Futility Closet - 019-Testing the Post Office

Episode Date: July 21, 2014

In 1898, 19-year-old W. Reginald Bray made a thorough study of British postal regulations, which laid out rules for mailing everything from bees to elephants and promised that "all letters must be del...ivered as addressed." He resolved to give the service "a severe test without infringing its regulations." In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the antics that followed, in which Bray sent turnips, bicycle pumps, shoes, and even himself through the British post. We'll also sympathize with Lucius Chittenden, a U.S. Treasury official who had to sign 12,500 bonds in one harried weekend in 1862, and puzzle over the worrying train journey of a Wall Street banker. Our segment on W.R. Bray, the Edwardian postal experimentalist, is based chiefly on John Tingey's 2010 book The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects. Tingey maintains a website with an extensive catalog of the curios that Bray sent through the post. Also David Leafe, "The Man Who Posted Himself," Daily Mail, March 19, 2012. In an article in the Royal Magazine in 1904, Bray noted the usefulness of the Post Office's offer to conduct a person "to any address on payment of the mileage charge": What mothers know that, if they like, they can send their little ones to school as letters? Possibly, as soon as the 'mother-readers' see this, the Post Offices will be crowded with toddling infants, both in and out of 'prams,' all waiting to be taken to schools, or out for a day in the country. 'But I should not like my child to be carried with postage stamps, and arrive at the school black with postmarks!' That is what I expect some mothers will say. Oh, don't be alarmed, nothing like this will happen! All that you need to do is to take the child to the Post Office across the road, pay a small fee, and a messenger boy will escort the little one to the very door of the school. However Post Office officials do not appear anxious to gain fame as nurse providers to infants. Miscellaneous postal mischief on Futility Closet: Torturing the Post Office Post Haste Riddling Letters Sources for our segment on L.E. Chittenden, the iron-wristed Register of the Treasury under Lincoln: Lucius Eugene Chittenden, Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration, 1891. Joseph F. Tuttle, "Abraham Lincoln, 'The Perfect Ruler of Men,'" Historical Register of the Colorado Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, Nov. 1, 1906. William Juengst, "In Ruffles and Starch Cuffs: The American Jews' Part in Our International Relations," The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, Sept. 30, 1921. Arthur Laurents wrote a piece for the New York Herald Tribune in 1957 that discusses the development of West Side Story. You can listen using the player above, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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 19. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.
Starting point is 00:00:50 In today's show, we'll follow W. Reginald Bray's playful attempts to test the limits of the British postal system in the early 1900s, learn why Lucius Chittenden signed his name 12,000 times one miserable weekend in 1862, and puzzle over the worrying train journey of a Wall Street banker. But first, we have a quick note for our regular listeners of the podcast. We generally put out our show on Monday mornings, and we know that many of you listen to the podcast through Boing Boing, but sometimes there's a delay before it's posted there. So if you want to get each episode as soon as it's available, you can always go to our main site at futilitycloset.com. You can also subscribe to the show through iTunes and other services. dot com. You can also subscribe to the show through iTunes and other services.
Starting point is 00:01:31 I've written intermittently on Futility Closet over the years about what I guess you'd have to call postal mischief, people playing games with the postal service. For instance, I read years ago that someone once dropped a letter into a mailbox in Los Angeles that had nothing on it but a stamp and the Playboy logo, the little bunny head. And it was delivered successfully to their Playboy's headquarters in New York City. There was sort of a, not a fad, but an enthusiasm for this sort of thing back at the turn of the 20th century in England. The Strand Magazine used to run these wonderful features about the crazy things that people dropped into post boxes in London and that the post authorities had to make sense of. I bet the people that worked for the post office just loved that. Yeah, but they dealt with it admirably. Some of them were just illiterate.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Some of them were desperate. Someone in place of a stamp wrote on an envelope, please excuse not putting stamp as I am so poor. But some were deliberately puzzling. People would put, instead of a normal conventional address, they'd put a rebus or they'd write out the address phonetically or something. Just, I guess, to mess with the post office. The undisputed king of this is a man named W. Reginald Bray,
Starting point is 00:02:36 who was, in all other respects, just an unassuming regular Brit, and he was an accountant. But in 1898, when he was 19 years old, he bought a copy of the Post Office Guide, which is this big quarterly publication that laid out all the regulations that the post office used and began to study it. And he found that among other things, it promised that, quote, all letters must be delivered as addressed. So he decided to give what he called a severe test to the post office without infringing his regulations. to give what he called a severe test to the post office without infringing his regulations.
Starting point is 00:03:07 He kept track of all this in a register. But this is basically sort of the flavor of what he was doing in a 1935 radio interview. The interviewer asked, what was your first experiment? He said, I commenced by sending freak letters. For instance, I actually wrote addresses and messages on such articles as bowler hats, pipes, cycle pumps, frying pans, handbags, dog biscuits, boots, collars, cuffs, braces, cigarettes, and even on turnips and a rabbit's skull, and posted them as ordinary letters without a covering or tie-on label. For the most part, he just dropped them into the post box. In other cases, he had to bring them into the post office, but, you know, he'd do this with almost anything he could think of. but, you know, he'd do this with almost anything he could think of.
Starting point is 00:03:44 He said, It is not easy writing on a turnip, so I carved the address with a penknife, and it was delivered intact, as were all my freak letters, even a lady's handbag, which was closed and posted with the address and stamps inside. I don't have the post office's side of this story, but it's heroic, I think is the word. And I think it's important to note that he wasn't doing this maliciously. He wasn't doing it just to cause trouble. In fact, he wrote in an article in the Royal Magazine in 1904,
Starting point is 00:04:13 This course I did not enter upon without much consideration and hesitancy, for it would be most unfair, to say the least of it, to cause a lot of unnecessary trouble merely for the sake of playing a senseless prank. If you follow his adventures, it seems to me he has more of sort of a scientist's mindset like he wanted to see what would be possible yeah exactly get away with the whole era of postal mail was sort of passing away but it's kind of magic you you just write the an address on some item and put it through this portal and it just gets spirited over to the recipient by some agency that you never see and portal and it just gets spirited over to the recipient by some agency that you never see. And he was just fascinated with that. He wanted to test
Starting point is 00:04:49 its limits and see, you know, how big or small or light or heavy, you know, what could it do? What are the limits of the ability? I just keep feeling sorry for the poor people that worked for the postal service. I don't blame you. These are, Bray's exploits are laid out in a book called, by John Tingey, called The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects. And I'm just here going to go through a list of all the things he did. I think he, if nothing else, he deserves a lot of credit for just the imagination of all the many things he came up with. In January 1899, he sewed together two pieces of a starched shirt collar, made that into
Starting point is 00:05:23 two postcards, and sent them to two friends. That's just the start of it. In October of that year, he persuaded his mother to crochet an envelope, meaning make an envelope out of... Like yarn? Yes, the whole envelope was composed of yarn. Okay. With the address Bray, Forest Hill, which is where they lived.
Starting point is 00:05:39 She sewed a small piece of card to it and put two half-penny stamps on it. That one was delivered. I don't know how the British postal system works. Presumably there was one poor beleaguered man who would open the post box every day and find turnips and find turnips in a crocheted envelope frying pan all coming from the same return address rabbit skull and we don't know who that is. But I guess it I guess the problem was is that the British Postal Service didn't define what a letter was. I guess that's how he's getting away with all this. Yeah. There must not be a clear definition of letter. Well, I had an economics professor in college who made the point once that no one just sits in a room and dreams up a regulation for the
Starting point is 00:06:14 most part. No one just dreams up a statute that says you can't spit on the sidewalk. What happens is somebody does spit on the sidewalk and they think, oh, we better have a rule about that. So, for instance, Bray came up, he figured out from reading these, studying these... The regulations. Regulations that the smallest animal you could send is a bee. You could send one live bee through the British Postal Service if it was packaged so it wouldn't be dangerous. And the largest is an elephant. And I can't prove this, but I think that must mean somebody must have walked into a post office at some point and said,
Starting point is 00:06:41 I want to post an elephant. And they thought, oh, we better have a rule about that. I don't know about that. Here's just more of what he did. He also varied the ink. He tried addressing one card entirely with red sealing wax, which just fell off in the post. And so that was returned to him. He tried ambitious addresses. In July 1898, he addressed a letter, quote, to the post offices around the world, London to Auckland via New York, Stockholm, Bern, Calcutta, Singapore, Sydney, and Rome. And then asking that if you returned to him at the end of that. That didn't get very far. It was returned the following day as undeliverable. And you can't blame him for that. I guess it
Starting point is 00:07:18 has to have one specific address, not multiple destinations. And he was always careful. He logged all these things in a register. So he would know what worked and didn't destinations. And he was always careful. He logged all these things in a register. So he would know what worked and didn't work. And he was always careful to include a return address so that even if the whole thing went haywire, he would get it back and understand how far it had gotten or what had happened. In July 1898, he addressed it to a
Starting point is 00:07:38 resident at Fingal's Cave, which is this famous cave in Scotland, which turned out to be impossible to deliver because no one lives in the cave. So there is no resident. So the post office said that was uninhabited and so impossible to deliver. He addressed one letter to, quote, any resident of London, which is enterprising, but that was returned as insufficiently addressed. A lot of these you can't play in the post office at all.
Starting point is 00:08:00 1899, a postcard was sent to Santa Claus Esquire, which was returned marked insufficiently addressed. But some of them got through, even some of the more creative ones. He sent one round robin card addressed to the keepers of three different lighthouses and instructing each of them to forward it on to the next one. And that worked. That got all the way through to the Eddystone, Scary Vore, and Bell Rock lighthouses and got successfully all the way back to him and Kim, which is impressive. So he got more creative at this point using postcards, picture postcards.
Starting point is 00:08:29 So he'd get a postcard that showed a particular landmark and just write on the address to a resident nearest, implying that they would have to find out who lived closest to that landmark and just deliver it to them or to the occupier. He addressed one to a railway station, just wrote driver of locomotive number 384 Glasgow and Southwestern railway Glasgow. Did these go through ones with like just photos of some did? Yes.
Starting point is 00:08:55 Some didn't. It depends sort of on the circumstances. So it's, it's hard to say he'd cut out a photograph of a town or a village, stick it to the front of a postcard, and add the words to a resident. And then write, this is a good example, Dear Sir or Madam, will you kindly redirect this postcard to the above address as I want to test the skill of the postal authorities with regard to cards pictorially addressed. Thank you in anticipation.
Starting point is 00:09:18 I think most of those went through. But he's getting more and more venturesome. In 1899, he used scissors and glue to make an address to compose an address from the postmarks of other letters. Oh, okay. So he'd take letters that had already arrived and cut out the postmarks and fashion those into an address. One of those was delivered successfully. He addressed one postcard
Starting point is 00:09:38 backwards, like Da Vinci used to do, just writing everything in mirror writing. That was delivered successfully. You have to admire the post office. You'd think someone would just knock on his door and eventually say, cut it out. And they never did that. But my favorite exploit is concerning what are called living letters. This is an actual postal regulation from the time.
Starting point is 00:09:56 Living animals can be accepted for express delivery under this service if confined in a suitable receptacle subject to the ordinary mileage fee. This is like the B I was talking about. A dog furnished with a proper collar and chain may also be at the discretion of the postmaster taken to its address on payment of the mileage chart. So on February 10th, 1900, he posted his dog, Bob, from the Forest Hill Post Office in Kent. And there's a record of this that Docket reads, herewith, please receive an Irish terrier as a letter for express delivery.
Starting point is 00:10:23 And sure enough, it worked. Bob was dispatched at 6.54 p.m. on February 10th and signed for at the family home six minutes later, because their home was like 100 yards from the post office. So Bob didn't have far to go, but officially he went through the mail. And as you're probably guessing, Bray eventually posted himself. The regulation for that said, a person may be conducted by express messenger to any address on payment of mileage charge so on february 8th 1900 he shipped himself actually two times once in 1900 and once in 1903 he claimed to be the first person to become a human letter to a human being through the post and there's a record of that actually the second one in 1903
Starting point is 00:11:03 because he sent himself by registered mail there's an record of that, actually, the second one in 1903, because he sent himself by registered mail. There's an official form that says, delivery of an inland registered person cyclist. He wasn't in any kind of crate or anything. He just wheeled his bicycle into a post office and said, I'd like to be delivered to his home address, as it turned out. I have an excerpt from a radio interview he did much later about this. In 1935, the interviewer said, good gracious, could you do that now? And Bray said, yes, certainly, by the express delivery service. A messenger is sent with a human letter, and frankly, it's a very useful service.
Starting point is 00:11:33 Once on a very foggy night, I could not find a friend's house, so instead of wandering about for hours, I posted myself and was delivered in a few minutes, which is a perfectly resourceful thing to do. If you don't know where you're going, the post office is intimately familiar with all the addresses in the neighborhood, so you can just ask them to deliver you to an address. Do you happen to know, like, I mean, I'm assuming they didn't carry him. They just, like, walked him to the house? There was a messenger boy. He had to ride his bike, and the messenger boy just walked, I'm sure, rolling his eyes down the street and pointed to his house. I think he was just interested in just the feat, just the accomplishment of saying he'd gone through the mail, which he did.
Starting point is 00:12:09 Everybody needs a hobby. This ascended finally to an art form, I would have to say. He started putting exotic postcards into bottles and throwing them into the sea. And the postcard would ask, you know, whoever found this, please return it. And one, I think this is the farthest he got, one was tossed into the sea between Folkestone and Dunkirk, which is an English channel, and arrived in Denmark and was returned to him.
Starting point is 00:12:33 Another one even better is that he would persuade hot air balloonists to go up in a hot air balloon and then release smaller balloons with postcards attached to them, gas-filled balloons that would go up. In September 1907, one of those got as far as Sweden and was returned. And he did, I guess, what you'd call sort of postal sleight of hand. He would tell a friend of his that he was planning a trip to Japan, and the friend wouldn't believe him, but then would receive a letter from him sent from Japan to England, even though Bray had never been there
Starting point is 00:13:07 and didn't know anyone in Japan. And the way he accomplished that was he would write the letter and address it to be sent from Japan one way to London and put the required postage on it, and then hide that in the folds of a big bulky newspaper, which he would then address to a non-existent address in Japan. So what would happen is the newspaper would make its way all the way to Japan. They tried to deliver it and find out it was undeliverable because the address had just been made up. They'd put it in the dead letter office there. The letter would fall out. They'd see that it had an address and the proper postage, and they'd put it in the mail to go back, and his friend would receive it then, which is clever. So Bray, as far as I can tell,
Starting point is 00:13:46 every other aspect of his life was perfectly ordinary and conventional. But I really like the story because it's so much imagination and resource went into this hobby of his. I wish I could get the post office's end of it, and I haven't been able to do that. They must have been some interesting conversations on there. Yeah, and I wonder, like, I'm assuming you can't still mail yourself in England?
Starting point is 00:14:12 No, you can't. You can't. You can't. I mean, I don't know what the limits are anymore, but there is in the book, there's a note that you can't. You can't. I'm not sure you can send live animals either, but they do say explicitly that you can't mail yourself. We covered that in an earlier episode that in the U.S. it's not legal to mail humans because someone did. Right, a family mailed their little girl and after that they changed the regulations so that you can't. So I guess you're out of luck in that case. He wandered off toward the end of his life, Bray did, toward autograph collecting rather than these postal adventures and amassed a huge number of autographs. By the time he died in 1939, he'd sent more than 32,000 of these postal curios and autograph requests, which is a huge number for someone who wasn't doing this full time. Anyway, if you want to know more about this, the book
Starting point is 00:14:57 that I'm finding almost all of it in is by John Tingey, and it's called The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects. It came out in 2010. We'll have a link to a website cataloging Bray's postal exploits and a collection of Futility Closet posts about other mail-related antics in our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com. If you've been enjoying the esoteric trivia that we talk about in these podcasts, you should be sure to check out our book, Futility Closet, An Idler's Miscellany of Compendious Amusements, which contains hundreds of intriguing distractions,
Starting point is 00:15:41 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 wonderful collection of fascinating nonsense and the most useless book you absolutely need to own. In 1862, during the American Civil War, the North got word at one point that a British shipbuilding company was making two armored warships for the South, which was an emergency. They got word of this at short notice, I mean, shortly before the ships would be ready to sail. ships would be ready to sail. And it would have been a real crisis if they were delivered, because not only could they play havoc with shipping up and down the coast, but they might have been able to break some blockades. The North was blockading Southern ports. And if those blockades could be broken, then the South could be in trading with other
Starting point is 00:16:38 powers, which would have helped their economy. It was kind of a big deal. So after a lot of negotiations, it's a bit complicated. But what it came down to is that the British government agreed that if the Americans could provide $10 million in bonds as a sort of security, then they would be willing to stop the ships from being delivered. So that's the good news. The bad news is that according to the rules at the time, these bonds, $10 million in bonds, had to be signed, each of them, by one man, the Register of the Treasury, a man named Lucius Chittenden.
Starting point is 00:17:08 So what all this comes down to is that one man, in order to stop these ships, had to sign his name 12,500 times in one weekend. He started on a Friday at noon and went through to Sunday at noon. Oh, my. Because of the denominations they had at the time. That's just what it came down to. He says if they'd had more time, this was all done in a desperate hurry, which is what made it necessary in the first place. If they'd had more time, they could have, you know,
Starting point is 00:17:36 worked it out, a different solution with the Britons, or deputed, you know, arranged the regulations so he could have just authorized some people to sign in his behalf aboard the ship as it sailed across to England. It would have been much less onerous, but there was no time to do any of this. And they had to make sure that it worked, that it wasn't going to be questioned or, you know. Right, exactly. So the only way, there's nothing for it. The only way to go about it was just to go ahead and sit down and sign his name 12,000 times over one weekend in 1862. So this is all recounted in Chittenden's sort of memoir of those years called Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration in 1891.
Starting point is 00:18:19 He says, there is no muscular exertion more severe, certainly none so inexpressibly dreary, as that of writing one's own name hour after hour, day after day, over and over again. They arranged this as intelligently as they could. He would sit at his desk holding his pen and an assistant would approach with a sheaf of ten of
Starting point is 00:18:38 these bonds, slide them under the pen and all Chittenden had to do was just write his name. And he wasn't writing each letter, he'd just sort of make this big swoopy signature. And then as soon as he'd finished it, the assistant would pull off the top sheet, exposing another one, and he would just do that ten times in a row. He said if he did that, they'd experimented a bit. He figured he could do it pretty consistently at the rate of ten signatures in a minute.
Starting point is 00:18:59 Wow. Which is not bad, but it's still thousands and thousands of these over and over again. I'm imagining this is what the pens you would have to dip into ink, too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Today, as I understand it, they have actual robots that'll do this that are legally authorized to sign for us at the President's signature.
Starting point is 00:19:15 I'm sure he could have used one of those. So they brought in an Army surgeon and explained this all to him and got all his preparations set up as well as they could, but it still came down to him sitting down and dipping his pen in the inkwell and just starting. Yeah. Which, as I say, he began at noon on a Friday. And this is from his book. The first seven hours passed without any unusual sensations.
Starting point is 00:19:35 In these first seven hours, 3,700 signatures were made. He's very matter-of-fact about this. But within the first half of the eighth hour, there were evidences of great muscular discontent, which soon threatened to break out into open rebellion. As the time slowly wore on, in the forenoon of Saturday, every muscle on the right side connected with the movement of the hand and arm became inflamed, and the pain was almost beyond endurance. It was necessary to continue the work, for if it should be suspended for any considerable length of time, the inflammation might become so great that control over the motion of the arm and its further use would become impossible.
Starting point is 00:20:08 In the slight pauses which were made, rubbing, the application of hot water, and other remedies were resorted to in order to alleviate the pain and reduce the inflammation. They were comparatively ineffectual and the hours dragged on without bringing much relief. So that's into Saturday morning. He's been going, oh, by the way, he's not sleeping during any of this. He's just signing his name and doing nothing else. Oh, my gosh. So it's been about, what is that, 24 hours going on that now?
Starting point is 00:20:30 And just keeps going. During the course, this is reading again. During the course of Saturday afternoon, the acuteness of the pain sensibly diminished. The muscles, finding that resistance was unavailing, had to give up the contest. A series of sensations followed, which, though less difficult to endure, were still more alarming. A feeling of numbness commenced in the hand and slowly crept up the arm to the shoulder producing an effect as if the hand
Starting point is 00:20:52 and arm were dead. With this came a distortion of the fingers so that the pen instead of being held in the usual manner was placed between the first finger and the thumb. So he can't even hold the pen anymore. And so they start, with the surgeon's help they start trying more and more expedience just to help him get through this and taking breaks and such he says it's
Starting point is 00:21:10 unnecessary to describe all the details of the devices and means resorted to to prevent sleep and to continue the work changes of position violent exercise going out into the open air and walking rapidly for 10 minutes concentrated extract extracts, prepared food, stimulants more in kind and number than can be now recalled, every imaginable means was employed during the night of Saturday. Notwithstanding their use with a liberal hand, it became evident that weakness was gradually asserting itself
Starting point is 00:21:35 and that the time was approaching when the work must cease from pure exhaustion. So he's gone, this is going into Saturday night. They had one card to play. There was one thing, if he absolutely gave out he could resign altogether from the office of Registrar of the Treasury and Lincoln could instantly appoint someone else. He would have to start signing his name.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Right, because if he's in that office he's authorized to sign the bonds. The trouble with that is that these are going to be sent to a foreign power and they would naturally have a question if these bonds are legitimate how come they're bearing two different signatures? They were legitimate, but it would take some explaining,
Starting point is 00:22:08 it would just slow things down. So Chittenden thought about this and decided, at that point he only had about 2,000 signatures left to go, so he decided just to go on. So this is going into Saturday night now. And at this point he's, it's fair to say, incoherent. This is what he writes. I have not had at any time since a very accurate memory of the events of that Sunday morning, that I could
Starting point is 00:22:30 not remain in the same position for more than a few moments, that the bonds were carried from desk to table and from place to place to enable me to make 10 signatures at a time, that my fingers and hand were twisted and drawn out of their natural shape. These and other facts are faintly remembered. The memory is more distinct that at about 12 o'clock noon, the last bond was reached and signed, So that's noon on Sunday. That's 48 hours since he began. That's 12,500 bonds he signed. They stacked them up at the end as they were preparing to, you know, package them for shipping to put them on this boat that was going to sail out of New York.
Starting point is 00:23:10 The stack of these bonds he'd signed was six feet, four inches tall. And he says he was still suffering after that. He says, after the bonds were signed, I suffered more than at any other time during the process. My nervous system was so thoroughly shattered that during the night of Sunday, sleep was impossible. On Monday night, after three full days and nights during which I had not lost consciousness, for a moment I fell asleep from pure exhaustion. So he said he was in pain for years after that, actually. And the pain actually led him to resign the office eventually.
Starting point is 00:23:36 But they did, the good news is, they did stop the ships. There's kind of a dark punchline to the whole story, though, in that when they had announced, they'd come up with this plan that he would sign, they'd provide the bonds to stop the ships, the American minister in London told the British government that they were forthcoming. And the British government thought that was good enough for them. They said as long as they found that he had the authority to offer this security, that was good enough for them and they stopped the ship. So in that sense, after all this work, he didn't have to have signed the bonds. They didn't need the signatures. They just had
Starting point is 00:24:06 no way of knowing that. They just needed the assurance that the government would stand behind the promise. So that's Lucius Chittenden's contribution to the war effort in the Civil War, which was, as I say, was significant. I mean, it had real consequences. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of heroic stories that come out of the Civil War that people know better about people doing incredible things. On the battlefield, yeah. And a lot of people made a lot of heroic stories that come out of the Civil War that people know better about people doing incredible things. On the battlefield, yeah. And a lot of people made a lot of sacrifices. But it's interesting because this is somebody that probably most people haven't heard of that actually made quite a sacrifice himself.
Starting point is 00:24:34 Yeah, a great personal sacrifice, really, that stayed with him. He must have dreamed about this, I imagine, for years and years. So thank you, Lucius Chittenden. We have a further PyCrete addendum to report this week. In episode 17, we discussed Jeffrey Pike's very imaginative proposal to build an aircraft carrier out of PyCrete, a mix of ice and wood pulp during World War II. And last week we had one update on how Pai Crete has actually been used
Starting point is 00:25:09 to build an enormous ice dome in the Netherlands. But Trey and Lissa wrote in to say, I don't know if you're aware, but Mythbusters looked into the aircraft carrier made of ice and succeeded in making a small boat out of Pai Crete and riding it a short way. I'd like to see that. Yeah, so I looked into this,
Starting point is 00:25:24 and I'm sorry we missed seeing it when it was on tv but apparently mythbusters did do a segment on piecrete in 2009 and they were mad they managed to confirm that piecrete is indeed stronger than regular ice and more bulletproof um they did construct a full-size boat out of what they called super piecrete which was using newspaper instead of wood pulp, because they found that that was even stronger and melted more slowly than regular piecrete. So now they're super piecrete. So a boat made of ice and newspaper. Yeah. But even so, even with their super piecrete, they gave up on their boat after 20 minutes because it was basically just deteriorating in the water. It just started melting and leaking and they kind of abandoned ship.
Starting point is 00:26:04 deteriorating in the water. It just started melting and leaking, and they kind of abandoned ship. They decided to label the whole idea of making a working aircraft carrier out of Pycrete plausible but ludicrous. That's sort of exactly the same conclusion. I know. I thought that was a really nice summation for the whole notion. So that was the update on Pycrete. Also, in our show last week, Greg mentioned that West Side Story was originally titled East Side Story, but he didn't know why that had been changed. Ted Graham wrote in to say, The original plot for the musical had been that of a tragic love story between a Jewish girl whose family fled Nazi Germany and a Catholic boy. The story was to have taken place at the convergence of the Easter-Passover holidays. The Lower East Side was traditionally inhabited by both Catholic and Jewish populations,
Starting point is 00:26:51 necessitating the East Side story title. As time wore on, reports of gang violence in the news prompted Lawrence and Jerome Robbins, who had come up with the idea in the first place, to focus on gangs and make the girl Puerto Rican. This, in turn, meant moving the action to the Upper West Side, which had a large Puerto Rican population, and changing the title. Lawrence wrote a piece for the New York Herald Tribune in 1957 that briefly talks about these changes. As much as I would love to hear a Klezmer version of America, I think Robbins and Lawrence
Starting point is 00:27:22 made the correct choice. Oh, and Sharon is right. West Side Story does sound better. That's true, you're right. So we'll have a link to author Lawrence's New York Herald Tribune article in our show notes. And thanks so much to Trey, Lissa, and Ted for writing in. And if you have any comments for us, you can leave them in the show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com or send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. futilitycloset.com, or send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.
Starting point is 00:27:53 Okay, so now it's time for our lateral thinking puzzle. In this segment, Greg is going to give me a scenario that's going to sound odd or confusing somehow, and I'm going to have to try to figure out the underlying situation just by asking yes or no questions. All right. Okay. You ready? I hope so. Thanks to everyone, by the way, who sent in puzzles to help stump Sharon. We've got a lot of great ones. Here's one sent by a listener named Ray who found it in Games Magazine in November 1994.
Starting point is 00:28:17 Bernard was the president of a major Wall Street bank. One morning when he got on a crowded train, he was extremely worried. When the train stopped and he alighted, he felt sick but was no longer worried. Why not? Okay. Does it matter what kinds of symptoms he had for feeling sick? Like, do I need to know whether it was a headache or a stomach ache or, you know, specific symptoms for he felt sick? Yes. Okay. Okay. Did he feel like he had a specific illness?
Starting point is 00:28:47 No. He had specific symptoms? Yes. Is this important? Yeah, but I'm not going to be able to answer all your questions in that direction. Okay. He's a banker at a Wall Street bank. Yes.
Starting point is 00:29:04 He got on the train feeling worried. Yes. Do I need to know what he was feeling worried about? Yes. Yes. He got on the train feeling worried. Yes. Do I need to know what he was feeling worried about? Yes. Yes. Was he worried about something to do with his job? No. Was he worried about something to do with the train?
Starting point is 00:29:13 Yes. Did he fear that there was going to be some kind of an accident? No. Or some kind of other misadventure with the train? No. Did he have some kind of like a psychological condition that I should know about? No. Or some kind of other misadventure with the train? No. Did he have some kind of like a psychological condition that I should know about? No. Would anybody else in his situation with his knowledge and thoughts have been worried also?
Starting point is 00:29:35 No. Is Bernard a normal human male? Yes. Adult? Yes. He has no physical conditions I should know about? No. Does it matter where this takes place?
Starting point is 00:29:51 I'll say yes. Does it matter what country it takes place in? No. Does it matter in what kind of terrain? No. Like high altitude or way under the ground or something like that? No. Does it matter in what specific location, like what city or what streets?
Starting point is 00:30:07 No. But it matters where. I'm trying to figure out, does it matter what planet it takes place in? Good question. But where, but not some kind of feature like mountains or water and not country and not city and not specific street it'd be interesting it's near something it's near some i'd say it's more the
Starting point is 00:30:33 setting than the location that's important is it matter what kind of a train it is you said you got on a train um was it a subway no was it an elevated No. Was it a choo-choo locomotive kind of train? No. Was this what I normally think of as a train, like Amtrak or, you know, that kind of a train? No. Oh. Oh. Was he on some form of transportation?
Starting point is 00:31:02 No. Read the thing again. He got on the train. Bernard was the president of a major Wall Street bank. One morning when he got on a crowded train, he was extremely worried.
Starting point is 00:31:11 Okay. I have to understand what you mean by crowded train, and it's not what I would think of as some form of transportation. Not normal transportation. Right. Does it involve animals?
Starting point is 00:31:24 No. He got on a crowded train. I mean, dresses have trains, but I'm trying to think of what else you use the word train as a noun. He got on a crowded train. Yes. Crowded by other people. Yes. So there are other people on whatever he's on that you're calling a train.
Starting point is 00:31:46 Yes. But I don't even understand what this is. Okay, what do I need to ask? Okay, it doesn't matter what city or country he's in. You said he left home. He left what I think of as a home. Yes. And he was on this train. Oh, oh, was it some kind of as a home. Yes. And he was on this train.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Oh, oh, was it some kind of ride? Yes. Like an amusement park ride? Yes. And that's why he felt sick when he got off. But why was he worried when he got on the crowded train? Because he was worried he'd get sick? Yes, basically you've got it.
Starting point is 00:32:28 He had promised to take his nephew on a roller coaster. And his nephew was all fired to do it, but he himself hated roller coasters. So he was worried about getting banged around on the roller coaster. Oh. And, uh, right. So it had nothing to do with being a banker or going to work or... No. Those are all red herrings. You know, and I'm imagining some scenario where he was afraid the train was going to
Starting point is 00:32:44 blow up or he was some kind of terrorist and he'd put a bomb on the train or something. Okay. Bernard was the president of a major Wall Street bank. One morning when he got on a crowded train, he was extremely worried. When the train stopped and he alighted, he felt sick but was no longer worried. Okay. All right. Okay.
Starting point is 00:33:00 Well, thank you, Ray, for sending that in. That was very cute. We do appreciate that we've been getting in lots of nice puzzles from the listeners, and that's a really big help. Keep them coming. And people have been doing a great job with hiding the answers so that the answer isn't spoiled for the person who opens the email. So if you want to send in a puzzle for us to try, you can send them at podcast at futilitycloset.com. you can send them at podcast at futilitycloset.com
Starting point is 00:33:24 Well that's it for this episode. 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 mentioned in today's episode. You can also email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com If you enjoy Futility Closet
Starting point is 00:33:43 be sure to look for the book on Amazon.com or check out the website 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 captivating diversions, perfect for filling five minutes or 50. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, you can recommend us to your friends, leave a review of the book or podcast on Amazon or iTunes, or click the donate button in the sidebar of our website
Starting point is 00:34:07 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

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