Futility Closet - 048-The Shark Arm Affair

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Starting point is 00:00:55 Go to lootcrate.com slash closet and enter code closet to save $3 on any new subscription. 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 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 48. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1935, a shark in an Australian aquarium disgorged a human forearm, a bizarre turn of events that spawned a murder mystery that's never been solved.

Starting point is 00:01:22 In today's show, we'll discuss sharks' contributions to the human justice system. We'll also learn about the Paris Herald's obsession with centigrade temperature, revisit the scary travel writings of Victorian children's author Favell Lee Mortimer, and puzzle over an unavenged killing at a sporting event. Here is a gruesome Australian story to go with our earlier gruesome Australian story of the Somerton Man in episode 25. This one's even gruesomer, I think. In 1935, April 17th, fishermen off the southeastern coast of Australia hooked a shark, a big tiger shark, three and a half meters long, and thought it was so big and impressive that rather than kill it and sell it, they would give it to the local aquarium, which they did. And the shark swam listlessly around the aquarium for about a week,

Starting point is 00:02:12 and then on April 25th began thrashing around in front of a crowd and vomited up a human arm, of all things. It was the left forearm of a man, and it was quite an interesting one as left forearms go it had a distinctive tattoo showing two crouching boxers in red shorts and it still contained some rope tied around the wrist but it ended at the elbow

Starting point is 00:02:35 they did some fingerprint analysis on it and there were still enough fingerprints left to show that it had belonged to a small timetime local criminal named Jim Smith, who had actually been missing since April 7th. I am amazed that you could get that much detail off of an arm, like the tattoo with the colors and the fingerprints, and it's been inside a shark for at least a week?

Starting point is 00:02:57 I mean, wow. They showed the arm and the tattoo to Smith's wife and brother, and they both agreed that it was his arm. Okay. The experts at the time estimated that the arm could have been in the shark's stomach for anywhere from 8 to 18 days. How you find that out, I don't know. There's some guy whose job it is to know these things. And it gets even worse.

Starting point is 00:03:19 A medical exam showed that it wasn't the shark that had severed the arm. The shark had just swallowed the already severed arm. The arm had been cut off, and not cut off with surgical equipment, but sort of hacked off with a knife or some other sharp instrument. Uh-huh. So this is maximally icky. The plot thickens here, yeah. So that's enough to trigger a murder investigation, as you might imagine.

Starting point is 00:03:38 The last man known to have seen Smith was another criminal, a forger named Patrick Brady, that too had been seen drinking and playing cards. So the police searched Brady's rented beach cottage and found, very suspiciously, some items that were missing were two window sashes, a tin trunk, a small anchor, and a rope. So you can put that together in your head. That enough evidence um to create the theory that bright brady had apparently killed smith cut him into pieces stuffed him into a trunk and sunk that in the ocean apparently the forearm wouldn't fit so he waited that separately they thought and just threw that in after oh that's what they think to this day i'll just jump ahead and tell you no one knows if that's really what happened um in asking around the police also heard from a cab driver who said on the day after Smith had disappeared,

Starting point is 00:04:29 a very nervous-looking Brady had jumped in the cab and asked him to take him to North Sydney. The cab driver said, quote, he was disheveled. He had a hand in a pocket and wouldn't take it out. And it was clear he was frightened. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of a middle-class businessman named Reginald Holmes, who was another third small-time Sydney criminal. The three had conspired in some insurance scams earlier the previous year, and it appears possibly that Smith had also been blackmailing Holmes because he had some money. It's all very sorted. some money. It's all very sorted.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Holmes denied any involvement, but eventually agreed to cooperate, and he pointed the finger at Brady saying that he'd killed Smith, put his dismembered body in a trunk, sure enough, and thrown it into Gunnamatta Bay in southern Sydney.

Starting point is 00:05:19 I like the definition of cooperated. He cooperated by pointing at the other guy. Yeah, saying he did it. And this is tricky to research because there are various sort of ghoulish details here, and I'm not sure whom to trust. Among other things, he said that Brady had come to his home with the severed arm and threatened to kill him if he didn't give him 500 pounds. I only find that in one newspaper story,

Starting point is 00:05:41 and that he himself had then thrown it into the surf afterward. So I don't know how all of this unfolded basically what happened is a lot of small-time sydney criminals were all pointing at each other as having killed jim smith and that seems to be that one of them actually wound up doing that um the whole thing gets even worse because uh on june 11th holmes withdrew 500 pounds from his bank account and left home late in the evening telling his wife he had to meet someone and then his body was found the next morning. He had been shot three times. So if you're having trouble following this, you sort of don't have to because it doesn't lead anywhere. Basically, it means that this very incriminating and surprising left forearm showed up in a local aquarium, and everyone in town is trying to allay any suspicion.

Starting point is 00:06:24 And it's not clear to this day who wound up actually doing it. At this point, the only one of the suspects who's still alive is Brady, who can't have been the one who shot Holmes because he was in jail at the time on suspicion of having killed Smith. So then it's really unclear who would have shot Holmes and why. Yeah. Okay. At the inquest, I like this detail.

Starting point is 00:06:42 So now Brady's taken to trial on suspicion of having killed Smith, the guy who lost his arm. And his lawyers had the presence of mind to point out that an arm, quote, did not constitute a body. In other words, you can't prove that Jim Smith isn't walking around somewhere perfectly healthy but lacking a left forearm. Perhaps he is. Okay. perfectly healthy but lacking a left forearm. Perhaps he is. Okay.

Starting point is 00:07:06 And they took that actually to the Supreme Court and it held up basically in the end. Brady was charged with murder, but the jury acquitted him. And Brady maintained for 30 years after this that he was completely unconnected with the murder. He died in 1965. And the case remains unsolved. Nobody knows what happened to Jim Smith.

Starting point is 00:07:22 It seems very likely he was killed for some underworld small-time criminal reason and cut into pieces and thrown in the sea but no one knows who did that okay i'm gonna say if anybody knows of a movie that was made about this you should let us know because this is the kind of thing where i always say wow i could just picture this being a movie and then six people write in to say this was a movie yeah so well i kept thinking if you think of it about this from the criminal's point of view someone killed jim smith right yeah and cut him into pieces and fit him carefully into this trunk took it out i guess in the middle of the night out into the sea and

Starting point is 00:07:54 dumped it overboard and thought this is foolproof this is as close as to a foolproof way of getting rid of bodies you can possibly have probably just dumping it overboard he thought if i'm really lucky maybe a shark will eat it. And then you just think afterwards, just like, what are the odds? That's like the worst luck you can possibly have. There's a little footnote here. I don't know if it goes anywhere. Some people speculate that Brady killed Holmes at the orders of a gangland figure named Eddie Wayman, who was higher up in the crime hierarchy, but sort of associated with these people.

Starting point is 00:08:26 Apparently, Smith had ratted him out earlier in the middle of a bank robbery and sort of got him caught. And so some of these killings, maybe both of them, may have been higher level Sydney criminals sort of cleaning up the town and just settling old scores and just cleaning their tracks up now that there's a forearm in the offing no one knows if that's true either um speaking of sharks giving evidence though i have a second shark giving evidence story believe it or not this is from much earlier in 1799 in the caribbean it was forbidden for american ships to pass through british waters Caribbean, it was forbidden for American ships to pass through British waters. So Thomas Briggs, the captain of an American brig called the Nancy, had the bright idea of throwing his American papers overboard and getting some fake Dutch papers in Curaçao to present in case they were

Starting point is 00:09:18 accosted. And sure enough, they were. An English cutter called the Sparrow intercepted them and said, hey, you're American, you shouldn't be here. And he said, we're not American, we're Dutch, and showed them the papers. The British weren't buying this, but couldn't prove, they thought they were smugglers, couldn't prove that something was amiss with the papers. So they sent them to Jamaica to have the case heard by the Vice Admiralty. And wouldn't you know, two days later, another English ship caught a shark near the coast of Haiti, opened it up, and in its belly were the papers of the American ship, Nancy, which is pretty much as red-handed as you can get.

Starting point is 00:09:49 And those were presented in court, and the Nancy and her cargo were confiscated. Apparently things don't digest very well in the bellies of sharks. If you can, like, read the writing on the paper still, I mean, that's pretty impressive. I think all of this, 100% of the evidence here shows that sharks, far from being bloodthirsty monsters of the deep, are actually sensitive judges of human character and pay attention to what's going on up there. And whenever a criminal throws evidence into the sea, they hurriedly swim over and swallow it and then valiantly fling themselves into the human world to bring it to light.

Starting point is 00:10:18 I think the police departments should hire more sharks. Just a reminder that we've set up a Patreon campaign to support this podcast. Futility Closet is our business and we spend many hours a week making each podcast episode, so we need your help to keep going. Patreon is a way for fans to support projects directly by making small, regular contributions. You sign up to make an automatic payment each time we publish a new episode. The amount of your contribution is up to you, and you can change it or cancel it at any time. If you pledge at least a dollar an episode, you get access to the podcast activity feed, where we've been posting bonus material on each episode, various posts and comments about our work on the show, and occasional outtakes. Right now, we're almost two-thirds of the way to the goal we set for continuing the

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Starting point is 00:11:34 so far. Our fans and supporters are the reason we're still going. In episode 47, we heard about Favele Mortimer and her outrageous travel books from the 1850s designed for children. These books, which were presented as non-fiction, included ludicrous and extremely negative depictions of other countries and their inhabitants, such as claiming that all Persians are deceitful and can never be trusted. We wondered what her motives were in writing such books, and several listeners sent in their theories. Bennett Todd and Joel Mills suggested that perhaps Mortimer was using gross exaggerations as an attempt at comedy, and I think that she was at least trying to be amusing or entertaining, so I think that is a possibility there. It be amusing or entertaining. So I think that is

Starting point is 00:12:25 a possibility there. It's weirdly hard to tell because comedy in general doesn't date very well. Yeah. And out of context, it can sometimes be difficult to recognize. Yeah. So that's true. But I do think she was trying to be at least entertaining. Jim Finn suggested that Mortimer might have been a precursor to today's tabloid writers who take a grain of truth and then distort it so much that it becomes almost unrecognizable. And that does seem possible for many of her claims, although that doesn't really recommend her books for teaching children. And I thought Jim's theory fit in well with a theory proposed by Fred Kearns,

Starting point is 00:12:59 who says, The clue is that Mortimer was a religious enthusiast. What I hear listening to her accounts is the distillation of the stories of foreign missions. In order to drum up donations for the many religious missions, the missionaries would regale eager audiences with dreadful accounts of the unchristian nature of foreign parts. So that's a possibility, yeah. Many of Mortimer's citations for her material do seem to be coming from clergy or missionaries. So I can see how, you know, maybe missionaries were coming back to England with exaggerated tales of other lands and other peoples and that these ended up forming the bases of her information or misinformation, as the case might be.

Starting point is 00:13:38 But that she herself thought that it was true? You know, that's really hard to tell. I guess if she hadn't traveled to any of these places herself, she wouldn't have, you know, she didn't go to any of these places herself. I think some of the best clues we have come from the two prefaces to Mortimer's books. Mortimer basically says that the books are written to appeal to children with the goals of teaching Christian principles and getting kids interested in missionary work. These are her main goals, and it seemed to me that accuracy of description was a much lesser goal to her.

Starting point is 00:14:20 She seems to think that the attainment of secular knowledge is valuable only as a tool in the service of or the glorifying of God. And if you read her travel books, they really are filled with just moral judgments and long homilies. I mean, that makes up a great deal of the text. It does seem like the one thing that anyone knows about her is that she was very religious. Yeah. And so it seems like maybe the key to seeing these is that they weren't intended as travel books so much as they were intended as a way of getting these Christian lessons beat into children. Yeah, I can see that. She says that she wrote her books in such a way to try to capture the interest of kids who she thought were generally too interested in works of fiction,

Starting point is 00:14:55 which she felt would lead them away from the Bible and the church. So she believed that her interesting descriptions of other countries and their natives would set up children for reading missionary magazines, which is what she wanted them to be reading. Okay, I can see that. But that does still leave the question of how accurate did Mortimer really think her books were? That's like, to me, a really interesting question. You know, clearly, there's a fair amount of simplification because it's intended for children, you know, so you have that. But it's hard to know what to think of the really broad, gross generalizations that just fill the books. Like, did she really believe that no people in Europe are as clumsy and awkward with their hands as the Portuguese? Did she really think

Starting point is 00:15:35 that was true? And details like that, it's hard to see how even that would work in the service of a missionary object, you know? Although she may have just intended all this to be amusing and entertaining to children again. She says that very clearly in her preface, that there's no point in giving a lesson unless you can keep their interest. So maybe she thought kids would find this amusing. That goes back to was as intended as humor or entertainment.

Starting point is 00:16:00 She does call her first book incomplete, superficial, and trifling and says, it is not with the hope of superseding solid works that this prattler is set forth. So, I mean, that, you know, she seems to be saying something there. In the preface of her first book, she says that she hopes it is not inaccurate. But I noticed that she doesn't actually say that in the preface for the second and third books. She doesn't make say that in the preface for the second and third books. She doesn't make that claim again. In that preface, she acknowledges that the books do not claim completeness, comprehensiveness, or depth of research.

Starting point is 00:16:33 All right. That's honest, at least. Interestingly, I thought, she says, to form great and good characters, the mind must be trained to delight in truth. But to me, it's not clear how exactly she defines truth. She seems to be saying that religious truth is much more important than any other kind of truth. So my best guess is she felt the books were at least somewhat accurate, but what was really more important to her was the religious truths that she felt she was getting at. Although this really does leave the big question of how much did the Victorians who read her books

Starting point is 00:17:07 believe that these descriptions were truthful and accurate? That would be really useful to know. Yeah, and that we can't really find out. But, you know, most Victorians, especially in the 1850s, they might not ever leave their hometown. They certainly weren't going to travel to these places for themselves, and this might be the only descriptions they ever read of these other countries. So overall, to me, the books seem to be a combination of amusing, fantastical exaggeration that was designed to hold kids' interest, and then lots of moralizing snuck in.

Starting point is 00:17:37 I think it probably sounds really odd to our modern ears, but maybe not so much to the Victorian ears, which may account for why the books were so popular, at least with the parents who bought them. We haven't been able to figure out how popular they actually were with the kids who were supposed to be benefiting from them, which is another question. On a last note, Steve Winters wrote in to say, I didn't find her writing so unrelentingly mean when reading it in the original.

Starting point is 00:18:01 She had a number of positive things to say about most of the various countries she writes about. And that does seem to be the case. I mean, she says a lot of really mean things, but she usually tries to find at least one positive thing, even if it's only that they have great horses there. She gets that in. Steve goes on to say, that being said, I did find this passage particularly amusing. In one of the palaces, there is a room where a very wicked Frenchman once lived. His name was Voltaire. The walls of this room are covered with pictures of monkeys and parrots. It was done by the order of a king who said Voltaire was like a monkey and a parrot. Voltaire has written a great many books which have taught people to despise God and to serve Satan.

Starting point is 00:18:44 And there you have Mortimer in a nutshell. So thanks so much to everyone who wrote in to us. And if you have anything you'd like to say, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Here's a piece of, I guess you'd call it, editorial perversity. The following letter appeared in the Paris Herald on December 27, 1899. To the editor of the Herald, I am anxious to find out the way to figure the temperature from centigrade to Fahrenheit and vice versa. In other words, I want to know, whenever I see the temperature designated on the centigrade thermometer, how to find out what it would be on Fahrenheit's thermometer.

Starting point is 00:19:33 And it's signed, Old Philadelphia Lady, Paris, December 24th, 1899. Which is nice enough. Someone wrote in to the Paris Herald asking how to convert temperatures. Okay. The problem is, after running on December 27th, it also ran the same letter in the Herald on December 28th and the following day, and in fact, every day thereafter for 18 years. The exact same letter. The exact same letter, signed by the same woman, a total of 6,718 times.

Starting point is 00:20:01 Okay. There's got to be a story there. No one knows quite what to make of this. The readers at first took it seriously, understandably. The paper received four answers to the letter on December 30th, and then five on New Year's Day, 1900. And down through the years, they received more and more letters, because what would happen is they just kept reprinting the same letter,

Starting point is 00:20:22 and newcomers to the paper would obviously take it seriously and sit down and thoughtfully write out an answer on how to convert. This dear little old lady needs to know how to convert temperatures and I need to help her out. Absolutely. And send them in. And the paper would print them. And then people who knew about the joke, or I guess that's what you'd call it, would get even more furiously enraged than they had been before. And protest and cancel their subscriptions and write

Starting point is 00:20:45 in vituperative letters themselves. All this is traceable, perhaps not explicably, to the paper's publisher, James Gordon Bennett Jr., who is the son of James Gordon Bennett Sr., who was the founder of the New York Herald in 1835. Jr. was famously eccentric. Among other things, in 1877, he'd been engaged to a socialite, but arrived late to a party at her family's mansion, drunk, and proceeded to urinate into either the fireplace or a grand piano. Stories differ. And was forced to flee to Europe after that. That was the end of that engagement.

Starting point is 00:21:21 While he was in Europe, though, he set up sort of the Paris edition of the New York Herald, sort of a European version of it. They called it the Paris Herald. It has since turned into the International Herald Tribune and just recently into the International New York Times. It's the same paper. Bennett wasn't what you would call a terribly professional newspaper man. He was wealthy, so he spent most of his time playing polo and tennis and organizing trans-oceanic yacht races. And I've been searching on and off over the years for an explanation for what he thought he was doing in publishing the same letter in his paper 6,000 times,

Starting point is 00:22:03 and I haven't come up with anything exact. He told his staff that, quote, whoever interferes with or suppresses the old Philadelphia lady ceases automatically all connection with the Herald, meaning I'll fire you if you stop running this letter. And the reader's protests had no effect on him. He ran the same letter every day right through World War I. The closest explanation to have come to an

Starting point is 00:22:26 explanation comes from a 1918 article in the New York Times from James Townsend, who was an old newspaper man who worked on a lot of big papers and worked with Bennett on the Herald. He said, of all the people he'd worked with, quote, Mr. Bennett always seemed to me to be the most difficult to understand from any ordinary viewpoint. In fact, I doubt whether Mr. Bennett always seemed to me to be the most difficult to understand from any ordinary viewpoint. In fact, I doubt whether Mr. Bennett ever understood himself. He says, he explained the old Philadelphia lady query to me in Paris by saying that just so long as there was an average income of jocose, but more often indignant and abusive letters about this letter at the Paris Herald office, he would continue to publish it, which is not really an explanation. he would continue to publish it, which is not really an explanation.

Starting point is 00:23:09 I gather he just thought it was funny, and standards back then were different. We talked about this a bit in the stories about the newspaper hoaxes in the 1870s about UFOs, that in Mark Twain's day, newspapers would run hoaxes and sort of jokes on the readers much more often than you would now. Oh, I see. I see. So it looks terrible to me now. Oh, I see. I see. So it looks terrible to me now. I mean, that's the last thing you want to do with a newspaper is play games with your readers, but evidently he thought it was funny. Bennett died in 1918, and I'd merkely surmise that the paper instantly withdrew the letter as soon as he was safely gone

Starting point is 00:23:39 because it vanished after that. But it has appeared since then. On December 22, 1944, the New York Herald Tribune reprinted the letter in order to celebrate the liberation of Paris. So they ran the whole old Philadelphia lady letter again with the message, the mailbag is now open. And presumably they received a few letters about that as well. So it's Greg's turn this week to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him with a situation, and he's going to have to try to figure it out asking only yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:24:12 This week's puzzle was sent in by Lily Geller, and she does note that is with many such poor puzzles, it's a bit morbid. We haven't done a lethal one in at least a couple of episodes now, so we're definitely due for somebody to die in the lateral thinking puzzles. So here we go. Thanks for the warning. A man dies at a sporting event. Everyone involved is arrested, but no one is charged with his death.

Starting point is 00:24:36 Why? Wow. Wow. That's an interesting one. It's not a soccer match, is it? No, it's not a soccer match. Would you say it's a sporting event in which people normally have some risk of getting killed, like a bullfight or something? Not usually.

Starting point is 00:24:58 So this isn't something where he expected to die? That is correct. You say everyone involved... Is arrested. Everyone involved in his death. Okay, let's back up. Okay. A sporting event means there was some sort of contest taking place and there were spectators. Correct. And officials? Presumably. Okay. More than one player? Yes. More player yes more than two players probably not wow i'm not sure okay one oh so we won't call him a player one person undertaking some sporting event incorrect okay no that's progress though that gives me something to hold on to.

Starting point is 00:25:48 One person was... One athlete. Can I call him that? No. Probably not. God. Square one. Can you read it again?

Starting point is 00:26:03 A man dies at a sporting event. Everyone involved is arrested, but no one is charged with his death. So the man is not an athlete, not participating in the sport or game or whatever it is. He's a spectator? Yes. Dies. Yes. Everyone involved is arrested.

Starting point is 00:26:19 But no one is charged with his death. So they're arrested for some other reason? Yes. Everyone involved. Okay, so he's one of some other reason? Yes. Everyone involved. Okay, so he's one of several spectators. Yes. Do I need to know what kind of sporting event it was? Yes. I do.

Starting point is 00:26:34 Okay, and so my earlier question was that you said there's not more than one participant in this sporting event? No, no, I didn't say that. Is it a team? Is it a sport? Yes, I think you would call it a sport. A team sport? No. So like tennis? Something like that? No, not really. It's not just two contestants? Two participants? It probably is, as far as I know. I'm terrible at knowing my sports really well. Did this really happen, I should ask? It's based on a true story.

Starting point is 00:27:09 Really? Yes. Do we need to know the location, like the geographic? No. Okay. And you said it would be useful to know what the sporting event was. Yes. Is this Olympic?

Starting point is 00:27:24 No. And you say it's not. Would you call it a game ah most people call it like you know football or basketball you call those games no i don't think you would call this a game um so it's more like you know shot put or something like that where someone's trying to... No, it's not like that either. But you wouldn't call it a game. Would you call it a contest between multiple athletes? No, I wouldn't. But you'd say there's one... I'm not getting any purchase here at all.

Starting point is 00:27:58 You said you wouldn't call it a team sport. I would not call it a team sport. Or a game, but it's not an individual athlete trying to accomplish something. I wouldn't use those words. Is there equipment involved? Let's do that. Like a ball or a javelin or something. There is, but that's going to mislead you.

Starting point is 00:28:16 Okay, so let's say. That's not what you're going to think of. The equipment is not necessary to the playing of the sport. Let's say that to be as helpful as possible. Is it a martial art, some kind of actual physical fight? Not a martial art, but boxing or something. Some kind of actual physical fight. Let's go with that.

Starting point is 00:28:38 Is it a martial art? No. Is it boxing? No. Wrestling? No. What am I not thinking of? Something like that. No. Is it boxing? No. Wrestling? No. What am I not thinking of?

Starting point is 00:28:48 Something like that. Closer, more along those lines than anything else you've said. Okay, some kind of contest between individuals. Yes. You wouldn't call it a game. I think I'm on the right track. But you wouldn't call it a fight? It is fight but it's not wrestling boxing what am i missing fencing no um

Starting point is 00:29:14 okay so between two people would you say no more than two no More than two. No. Think how you worded that question. Think very carefully about every word in that question. I don't remember what I said. It's a contest. Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Between more than one person? No. You said no. It's not a contest between more than one person. Correct. But not fewer than one person? No. You said no. It's not a contest between more than one person. Correct. But not fewer than one person. That's correct. It's a contest of one person?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Correct. You're making an assumption. It's not a contest at all. It is a contest. It is a person. It's not a person involved. Yes. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:30:05 So it's some other species besides human beings. Yes. Horse race. No. A race of some kind. No. I already said it was a fight of some kind. A fight among animals. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:14 Animals of the same species? Yes. Like a cockfight? Yes. It is a cockfight. It is a cockfight. But the person who dies is a human being, a spectator, watching a cockfight. Yes. And this really happened.

Starting point is 00:30:27 Something very similar, yes. Okay, so there's a group of people watching a cockfight. Yeah. And one of them is a man who dies. Yes. And a number of other people are arrested. Yeah. So why would they be arrested?

Starting point is 00:30:40 Because cockfights are illegal? Yes. Okay, so I still need to know how he died though right yeah is it associated with the actual cockfight or do you have like a heart attack or something no uh was he injured yeah by the birds yeah and got like an infection or something or just bled yeah yeah i mean you mostly have it um the man was at an illegal cockfight where roosters have sharp blades strapped to their limbs he suffered a fatal cut to his leg when a rooster attacked him um and then for this

Starting point is 00:31:12 puzzle the other people involved were arrested for the participation in cockfighting but none could be held directly responsible for his death so lily says that this is actually based on something that actually happened in california in 2011. The police arrived to break up a cockfight and everybody fled, but this man had been stabbed in the leg by a rooster and later died at a hospital. She includes a link to the NPR account of the story, which we'll have in our show notes. And I thought the best part of the story was, just last month, the Daily Mail reported that a rooster slashed its owner's throat in India.

Starting point is 00:31:47 Oh, my God. According to the mail, the rooster attacked after its owner forced it into the fighting ring. And I'm like, yay for the rooster. Good for the rooster. Score one for the rooster. So, thanks so much to Lily and everyone else who sends us in puzzles for us to use. We really appreciate getting puzzles in from the listeners.

Starting point is 00:32:05 And so, if you have any you'd like to send us, please do. You can send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 fascinating tidbits.

Starting point is 00:32:30 At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click podcast in the sidebar. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by clicking the donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you have any questions or comments about the show,

Starting point is 00:32:55 you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 048-The Shark Arm Affair

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