Futility Closet - 025-An Australian Enigma

Episode Date: September 8, 2014

On Dec. 1, 1948, a well-dressed corpse appeared on a beach in South Australia. Despite 66 years of investigation, no one has ever been able to establish who he was, how he came to be there, or even how he died. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll delve into the mystery of the Somerton man, a fascinating tale that involves secret codes, a love triangle, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. We'll also hear Franklin Adams praise the thesaurus and puzzle over some surprising consequences of firing a gun. Sources for our segment on the Somerton man: Mike Dash, "The Body on Somerton Beach," Smithsonianmag.com, Aug. 12, 2011 (retrieved Aug. 31, 2014). Lorena Allam, "The Somerton Man: A Mystery in Four Acts," Radio Australia, Feb. 23, 2014. The corpse of a well-dressed, clean-shaven man, 5'11", age 40-45 and in peak physical condition, was discovered on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, South Australia, early on the morning of Dec. 1, 1948. In a fob pocket of the man's trousers the pathologist at the city morgue found a tiny slip of rolled-up paper bearing the words "Tamam Shud," the final words of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This led investigators to a copy of the book, which had been thrown into a car parked near the beach. In the back of the book were these penciled lines, which have never been deciphered. More than 60 years of inquiries around the world have brought us no closer to establishing the dead man's identity. His tombstone gives only the bare facts of his discovery. Franklin Pierce Adams' poem "To a Thesaurus" appears in The Book of Humorous Verse, by Carolyn Wells, 1920. 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 [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 25. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll ponder the mystery of a well-dressed corpse that appeared on a South Australian beach in 1948, hear Franklin Pierce Adams praise the thesaurus, and puzzle over some surprising consequences of firing a gun.

Okay, the Somerton Man. This is an utterly baffling mystery from 1948. It's, I think, well-known in Australia where it happened, but relatively less so elsewhere, which is a shame because it's really fascinating, I think. The bare facts are pretty simple. The body of an unidentified man was found on the morning of December 1st, 1948, on Somerton Beach, which is in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. on Somerton Beach, which is in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.

That was 66 years ago, and to this day, no one knows who he was, how he came to be there, how he died, or whether it was murder or suicide. We just don't know anything at all about who he was, despite worldwide inquiries, which is hard to understand. The body was found, it was lying on the sand on the beach, with its head resting on the seawall and the feet were pointing toward the sea. There was a half-smoked cigarette lying on the right collar of the coat as though it had fallen from his mouth. And his pockets contained pretty ordinary things, a pack of cigarettes, matches, a comb, a pack of gum. It's unclear how long he had been there. Some witnesses had said they'd seen him lying in the same position on the previous evening,

thinking perhaps that he was drunk or maybe asleep because he wasn't reacting to the mosquitoes that were there. And some people had said they thought they'd seen him move at that time, so he was alive and in that position, if that was him, the previous evening. But he certainly wasn't alive at 6 30 a.m on the following morning um at the inquest the pathologist said uh the man was age 40 to 45 and in top physical condition that's the other odd thing about this he seems like he may have been someone of some importance he was 5 11 clean shaven with hands that showed no signs of manual labor. A couple oddities, his calf muscles were high and well-developed, and his toes were oddly wedge-shaped.

Make of that what you will, maybe he was a dancer, we don't know. But John Cleland, who was the forensic pathologist at the inquest in 1949, said, quote, the general impression I gained was that he was a man whose bearing you would take notice of by reason of his general appearance. He said there was expression about his face as though he might have been an educated man. And sort of substantiating that, he wore quite good clothing. He had a white shirt, a tie, you know, you wouldn't expect this attire at the beach, a double-breasted coat, new brown shoes that hadn't been worn much. And oddly, all the labels in his clothes were missing. He carried no identification.

There didn't seem to be any way to identify him. And as the inquiry developed, it turned out that his teeth did not match the dental records of anyone in Australia. This just gets more and more mysterious the deeper you go into it. It turns out pathologists estimated that he died at around 2 a.m. that morning. There was no mark of violence on or around the body. So not only don't we know who he was, we don't to this day don't know how he died. He was in peak physical condition. It wasn't violence that killed him. His heart was sound, so that rules out a heart attack. His liver was distended with blood,

and his spleen was three times his normal size, but they couldn't find in the autopsy any foreign substance in the body. The pathologist said, I was astounded that they found nothing. So if he died by poison, it was some relatively rare poison that can be administered and then pretty quickly dissipate um without leaving a trace or just couldn't be identified yet in 1948 yeah that's possible uh blood was congealed in the stomach seemed consistent with poisoning but no poison could be found so um yeah they speculated even at the time that it could have been a very rare poison, one that, quote, decomposed very early after death, according to a professor who testified. So they think perhaps digitalis, that's one that's possible.

I mean, even at the time they identified some potential poisons that could have been used, but it's not clear how he would have got his hands on them. Or he may have been murdered. It may not even have been used, but it's not clear how he would have got his hands on them. Or he may have been murdered. It may not even have been suicide. Right. And so that means somebody was walking around Adelaide with very rare poisons. Yes. And that hasn't gone anywhere. So the coroner said, quote, the report I've received indicates that the identity of the deceased is quite unknown, that his death was not natural, that it was probably caused by poison, and that it was almost certainly not accidental. The alternatives to be considered, therefore, are whether the deceased died by his own act or by the act of someone else. And we still don't know the answer

to that. We don't know whether he killed himself or someone else killed him and how. It seems likely by poison, but we don't know much more than that. The detective who was put in charge of the investigation named Lionel Lane, said, There's no fact that I know of that points towards suicide and abolishes the possibility of murder. I believe he died an unnatural death, but how, I cannot say. A physical specimen as he would would not just go to the beach and die. That's not even the most mysterious part of this, if you can believe it. It gets much more intriguing even than that.

They put the body on display so that people could come to try to help the authorities to identify it and dozens of people came and many people wrote in who were missing a relative this was in 1948 which is shortly after the war which brought on all kinds of dislocations and upheavals there were people who were still returning from the war people who had been prisoners people who were mentally unbalanced because of the war on top of that it was quite a hard time economically. So in Australia in general, there were a lot of single men traveling throughout the country looking for work. So there's just a lot of people moving around for many reasons at that time, in any case, which makes the whole thing harder. Scotland Yard was called in, but they made a little further progress.

They circulated the man's photo and fingerprints throughout the world, throughout the world, but no one could identify him, or at least no one who would come forward. And no one still has. And this actually became a problem because they were making so little progress in establishing his identity that the body began to decompose. It was found on December 1st. By December 10th, they took the step of embalming it because they had to. And eventually they wound up making a plaster cast of the head

and shoulders to have some likeness to show people so they could finally bury the body because they just couldn't put it off any longer. But they weren't making any progress. I mean, circulating photograph around the world and having people come in and look at the body and then at this cast wasn't getting anywhere and still hasn't. To this day, we don't know who he was. By early February, eight different identifications of the body had been put forward, but all of these were eventually disproved. And by November 1953, they actually had received 251 identifications from the public, and all of those were disproved. And they're still on square one. This is still an open case, and to this day, no one knows, really begins to know who this man could

have been. Even that's not the most mysterious part of this, though. It gets much more mysterious even than that. On January 14th, which is now about six weeks after the body was discovered, the staff at the Adelaide Railway Station discovered that a brown suitcase had been checked into the station cloakroom on the day before the man's body was discovered. And it appears that he's the one who checked it. This is strangely mysterious, too. I mentioned that the labels on the man's clothing had been cut out. Well, the label of the suitcase had been removed,

so there didn't seem to be any way to trace its origins either. It contained mostly ordinary items, clothing and shaving items, but a few odd things. I don't even know what to make of these either. An electrician's screwdriver, a table knife that had been cut down into a short, sharp instrument, a pair of scissors with sharpened points, and a stenciling brush such as that used by third officers on merchant ships for stenciling cargo was in the suitcase. That's a very specific stenciling brush. Yeah, but that goes nowhere. All

these clues go nowhere. I mean, there isn't even a theory that begins to make sense of that. All identifying marks on the clothes had been removed. Here's one, the only tenuous link that provides any kind of identification. There was a coat in the suitcase that had been tailored in such a way that showed that it must have come from the United States. So that means either that the man had been in the U.S. and had obtained the coat there, or he had got the coat from someone else of similar build who had been to the U.S. and had obtained the coat there, or he had got the coat from someone else of similar build who had been to the U.S. So that's a tiny little finger hole, but that doesn't go anywhere either, or it hasn't yet.

Anyway, if you put all of this together, you can sort of establish a picture at least of what the man had done on that day, even if we don't know where Delta Mead come from. It looks like he'd arrived by an overnight train from somewhere else in Australia, arrived at the Adelaide railway station, showered and shaved at the city baths, and then returned to the station and bought a ticket for a train to the beach. He never used that ticket. He wound up buying a bus ticket instead and took that instead to the beach. That's probably because he just missed the train for some reason.

We think. Nobody knows. So basically he just arrived by rail in Adelaide and then went to the beach. I keep saying that's not the most mysterious part. That's not the most mysterious part. Four weeks after the body was discovered, a pathologist at the city morgue found a tiny slip of rolled up paper in a fob pocket sewn within his trouser pocket. So a pocket within a pocket contained a tiny, I mean really tiny, slip of rolled up paper. On the paper were the words, Tamam should, which didn't make any sense to anybody. It was written in a distinctive font. But the detective Lane went to a bookstore and after a lot of sleuthing

discovered that those are the last two words in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the 11th century poem by the Persian philosopher and poet Omar Khayyam. They mean in Persian, ended or finished, which is sort of appropriate to find on a dead body, I guess. But it wasn't clear who had put that, if he'd put that in his own pocket, and what significance it had to him or to anyone else. The slip's opposite side was blank, so they started to try to trace it to a particular edition of the book.

And they circulated this, publicized it, looking for help from the public. And a man came forward saying he'd discovered a copy of the Rubaiyat in the back seat of his car. He'd left the car parked near the beach with the window open, and someone had thrown a copy of the book into the back seat. Oh, that is really strange. And so the police looked at this, looked on the back page, and sure enough, someone had clipped out that little passage, the two words, Tamam Shud, out of the back of this book, and they checked the paper, and it matched. So this appears to be the book that that little

two-word phrase was clipped out of. So someone had cl be the book that that little two word phrase was clipped out of. So someone clipped that out, put it, he put it in his pocket apparently, and then threw the book into a stranger's car. Instead of destroying the book. Yeah. Who knows what that means? Yeah. So that doesn't seem to go anywhere either. And it gets still yet even more mysterious than that. Now they have the book that he'd cut that passage out of, and written in the back of the book were five lines of what appears to be code, a series of capital English letters. I can't recite them here, but I'll put them in the show notes. I don't have to tell you that in 66 years, no one's been able to decipher that either. It's not random.

I think that's been established, that it's not just a random series of letters. But the problem is that it's too short a passage to work with, really. They may be the initial letters of some prose passage. It may be some kind of code deeper than that. It may have some personal significance to the man, but no one's ever been able to crack that code. Yet still even more mysterious is that also in the back of the book was written in pencil a telephone number. And the phone number was traced to a nurse who lived a thousand feet from where the body was discovered on Somerton Beach. So the police eagerly talked to the woman.

She had asked to be kept anonymous just because she didn't want to be sort of dragged into this whole mystery. And unfortunately for us, the police honored that wish, so we don't know her name. But we know something of what she told the authorities. And that is also mysterious. She was a nurse, and during the war,

she lived in Adelaide, but during the war she worked in Sydney. And they'd asked her if she'd ever possessed a copy of the Rubaiyat and given it to anyone. She had, actually, during the war, and she'd given it to a soldier named Alfred Boxall, but he was still alive. He still had the book, and it was intact. That didn't seem to go anywhere. He still had the book and it was intact. That didn't seem to go anywhere. But what was interesting is after the war, well, they showed her the bust. The man was now buried at this point, but they showed this plaster cast they had made of his head and shoulders.

And she said she didn't know the man, but the detective described her reaction on seeing the cast as, quote, completely taken aback to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint. Paul Lawson, who was the technician who'd made the cast, was present when she'd viewed it and said she immediately looked away and would not look at it again. But what she told the police verbally is that she didn't recognize the man. A neighbor said that a mysterious man had come and inquired about her earlier so she was sort of resistant to being involved in any of this at all but you can sort of piece together a story that fits some of the facts despite what she says it's possible that while she was serving as a nurse in sydney during the war she met this mysterious man who's now dead, whoever it was, and together

they conceived a child. Then the war ended. She went back to Adelaide and got engaged to another man. She was living with her fiance when the police talked to her and were guessing, convinced this man, this new man, that the child was his. And then this man, mysterious man, who she'd met in Sydney, tracked her down in Adelaide, arrived by rail that morning, talked to her on her doorstep, and she said, I'm sorry I can't be with you. I've committed to raising a family with this other man. And then the mysterious Somerton man went to the beach and killed himself.

That's pure conjecture. I mean, the fact that he killed himself, that would kind of fit with that he put, you know, words meaning the end in his pocket, and that he threw this book into a car rather than into the sea or into the trash can, like he wanted it to be found, you would almost think. Yes. He was hoping somebody would know his story somehow. And that fits, and it makes more, as much sense as anything else. I mean, that sort of fits the facts such as we have them. But the problem is that doesn't begin to touch on any of this other mysterious stuff. Why were all the labels cut out of his clothing and out of his suitcase? Why doesn't anyone in the world recognize him or his fingerprints?

How did he manage to kill himself with a poison that disappears within a few hours? I mean, it doesn't. You can start to contrive a story like, say, or maybe he was a Soviet spy who was in Sydney during the war and managed to meet this nurse, but no one else knew him. And because it was the Soviet Union, maybe that's why no one responded to these worldwide pleas for some identification. Even if he had come from another country like that i know they circulated his photo but unless he had a you know if he only had a small circle of friends and family there's a chance none of them saw the photo if he really

was like from the united states for example you know how widely circulated were the photos did everybody in the u.s see a photo of him no but they were i mean it's been 66 years now and there are a lot of people looking into it that's that's to my mind that's still the biggest mystery of of all of this is how does you know presumably supposedly no man is an island i mean even if he were a spy or someone far from home and was doing some kind of top secret work that he couldn't share with other people anybody's living a life in a society has to interact with other people. He'd have neighbors and colleagues and just nodding acquaintances. People who had seen him.

He has to buy food. I mean, he has a postman. He's got people who at least would recognize a photograph in a newspaper. Yeah. And no one has come forward. Even now, 66 years later, no one's come forward and said they know the first thing about him. I still want to know what the stenciling brush was for. The other thing sounded like they could have been some kind of weapons or something,

and that you could maybe come up with a story for, but the stenciling brush, I don't know. And unfortunately, that's where it stands now. The case is still open. The South Australian Police Historical Society has this plaster bust, which actually contains strands of his hair. But unfortunately, the formaldehyde that we used in embalming him apparently has destroyed a lot of his DNA, so they can't trace that.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that, if they still had DNA. They've made inquiries. There are people who are still working on this who've asked, can we exhume the body to get some DNA to try to see if that leads somewhere? But that's not... You need... The authorities say you need some more compelling public interest

to exhume a body other than we really want to find out who he was. So at least for the time being, that hasn't gone anywhere. And the brown suitcase that was found in the railway station was destroyed in 1986. As I say, all this happened close to 70 years ago. So a lot of the principles are dying or already dead. If there were people who knew the truth but weren't coming forward, they're dying now if they're not already dead. It's still possible that some evidence could come forward that could break the case and shed some light that finally establishes identity. But the further we get from 1948, the less likely that seems to be.

Wow. We'll have images of the Somerton man, the undeciphered pencil markings from the back of the Rubaiyat, and his sadly anonymous tombstone in our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com. If you've been enjoying the esoteric trivia 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 bite-sized oddities, as well as wordplay, paradoxes, and other intriguing 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. collection of fascinating nonsense, and the most useless book you absolutely need to own. To a Thesaurus by Franklin Pierce Adams. This is from 1920. O precious codex, volume, tome, book, writing, compilation, work. Attend the while I pen a poem, a jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk. For I would pen and gross indict, transcribe, set forth, compose, address, record, submit, yea, even write an ode, an elegy to bless. To bless, set store by,

celebrate, approve, esteem, endow with soul, commend, acclaim, appreciate, immortalize, laud, praise, extol, thy merit, goodness, value, worth, experience, utility. O manna, honey, salt of earth, I sing, I chant, I worship thee. How could I manage, live, exist, obtain, produce, be real, prevail, be present in the flesh, subsist, have place, become, breathe, or inhale, without thy help, recruit, support, opitulation, furtherance, assistance, rescue, aid, resort, favor, capitulation, furtherance, assistance, rescue, aid, resort, favor, sustention, and advance. Alack, alack, and well-a-day, my case would then be dure and sad, likewise distressing, dismal, gray, pathetic, mournful, dreary, bad. Though I could keep this up all day, this lyric elegiac song, me seems hath come the time to say, farewell, adieu, goodbye, so long. We have a brief update to our story from episode 24 about William McGonagall,

a singularly terrible Scottish poet who persevered through 25 years of ridicule and abuse. Terry Hart wrote in to say, in your last podcast, you stated, with respect to William McGonagall, I've often thought this story would make a good movie, but it's hard to tell if it would play as a comedy or a tragedy. I'm not sure if you were aware of the 1974 British film, The Great McGonagall, starring Spike Milligan as William McGonagall and Peter Sellers as Queen Victoria. I've never seen it myself, but it definitely would have played as a comedy. I would think so with Peter Sellers as Queen Victoria. Yeah. Gregory LeBlanc apparently has

seen the movie and said of it that it's not exactly a biopic, but is honest an adaptation that Milligan seems capable of. Gregory also expressed the hope that several people would write in to inform us of this movie because it would be nice to think of Milligan as unforgotten. Actually, a few people did write in to let us know about the movie and our thanks to all of them because we were completely unaware of it. Yeah, I'd like to see that now. Yeah, we should check that out. Kendall Williams had a rather different perspective on episode 24, saying,

If you fast-forward the podcast through Greg's reading of the poetry, he sounds like the world's worst rapper. I'm sure that's true. I'm not so sure if that's commentary on McGonagall's poetry or your poetry reading style, Dean. I am the world's worst rapper. They're both true. So thanks to everyone who wrote in to us about that. And if you have any questions or comments for us, you can leave them in the show notes or email them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This is our lateral thinking puzzle segment, which we've gotten a lot of positive feedback on so far.

People seem to enjoy listening to us struggle. I think apparently the more we struggle, the more they actually enjoy it. Yeah, I don't really understand that, but I'm glad people like it. This week, Greg will be giving me a puzzle that I'll have to try to solve using only yes or no questions. This is from Kyle Hendrickson's book Mental Fitness Puzzles from 1998. A man walks into his backyard in the middle of the night and fires a gun. Due to his strange behavior, he never sees another sunrise. No, he didn't kill himself.

Can you explain this odd occurrence? Did he blind himself somehow? No, good guess. Because I was thinking there's various ways you could blind yourself with a gun. That would have been really impressive if you just nailed it right away. Okay, was this a gun that shoots metal bullets yes um he walks into his backyard in the middle of the night was he able to see before he went into his backyard is he still able to see at the end of this when you say he never sees another sunrise yes he is good yeah does he never see another sunrise because of where he lives geographically? No. And there are no sunrises?

Okay. Does he live on Earth? Yes. I'd love to say no to that. Yes. Well, there could be all kinds of interesting reasons for never seeing another sunrise if you're somewhere else in space. Okay. Does it matter where on Earth he is?

No. Okay. In any kind of way? No. Okay. matter where on earth he is no okay in any kind of way no okay um does he never see another sunrise because the sun never rises again no just checking does he never see another sunrise because he is now uh shut inside in such a way that he can't see the outside. No. Okay. Does he never see another sunrise because something is over his eyes or covering his eyes? No.

Do you literally mean that he never, oh, oh, is he a vampire? No. These are excellent, but no. Okay. He never sees another sunrise. I think you're like extra credit for the really good question um but he is his freedom is unimpaired he is allowed to go wherever he wants to go correct okay does he choose to never see another sunrise um i'm gonna say yes but i don't want to mislead you okay he's a human man yes um does and you said it doesn't matter where this takes place doesn't matter when it takes place no uh does it

matter why he fired the gun yes okay did he fire the gun at something in particular yes i got really hung up on this sunrise thing here and forgot about other things okay um did he fire the gun at something living yes did he fire the gun at another human being no at an animal yes uh it matters what kind of animal yes a natural creature as opposed to a supernatural creature i'm just narrowing it down a mammal no a bird yes um oh did he well i was gonna say he could have killed an endangered bird but then you're saying he's not in prison so that's right no no that's right so it matters what kind of bird he fired his gun at yes um a large bird uh what do you mean large like an eagle or uh uh something along those lines i'll'll say relatively large, yeah.

An owl? No. A bird that's usually out at night? Because you said this was the middle of the night. There aren't too many birds that are normally out in the middle of the night. A bird of prey? Like a bird that I would think of as eating other birds? No. I mean eating other animals. A large bird?

And by bird, oh, oh, a bird that flies? Yes. There are some birds that don't fly that are kind of large. A bird that flies. Does it matter why he was trying to shoot this bird? Yes. And is there a reason why it was the middle of the night?

No. Okay. A specific bird. He was trying to shoot one bird. That's right. A specific bird. He was trying to kill one, shoot one bird. That's right. One specific bird. Right. Was, did the bird, uh, had it taken something like a baby or a small animal? He's trying to protect it?

No. No. Um, um, um, yeah. What are the large birds are there besides eagles? Um, I'm just going blank. A vulture. Um. No. Um. The large birds are there besides eagles um i'm just going blank a vulture um no um the large birds of prey hawks no um there's a bird i've heard of that flies yeah and it's not found in like some specific locale like a um pelican or uh... No. Wow.

Goodness, yeah. We got dramatic effects going on in the background here as I try to figure out what kind of bird he shot and why. A bird with feathers, a living bird. Yes. That was flying at the time? I don't know. Let's say no. It doesn't matter.

Oh, did he own this bird? Yes. It was a pet bird. I wouldn't say that. Is he a farmer? Yes. A turkey? No.

A chicken? A bird that you would normally find on a farm? But not a chicken. A rooster. Yes. A rooster. Oh, oh, the rooster had been crowing and waking him up, and he didn't want to see the sunrise. He retired, and so he didn't want to be woken up by the restored sunrise every day. So he took the extreme step of shooting it.

In the middle of the night. And then slept through the sunrise for the rest of his life. And then slept through all the sunrises. Ah, very nice. Well done. If you'd like to send in a puzzle for us to use on the show, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help support it, please take a moment to recommend our show to others who might also like it.

You can also click the donate button in the sidebar of the website. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our book on amazon.com or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 intriguing distractions perfect for filling five minutes or 50. You can see our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com where you can post comments or questions, listen to past shows, and see the images mentioned in today's episode. You can also email us at podcast at putilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. Thank you.