying the sack to other silver mining towns in central Nevada, where they made even more money, and then just kept going. He carried it over the Sierra Nevada to Sacramento and Stockton and San Francisco in California, then went east, where he earned even more money, and then finally went to the Sanitary Commission had a fair in St. Louis, where they auctioned it some more, made even more money, and then finally opened the sack and cooked it into these little cakes and sold each of those for a dollar a piece. So they got absolutely as much money as they could out of this arbitrary sack of flour. When this was all over, Gridley had covered 15,000 miles and raised more than $250,000 for the commission. In his book, Mark Twain says, this is probably the only instance

on record where common family flour brought $3,000 a pound in the public market. And this is important historically because Gridley is today credited with keeping the Sanitary Commission afloat financially. It was just getting off the ground at the time. And it later became part of the International Red Cross. So this is important historically. He's been called one of the greatest unarmed heroes of the war. But afterward, he had sort of nothing to show for it. He'd raised all his money for the commission, but he returned to Nevada broke.

The silver broom there was over. His merchant business had suffered accordingly, and he'd spent all his own money carting this meaningless sack of flour around the country. And contracted a rheumatic condition to boot. So he was ill on top of it. In 1866, he moved to California to be with his sister, and he actually died there at the pretty young age of 41 in 1870, leaving behind a wife and four children. But it has sort of a happy ending. His grave at first was marked with a simple board because his family had no money at all. But in 1882, the Union soldiers who he'd raised a quarter of a million dollars for raised their own fund to give him a more dignified monument.

And that's there now in the Stockton Rural Cemetery in California. I'll put an image of it in the show notes. It's a very impressive monument. There's a tall pedestal, and on top of it is a man, and next to him is a sack of flour, which is a wonderful story, and not to take anything away from what Will Gridley did, but that sort of thing fascinates me

because if you look at history, it's these big stone monuments that outlast everything else. So someday when his whole story is forgotten, there's still going to be a giant monument with a man and a sack of flour next to it, and people have to try to understand what that meant. Try to puzzle out why it's there. Why we created such a giant monument

to someone with a sack of flour. I'd never heard of him before you mentioned him so maybe if people like you just keep his memory alive then... Yeah, and there's a chapter in Roughing It that's probably the most durable thing that tells the stories Mark Twain wrote him up and that gets you close to immortal, I think, these days. Anyway, I'll put an image in the show notes.

He's buried in the Stockton Rural Cemetery in Stockton, California, and they celebrate an annual remembrance for him every Memorial Day. Here's the other patriotic item. In 1921, the journalist, critic, and all-around curmudgeon H.L. Mencken published this big magisterial multi-volume work called The American Language, which looked at how people use the English language in America. And one of the points he made there is that he felt in 1921 that the Declaration of Independence was becoming sort of remote. People still revered it as a document, but he felt that they were becoming less and less sensitive to what it actually said because it had been composed in this sort of florid 18th century English as opposed to modern American English. So he found, for example, in talking to people that if you ventured the idea that people have the right to

alter or even abolish their government, some of them were horrified, even though that's explicitly what the document says. Because nobody knows what's actually in the Declaration of Independence anymore. Yeah, because it's not written in a language that's really alive for them. It's just sort of becoming remote in history. So he made this point by rewriting it, by recasting it in what was then common American vernacular in 1921. And I'd like to read a piece of that now. This is the Declaration of Independence in American, as translated, I guess you'd say, by H. L. Mencken.

When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country and go it on their own hook without asking no permission from nobody nobody excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it so that everybody can see that they're on the level and not trying to put nothing over on nobody. All we got to say in this proposition is this. First, you and me is as good as anybody else and maybe a damn sight better. Second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights. Third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else.

That any government that don't give a man these rights ain't worth a damn. Also, people ought to choose the kind of government they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any government don't do this, then the people have got a right to can it and put in one that will take care of their interests.

When things get so bad that a man ain't hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might call him almost a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out and put in new ones who won't carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these colonies is up against, and they've got tired of it and won't stand for it no more. The administration of the present king, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it, he always tried to get away with it by strong armwork. Therefore be it resolved that we, the representatives of the people of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, hereby declare as follows, that the United States, which was the United Colonies in former times, is now free and independent, and ought to be, that we've thrown

out the English king and don't want to have nothing to do with him no more, and are not in England no And we swear on the Bible, on this proposition, one and all, and agree to stick to it no matter what happens, whether we win or we lose, and whether we get away with it or get the worst of it, no matter whether we lose all our property by it or even get hung for it. We'll have Mencken's full declaration in our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com. If you enjoy the offbeat topics that we talk about in these podcasts, you'll want to check out our book, Futility Closet, an idler's miscellany of compendious amusements,

which contains hundreds of assorted curiosities, as well as wordplay, puzzles, paradoxes, and other bite-sized amusements and conundrums. Look for it on Amazon or iTunes, and discover why other readers have called it a great fun read that will never leave you bored and full of wonderful discoveries for the curious mind. So we received several entertaining emails this week regarding last week's story about Robert Louis Stevenson bequeathing his birthday to Annie Eyde. Yeah, last week's story about Robert Louis Stevenson bequeathing his birthday to Annie Eyde.

Yeah, Stevenson in 1891 had donated his birthday to the daughter of a friend of his with the condition that she add the name Louisa to her own name and that she actually honor, celebrate the birthday. And the deal was if she didn't honor those conditions that it would, the birthday would pass instead to the president of the United States. Okay, so Adam Remsen, an attorney from Memphis, wrote in with his legal opinion about who might currently own Stevenson's November 13th birthday. Good. Okay. Adam says,

The big question here is whether Annie ever legally accepted the gift. One of the requirements of the gift was that she add Louisa to her name, at least in private. There's no time frame or frequency specified in the document, so she could have used the name Louisa in private just once on her deathbed and still satisfied the requirements of the gift. Okay. Adam notes that the birthday would have still belonged to Stevenson or his estate until

Annie did legally accept it by fulfilling all of her requirements. So he figures if she didn't ever fulfill the requirements, then it would have become the birthday of the current president when she died. Because she wouldn't have completely failed until... Until her deathbed and she hadn't used Louisa yet, right. Okay. So Adam, just by some math, figures out that it might have been Eisenhower who was the president when Annie died. So if Annie didn't fulfill the conditions, then it would fall to him.

Yeah, then Eisenhower would get the birthday. Okay. So Adam goes on to say, if we assume, though, that Annie did use the name Louisa, that use of the name would constitute acceptance of the gift and November 13th would immediately have become hers. She passed it to her niece and then, assuming her niece didn't similarly dispose of it, it would have passed into the niece's estate. So I guess by Adam's reasoning, we can figure that the birthday is either currently owned by Anita Leslie's family or Dwight Eisenhower's family.

But the Leslie family, I mean, her descendants, if they were really conscientious about this, could hold on to Stevens's birthday as long as they kept up the condition. Right. So we actually, it doesn't really still solve the mystery of where the birthday is, but it kind of narrows it down. Okay. Okay. Then we also got in a very thorough email from Daniel. I'm not a lawyer, but I sound like one in emails, Sturman. Okay. He sent in a very comprehensive assessment of the situation. Daniel says, I think your conclusion as to the continued ownership of the birthday by

the President of the United States is erroneous. Okay. After all, Robert Louis Stevenson didn't indicate that it should be held by the President of the United States, but rather that he would transfer my rights to the birthday to the President. The former usage might have implied that the rights would devolve from President to President as the office changed hands, since both the birthday and the office are being held by the same person. But the latter uniquely identifies an individual to whom the rights now belong, and that individual does not change even if he loses his job. That makes sense. I've been guessing that if Anita didn't keep up the conditions,

it would just fall to the presidency in general and just roll from president to president. Right, and I guess that's what Daniel is saying. It matters on the exact wording, and so he thinks you've misread the wording. Okay. Daniel goes on to say, this means that whoever happens or happened to be president at the moment the birthday holders cease to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity would become the sole owner of the birthday in perpetuity. We have no real way of knowing who that may have been or

if Anita or her descendants ever actually broke faith with the birthday at all. The optimist would say that the birthday remains honored and cherished in Anita Leslie's family and will remain so forever. The pessimist, assuming otherwise, would still have no way to figure out which president Okay. So I took a look at FDR's will, and it, to my great shock and surprise, makes no mention of Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday. Stevenson's birthday. So Daniel actually sent in part of FDR's will in his email and says that his reading of the will leads him to conclude that the birthday would have been given to one of FDR's children, assuming that it had come to FDR in the first place. And Daniel goes on to say, there is a middle ground between the optimistic view that Anita Leslie's descendants still own the birthday and the pessimistic view that FDR received the rights to it literally within 10 years of Anita's promise to care for it.

Anita died in 1985, and if her descendants failed to keep faith with the birthday, it is likely it went to the president at the time, Ronald Reagan. Okay, that tells us when she died, so yeah. I couldn't find his will online, though, so the mystery remains. Okay. So we don't know what Reagan would have done with it or not if it did go to Reagan. No, but this is helpful because I couldn't, when we were doing the original piece, I wasn't sure how it would work. I see. But that's interesting. I didn't know when she died either. Yeah,

Daniel did an impressive amount of research on his email. Yeah, thank you. That's great. So then for another opinion on the subject, Ian Richens wrote in to say, if, as you say, Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday has now fallen through disuse to the sitting president of the U.S., there is at least precedent for him to have two birthdays as the head of state. The current Queen of England has two birthdays, one biological and one official, for state parades and such. So it seems that President Obama can celebrate his original birthday in private while in office and happily hand over his second official birthday in January 2017. That's a good idea.

I had no idea she had two birthdays. So apparently you can have two birthdays. Yeah, it's like wearing a second coat and then you just take it off when you leave office. Well, some other readers apparently thought along the same idea as Ian because a few listeners wrote in to note that perhaps we have figured out why presidents seem to age so fast while they're in office. Yeah. And that's because they have two birthdays. So they age twice as fast. That makes sense. Obama's getting pretty gray. It's because he's aging twice as fast and then he'll slow down again when he leaves office. So thanks so much to everybody who took the time to ponder the

question of the birthday and write in about it. If you have any questions or comments, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. I have a gruesome addendum to last week's story about the Flannan Isles Lighthouse. Last week we talked about how in 1900, three men had disappeared without any explanation from a lighthouse in the Flannan Isles off the coast of Scotland. And listener Dan Cash wrote in to point out that the fact that there were three of them is not a coincidence. By convention, there were three men assigned to man each lighthouse because of a horrible thing that happened exactly a century earlier in the winter of 1800. Not in Scotland, but in Wales. This is, apparently, this happened in the Smalls Lighthouse, which is 20 miles off the coast of Wales. That lighthouse is still there. It's now a proper tower. It's what you think of when you think of a lighthouse. But in 1800, it was basically

a hut on stilts on a reef 20 miles off the coast of Wales. And in the bitter, stormy winter of 1800, there were two men in that hut who hated each other. Their names were Thomas Griffith and Thomas Howells. And they had this miserable existence where they had to spend all their time together in this tiny lighthouse. Hating each other. Arguing, yeah. So they had just, the story at least goes that in 1800, in the winter, they had just started their turn of duty there when one of them, Griffith,

got sick and died unexpectedly. They had just arrived there. And Howells faced this horrible predicament. Normally what you do in that situation is bury the body at sea, which is basically committed to the waves. He didn't feel he could do that because he didn't want to be accused of murder. The two were known to hate each other, and so he thought it would be wiser to preserve the body so he could show that it had died of natural causes. So the question is, what do you do if you have to keep a dead body somewhere in 1800 in a hut on stilts in the middle of the ocean.

There's no land anywhere for 20 miles. So what do you do? He kept it indoors, according to the story, as long as he could bear it, but it started to decompose, so he made a coffin for it out of a cupboard and put it on the gallery. There's the hut, and then on top of that is the lamp, and there's a little gallery with a railing around that, and he kept it up there. But according to the story, he was there. Their normal tour de duty would have been a month.

And apparently this is so stormy that it extended to something like four months. Oh, wow. He has to live with a dead guy for four months. He has to live with a rapidly decomposing dead guy for four months. And run, operate the light during all the time, single-handed. All by himself, yeah. He managed to put up the distress flag to try to summon help and recorded all these events in the log appropriately

and managed to keep the light going all this time by himself. But according to the story, what would happen is that relief ships would come out and see the distress flag, but they could also see that the light was operating and there seemed to be a man there who was waving them off because the breakers and the storms had broken up in the coffin and the body was now lying on the gallery with one arm leaning down through the railings

and waving in the wind. So they'd go off again. And this went on for some time until finally there's a respite in the storms and they could come and rescue poor Thomas Howells who was now almost completely beside himself. So that's the story of ever since then, they've assigned three men to each lighthouse instead of two. So no one has to go through that again. This sounds like folklore, but I've

consulted two different lighthouse references and they both presented as fact. And it's hard to know, I guess at this point, it's impossible to know how much of that really happened. it's hard to know. I guess at this point it's impossible to know how much of that really happened. It does give the story in both sources that I've consulted are specific as to the names of the people involved and the place and the time. So maybe the whole thing's made up. Maybe there's some grain of truth there that got elaborated. I sort of hope it's not true because it's a horrible story. If anyone knows more about that, I'd love to hear from you. And I just wanted to share that because it's such a striking reason for why there were three men who disappeared on the Flannan Isles. Thanks to Dan Cash for writing in about that.

Okay, so it's Greg's turn this week to try to solve a puzzle by asking yes or no questions. Okay. Okay? All right. So, same rules as we've been doing. Yes or no questions. You'll get your first hint after three minutes if you've not been able to make any sufficient progress on your own. Okay.

Okay? Ready? Ready? So, this puzzle comes from Paul Sloan and Des McHale's 1998 book, Ingenious Lateral Thinking Puzzles. In a certain place, the local authorities, in order to increase tourism, have made the price of electricity higher. Why? In a certain place. Okay.

Is this associated with a landmark? Like, you know, Mount Rushmore, the Eiffel Tower, something like that? Something that would ordinarily have attracted some amount of tourism that's sort of being enhanced by adding electricity or some effect? No, to the way you've asked the question. That's interesting. All right. If there were no such thing as electricity,

would people still be attracted to this place? And attracted for the same reason they are with electricity yes in other words these authorities are trying to jazz up the joint by adding electricity no all right a certain location you say yes so i should be able to sort of zero in on that. Is it in North America? Yes. Is it in the United States? Yes. Have I been there? I don't think so. Is it east of the Mississippi? Yes. Can't help it, it is. Is it south of the Mason-Dixon line? No. All right. Is it in New England? No. No.

All right. Is it in New England? No. Where am I? Is it in the mid-Atlantic states? No. Is it in the Midwest? No. All right. But it's in the U.S., in the eastern U.S.? Yes. And is it what I would call a landmark, a tourist attraction?

Yes. Is it what I would call a landmark, a tourist attraction? Yes. And the authorities, you say... The authorities, I say. I think the way you worded that is that they increased... They've made the price of electricity higher. All right. That's the way the puzzle words it. What I'm trying to tease out is, did they do something to increase tourism, to increase the attractiveness of this place, that also had the side effect of increasing the price of electricity?

I'll say yes to that. Okay. It's not that they deliberately raised the price of electricity. Okay. All right. So they electrified something to make it more attractive. No. All right. It's electrified something to make it more attractive. No. All right.

It's not in the Midwest. It's not in New England. It's not in the mid-Atlantic states, but it's north of Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi in the United States. Yes. What am I missing? Ohio? No. Is it to a state that I've been in?

Yes. I don't know what part of the country I'm missing. I'm running out of time. Not Washington, D.C.? Correct. Correct that it's not Washington, D.C.? Correct that it's not. It is not Washington, D.C.? Correct. Correct that it's not Washington, D.C.? Correct that it's not. It is not Washington, D.C. All right.

Is it north of New Jersey? I think so. My geography is a little fuzzy here. Pennsylvania? No. I can't just guess states. Give me a hint. Okay.

Well, the first hint was supposed to be the place is a famous natural tourist attraction. I don't know if that's going to help you a lot. Authorities add electricity. Read that again. No. The authorities, in order to increase tourism, have made the price of electricity higher. New York State? Yes. New York city? No. Some tourist attraction, natural tourist attraction in the state of New York? Yes. Increased the price of electricity? Yes. Is this place associated with American history?

Not really, no. Is it a natural landmark? Okay, so it was naturally occurring and people are just attracted to it. I think it's probably obvious by now. How about another hint? Yeah. The demands of the tourism industry prevent creating more electricity, thus keeping the price higher. Read that again.

The demands of the tourism industry prevent creating more electricity, thus keeping the price higher. Read that again. The demands of the tourism industry prevent creating more electricity, thus keeping the price higher. Meaning they can't supply enough electricity? Not exactly. To satisfy the local demand on top of what? No, it's that the tourism industry, because of its demands, is preventing them from creating more electricity, which raises the price of electricity.

That's what that part of the puzzle means. Okay. Okay. So it's a naturally occurring landmark. Yes. In New York State. Yes. But you York State. Yes. But you say they haven't electrified it.

They haven't added electricity. Correct. That is correct. I'm not getting it. It's Niagara Falls, where the water can be diverted from the falls in order to provide power generators. Only there's a treaty actually between the u.s and canada which prevents how much which delineates exactly how much water is allowed to be diverted off to power generators but most of it has to still go over the falls so it looks

oh i always know we're close it looks great for tourists so they've got like this really specific treaty for how much water is allowed to be diverted off and can't be diverted off depending on the tourism season and the time of day and everything. So read the puzzle statement again. That's what I wasn't getting. So the puzzle statement is, in a certain place, the local authorities, in order to increase tourism, have made the price of electricity higher. I see.

That's good. Okay. And that's why your second hint was that it's, they're preventing them from creating more electricity. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I couldn't understand what that meant. All right. Okay. All right. Well, we've been hearing from some listeners that they're enjoying

this new segment and some people have asked about sending in puzzles of their own for us to use. We think it actually would be a lot of fun to get in puzzles from the listeners.

So feel free to send them in. But when you do it, do it in a way that we don't immediately see the answer to the puzzle. Yeah, hide it somewhere. Yeah, because that way the person who opens the email, the answer would be spoiled for them. So that would limit who could give the puzzle to whom, basically. All right, so check us out next week and see how I do with whatever puzzle Greg picks out for me. Well, that's another episode for us. You can see our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com,

where you can post comments or questions, listen to past shows, 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 sample over 8,000 absorbing tidbits, perfect for filling five minutes or 50. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, you can recommend us to your friends or leave a review of the book or podcast on Amazon or iTunes.

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