Futility Closet - 078-Snowshoe Thompson
Episode Date: October 19, 2015In the 1850s, settlers in western Nevada were cut off from the rest of the world each winter by deep snow. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll learn about their lifeline, Norw...egian immigrant John Thompson, who for 20 years carried mail, medicine, and supplies through 90 miles of treacherous snowdrifts on a pair of homemade skis. We'll also hear listener contributions regarding prison camp escape aids in World War II and puzzle over how lighting a cigarette results in a lengthy prison sentence. Sources for our feature on Snowshoe Thompson: Alton Pryor, Classic Tales in California History, 1999. Erling Ylvisaker, Eminent Pioneers, 1934. Kay Grant, "'Snowshoe' Thompson: The Norwegian Who Mastered the Rugged Sierra Nevada to Deliver the U.S. Mail," Wild West 18:4 (December 2005): 10, 68-69. "'Snowshoe' Thompson Finally Gets His Due," Deseret News, May 15, 1976. Alan Drummer, "Miracle on Skis," Milwaukee Journal, March 1, 1985. Larry Walsh, "'Snowshoe' Thompson Knew How to Carry the Mail," Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 26, 1992. "Snowshoe Thompson," Carroll Herald, Dec. 22, 1886. Red Smith, "Snowshoe Thompson Would Have Chuckled," Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 18, 1960. Listener mail: Wikipedia, Snakes and Ladders. "Clutty and His Escape Devices," in Ian Dear, Escape and Evasion, 2004. H. Keith Melton, Ultimate Spy, 1996. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener David White, who sent these corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. 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!
Transcript
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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 78. I'm Greg Ross.
And I'm Sharon Ross. In the 1850s, settlers in western Nevada were cut off from the rest
of the world each winter by deep snow in the California mountains.
In today's show, we'll learn about their lifeline, Norwegian immigrant John Thompson,
who regularly carried mail, medicine, and supplies through 90 miles of treacherous terrain on a pair of homemade skis.
We'll also hear listener contributions on prison camp escape aids in World War II,
and puzzle over how lighting a cigarette lands a man in prison.
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This podcast would not still be here if it weren't for you.
John Albert Thompson was born in Telemark County in Norway in 1827,
but his father died when he was 10 years old,
and the family moved to the American Midwest,
first to Illinois to settle on a farm there,
and then moved around to Missouri and then Iowa and Wisconsin.
But John apparently missed the mountains of his native Norway,
and when the California Gold Rush came, he drove a herd of milk cows to California
and settled in a town called Placerville, which is east of Sacramento,
and worked there as a miner and found that he didn't care for that
and finally bought a ranch in the Sacramento Valley and probably would have remained a
California farmer for the rest of his days if he hadn't chanced to read an ad in the Sacramento
Union in 1856 when he was 29 years old about the difficulty of getting mail across the snows of the
Sierra Nevada to the people in the Utah Territory. Just a bit of geography here. California is on
the American West Coast, and if you go east from there, you wind up in the Utah Territory. Just a bit of geography here. California is on the American West Coast,
and if you go east from there, you wind up in the state of Nevada,
which at that time was the Utah Territory.
But to get there, you have to go across big, scary mountains,
the Sierra Nevada, which are as much as 12,000 feet high,
and became completely impassable, apparently, in the winter.
And there are settlers in Nevada who depended on people getting through to them
with mail and supplies and medicine.
So it was a big problem that they were cut off by the snows in the winter,
and the post office didn't know what to do about this.
The ad that John read read like this,
People lost to the world. Uncle Sam needs carrier.
People living east of the Sierra Nevada mountains and west of Salt Lake
lose contact with the outside world as winter snows cut off all communications.
The greatest cry from the people is for mail.
Congress passed a bill August 18, 1856,
providing for a post route from Placerville, California to Genoa, Utah Territory.
So far, no one has come to accept the mail-carrying job this year,
according to Mr. A.M. Thatcher, postmaster of Placerville.
So he's not going to have a lot of competition if he wants the job.
Yeah, and this was a big problem.
Even in the warmer months, you could get across from California into Nevada through the mountains using horses and mules and wagons.
But that, even in itself, could take weeks.
And in the winter, it was just completely almost off the table.
There were snow drifts of up to 30 feet deep, and as I said, the Sierras were about 10,000 feet high to begin with.
So they're looking for someone to brave all this.
Yes.
Just to get the mail through.
To get the mail through.
This is, the high Sierras are where the Donner Party had been trapped,
just to give you a feel for this, 10 years earlier in 1846.
And during the winter, the best anyone had thought to do
was to make the crossing on snowshoes,
which are what we today call snowshoes, which are sort of the oval-webbed make the crossing on snowshoes, which are the, what we today call
snowshoes, which is sort of the oval-webbed Canadian and Native American snowshoes that
people can use to walk on snow. But even that took more than a month. It was just, the trip
from Placerville to Genoa was 90 miles, but getting there is really difficult.
And the person making it would have to bring enough supplies for themselves,
you know, a month's worth of supplies, presumably.
Plus the mail itself.
Right.
But fortunately, John Thompson had grown up in Norway and had some experience with what he called, today we would call skis, which were relatively new.
They called them snowshoes, which is where he eventually got the nickname Snowshoe Thompson, but it meant they were referring to the skis.
And skis were relatively
new in North America there. No one in this part of the world had seen them before. So what he did
anyway, after he read this ad, was he cut down a tree and made a pair of these skis like the ones
he'd used as a child in Norway. And they were very clumsy compared to what we think of today
as skis. They're made of green oak. They were 10 feet long and four and a half inches wide, and each one of them weighed 12 pounds, but they worked. Also, instead of using two poles,
the way he had learned to do this in Norway was to use one long pole held somewhat in the manner
of a tightrope walker just to sort of keep his balance and push himself along. So before he put
this all together and then before he applied for the job formally, he went to Placerville and
practiced maneuvering around in the snow to make sure he could do this all competently and then
presented himself to the postmaster and asked for the job and the postmaster understandably was
skeptical he had never seen skis before and everyone who had tried to make this trip in the
past had gone in groups thinking that was safer uh even men with mule teams had failed to make
the trip and they would sometimes find their frozen
bodies later on it was all quite grim so he is proposing to do this by himself yes with mules
yes so then he would have to carry everything yes the mail and all his supplies exactly and
did that the postmaster didn't want to give him the job but finally had to because no one else
wanted it like i said he had no competition uh competition. So Thompson set off east into the mountains and, to everyone's great surprise,
returned six days later with mail from Genoa, having traveled 180 miles round trip
through the snow, through the mountains, all the way into Utah territory and back.
And he did it in six days. Oh, wow.
Which is astounding.
That makes a great story in itself and it's very colorful and good for John Thompson.
What's astounding after this is that he volunteered to do this twice a month for 20 years for 20 years
the only connection between the west coast and these poor settlers in the utah territory was
one guy on skis who was volunteering for the job which is just astonishing he would start in
placerville which as i said is is just a few miles east of Sacramento,
in the heart of what was at the time the California Gold Country, and would go mostly east through the mountains into Genoa, is a little town in what's now Nevada on the eastern side
of Lake Tahoe, which was really at that point the next point of civilization to the east,
if you go east from Placerville.
So he'd go 90 miles east and 90 miles west,
and over the years it worked out that he could get all the way east in three days
and then take two days for the way back.
So he actually cut it down to five days because it was mostly downhill on the way back.
And this was, as you can imagine, unthinkably wonderful for the people in genoa i have one description of how they
received one of his early visits the cry of mail rang through the air followed by gasps and cries
and outright weeping but it was the weeping of joy the settlers crowded around thompson one an old
woman groped for his hand and would have kissed it if thompson had let her others thanked him over
and over thompson was a big man He stood six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds,
but he was just a little speck going through the wilderness here.
And on most of the trips, he met not one other human being.
And there were all sorts of hazards there.
I mean, apart from 50-foot snow drifts, there were bears and wolves
and just every kind of danger you can imagine.
And he did this twice a month for 20 years, which is just astonishing.
The route required him to ski in all conditions he had to cover he figured it out uh 25 to 40 miles a day to keep to the mail delivery schedule uh and as i said the snow drifts were some of his
50 feet deep he carried the mail in a bag on his back and it weighed on average 60 to 80 pounds
so that's without his supplies yeah and this is on
top of that on top of having 12 feet on each foot um he's carrying and the the mailbag on heavy
trips would be as much as 100 pounds which is and you have to carry that by yourself 90 miles each
way or 90 miles out to general at least right well and presumably he'd be bringing some mail back
that yes settlers would write and want and if he gets in any kind of trouble he's that's it there's no one to help
him yeah no one would even know exactly where he was or be able to get to him because they didn't
have his skis yeah right uh he would smear charcoal on his face to prevent snow blindness he wore a
wide-brimmed hat to counter sun glare and he traveled to answer your question about the supplies
he traveled very light i would say appallingly light.
It's scary even to read about this.
He carried only a handful of jerked beef
and a few dried biscuits in his pockets.
That's it for food.
He brought no water at all.
He would just take a mouthful of snow
or get water from an icy stream if he passed one.
He carried no blankets.
He just had one jacket that he would wear
and he would bring matches to light fires along the way
as he needed them. He said, if I have my Mackinaw, I never freeze. Exercise keeps me warm. In fact, my problem,
even in blizzards, is not to keep from freezing, but rather that I sweat too easily. I have never
been cold in the mountains. When he couldn't find shelter in a storm, he would remove his skis and
actually dance until dawn. This happened at least once. And when I first read about it, that sounds
like a tall tale. It sounds like a sort of folk figure that didn't really exist.
Apparently what he was doing was dancing Norwegian folk dances to keep himself from falling asleep,
because that would have been the end if he couldn't light a fire. And apparently that
really did happen at least once. He never did suffer from cold or frostbite, though he did
rescue others, many others who did. And amazingly, this was pretty
much trackless. There were no maps of these routes that he eventually figured out, but he brought no
compass with him. He would use trees and streams and rocks and the stars to guide him, even though
these mountains were, some of them at least, higher than the ones that he was familiar with
from his childhood in Norway. So he was finding his way, even as he figured this out.
And he said he kept his bearings even when traveling through blinding snowstorms,
even when he had none of these clues.
He just had some inbuilt natural sense of direction.
He told one reporter,
I was never lost. I can't be lost.
Something here in my head keeps me right.
Generally, he slept in snow and rock shelters
and generally avoided homes and cabins because they would tend to get buried in snow.
And apparently there was one incident where he came to an abandoned cabin that was deserted and mostly buried in snow and tried to get in by going down the chimney and got stuck.
And I have not been able to figure out the end of that particular story.
been able to figure out the end of that particular story. But I guess he decided after that that it was probably safer just to avoid homes and cabins and just to stick to sleeping out in the elements.
So as I say, he kept that up twice a month for 20 years, had all kinds of sort of ancillary
adventures along the way. He rescued many people. He found people just lost and wandering the
wilderness or unable to find their way to the town they were seeking. And if they were able to travel, he would put them on the back of his skis and just
convey them to wherever they were trying to go. One of them was a millionaire, C.J. Lucky Baldwin,
who he saved from a snowstorm. Baldwin offered to give him a reward, but Thompson turned him down,
saying that he did not accept money for saving lives. He did all sorts of miscellaneous small favors for people
who lived in the wilderness. He carried a pack of needles and a chimney for a kerosene lamp
so that a widower, a Mrs. Franklin, could continue her winter sewing. He brought violin strings for
Richard Cosser, a local fiddler, and the first issue of the Nevada newspaper, the Territorial
Enterprise, when that appeared on December 18th, 1858,
he carried that to the miners. He did, apart from this route I described that takes him from
Placerville to Genoa, he also was moving around the Sierras and the eastern foothills of the
mining communities in California. So a lot of the provisions, some of the historians write,
a lot of the provisions that came to the miners who were working in the gold rush came to them
historians write, a lot of the provisions that came to the miners who were working in the gold rush came to them brought by this one man, Snowshoe Thompson. In fact, in 1859, an unusual
blue rock showed up corrupting the gold-bearing ore in a mine at Washoe in Nevada, and they asked
him to take it to Sacramento to have it assayed, and it turned out to be silver ore that marked
the discovery of the famous Comstock load, which is the first major
discovery of silver ore in the United States.
So he pops up as a sort of little cameo player in a lot of big historic findings because
he was the one who was carrying things.
He was the only person in the winter months who could actually get around with any kind
of efficiency.
Also amazingly, I like this bit, he carried no weapon through all of this.
Oh, I was picturing him carrying a gun because you mentioned all the wildlife.
No, it seems like his trademark is just to
bring almost nothing at all. Just have
the mail on your back and your skis and just try to get
through it. And you're going to fight off bears with the mail?
He didn't ever. He became apparently very
close to meeting bears but never actually
encountered one. But he did meet a company of wolves
in the winter of 1857. He just
came over a hill and they were there. They were
working on the carcass of a dead animal.
And he wrote about this later
as he was trying to just get past them
unobtrusively and just go about his business.
Don't mind me! But they lined up
as he passed. He came within
25 yards of them and he said he passed them like a general
reviewing his troops. He wrote,
Just when I was opposite them, the leader of the pack
threw back his head and uttered a loud and prolonged
howl. All the others did the pack threw back his head and uttered a loud and prolonged howl.
All the others did the same, a more doleful and terrific sound I never heard.
I thought it meant my death.
The awful cry rang across the silent valley.
But they let him go.
He just, what else could you do?
He didn't have a gun or anything.
He just had to hope for the best.
And he just kept going.
And he turned when he was almost out of sight and looked back, and they had just gone back to the carcass.
So that's the closest he ever came to getting devoured by wolves.
His most famous rescue, I mentioned that he saved a lot of people,
but the most famous one happened in Christmas 1856 when he found a mountain man and trader named James Sisson
who was lying in a deserted cabin with his boots frozen to his feet.
He had been eating raw flour for 12 days.
The Old West was just awful.
You see enough movies and you start to think it just seems sort of exciting,
but I think a lot of it was just sheer misery.
He had been in the cabin for 12 days eating raw flour because that's all he had.
For the first four days, he'd been without a fire,
so when he finally found some matches in the cabin and started a fire,
he found that he couldn't get his boots off his feet.
His feet had frozen.
The boots had frozen to his feet.
And by the 12th
day, when Thompson found him, his legs were purple up to the knees with gangrene.
Oh. Oh.
So Thompson found him just in time. He had been planning the next day to amputate his
own legs with an axe.
Oh, my. Oh, my.
Sorry.
I'm just picturing, like, I mean, wouldn't he bleed to death? Oh, my gosh.
But it was going to, I mean, it was that or.
Yeah.
So Thompson found him, made as comfortable as he could, and asked him not to perform the imputation until, he said, give me three days to go try to get help before you do anything.
And then he skied the 30 miles to Genoa to get help.
He got six men to agree to come back with him to the cabin, but those men weren't as efficient on him.
Nobody was.
Oh, yeah.
So that slowed him down, took him two days to get back.
on him. Nobody was traveling. So that slowed him down, took him two days to get back. They got back on the evening of the second day and built a sled planning to bring the guy to Genoa. But then two
feet of snow fell that night. So it took him two days to get back to Genoa rather than one. But
they managed eventually to get him back there, only to find out that the doctor there said it
would be necessary to amputate Sisson's legs. And then he needed chloroform to use as an anesthetic
before he could do the surgery. And wouldn't you know it, there was no chloroform to use as an anesthetic before he could do the surgery.
And wouldn't you know it, there was no chloroform anywhere in Genoa.
So Thompson set out west now across the Sierras again, 130 miles this time,
because he went all the way through the mountains back to Placerville, which was the usual endpoint. Found that they didn't have any chloroform there either,
so had to keep going west into Sacramento, where they finally had some,
and then go east all the way back past Placerville through the mountains to Genoa
to get it back to the doctor so they could do the operation.
In all that means, Thompson traveled 400 miles with almost no sleep to save Sisson.
That last bit was almost 48 hours of continuous skiing.
But it worked. Sisson was gravely ill and lost his feet, but he did survive
and finally went back east after all that, and who can blame him?
So to add to all this, the capper on all this whole story
is that to everyone's great shame,
Thompson was never paid for any of this.
He wasn't paid.
It was all volunteered.
I thought it was a job that he'd applied for.
It was a job, but it came down to the fact
that he had no written contract,
and it was hard to get the government back in Washington
to pay him the U.S. mail.
Oh.
He originally carried privately for a man named Chorpenning,
but he had failed in business and never paid him.
And then for a while, he carried the U.S. mail for a few years but had no formal contract.
So what it came down to is that they could never get anyone to actually loosen up the purse strings
and actually pay him for everything he'd been doing.
In fact, it was only his industrious farming in the off-season that kept his family going.
He had a wife and a son through all of this.
In 1869, the Nevada legislature appealed to the federal government to pay him $6,000 for one stretch of runs, but that was ignored.
Finally, in 1874, as he neared 50 years old, he decided to travel to Washington himself and make his case, which seems reasonable.
I mean, he'd put in 20 years. He deserves to get something for 20 years of service. And hit kind of another adventure on the way out
there. On his way to Washington, he got as far as Wyoming and hit these huge, the train he was on,
hit these huge snow drifts. And even if all day's shoveling couldn't free, the train was being
brought along by four engines. And even with a lot of shoveling, they couldn't get it through.
So finally, he persuaded another passenger to walk along the line with him through deep snow
all the way to Laramie, which is 35 miles walking through deep snow just to be making some progress.
When they got to Laramie, the trains there were stalled as well, and the other passenger had had
quite enough of walking through deep snow and gave up. So Thompson kept walking 56 miles more
through deep snow to Cheyenne, Wyoming. He had
walked a total of 100 miles, and the townspeople there when he showed up said he was the first man
in from the coast that they'd seen in two weeks. Finally, from there, he was able to catch a train
to Missouri and then on to Washington, where newspapers hailed him as the first man to beat
the iron horse across the continent on foot. But even then, he got a lot of courteous hearing in
Washington and a lot of promises, but no money. And appallingly, it wasn't until 1975 when a congressional resolution finally paid the $6,000 that he was owed.
And that's only $6,000 for like one stretch, you said, not even for the whole 20 years.
Yeah, it's not clear how much he was owed or by whom.
There are different accounts.
But six, I mean, that's for 20 years.
And especially he was so vital to
so many people it wasn't yeah i mean he deserved i think probably more than that so anyway it wasn't
until 1975 that anybody finally gave him anything at all so that was uh a hundred years after his
death so he was contributed that money was finally contributed to a fund to build a monument to him
which is fitting at boreal ridge which is and there and that's high in the Sierra, that's sort of in the country
where he used to pass all those years.
There's a 10-foot sculpture of him there that was dedicated on the 100th anniversary of
his death.
So that's something, at least, a bit late, a century too late, but at least he got some
commemoration for all that work.
He himself had finally died of appendicitis that developed into pneumonia in 1876 at age 49, and he's buried in Genoa. His wife had a headstone of white marble placed on his
grave. It's engraved with the words, gone but not forgotten, and there's a pair of crossed skis at In episode 76, Greg covered how the British Secret Service used playing cards and board games to help POWs in World War II.
We had a few questions about some of the details of the story, and some of our listeners were able to answer them for us.
Greg had mentioned that MI9 smuggled escape aids into POW camps in board games such as Monopoly and
Snakes and Ladders. And Duncan Reynolds wrote in to answer my question about the second game.
Duncan said, Sharon wondered in today's podcast whether Snakes and Ladders was the same as Chutes
and Ladders. That's exactly right. In Britain, instead of chutes, there are snakes. If you land
on the head of a snake, you slide down to the end of the tail. I hadn't realized, but apparently it originated in India with snakes centuries ago, and the board
was covered in heavy religious symbolism. When it came to the UK in the Victorian era, the symbolism
stayed in the forms of snakes, ladders, and squares named after virtues, vices, rewards, and punishments.
For those who aren't familiar with the board game,
it's pretty much what I vaguely remembered from my own childhood,
which is a very simple game, entirely luck-based,
where you try to move from the bottom square of the board up to the top square.
If you land on a ladder, you get to climb up and improve your position, but if you land on a snake or a chute in the U.S.,
you have to slide back down and lose ground.
What I didn't know until Duncan wrote was
that it was based on an Indian game that dates back to the 16th century and that has its roots
in morality lessons. While in the U.S., we say that the game is based on luck, the original game in
India emphasized karma or destiny. The top of the board that you were aspiring to featured gods and
angels and majestic beings, while the rest of the board pictured animals were aspiring to featured gods and angels and majestic beings, while the
rest of the board pictured animals, plants, and people. So a player's progression up the board
was supposed to represent a whole life journey complicated by virtues and vices. The ladders,
which would help you progress, represented virtues such as generosity, faith, and humility,
while the snakes, which moved you backwards, represented vices such as lust,
anger, murder, and theft. I think I've managed to go my whole life without ever playing this game,
so maybe this is an ignorant question, but if it's entirely luck-based, then your life just
sort of happens to you, right? And virtues and vices wouldn't really have any bearing on how
you do. I guess, well, that's why maybe in the India, with the religious ideas of India, it was based more on karma or destiny, right?
And isn't it supposed to be like the way you behave in one life then comes back to influence you on the next?
No, I understand that, but in the game.
Right, it's not like you're choosing vices or virtues because it's entirely luck-based,
it's like you're choosing vices or virtues because it's entirely luck based but i guess it's just to show you that if you do follow virtues you progress up the ladder and if you
choose these vices you slide back um i don't know the lesson of the game was supposed to be
that a person could attain salvation through doing good, but the less virtuous would be reborn as lower forms of life.
But you're right.
It's not like you get to choose.
Like, hopefully we get to choose in life.
Yeah.
I mean, I think I'm all for the message there, but I don't see how that gets enacted on the board.
Maybe I'm just not seeing it.
Well, I guess, I mean, again, like I said, in India, there was supposed to be this emphasis on destiny.
But again, that would imply you're destined to be good or bad.
I don't know.
Also, it was interesting.
In India, the number of ladders was less than the number of snakes, which reflected their idea that the path of good would be much more difficult to stay on than a path of sins.
All right.
I don't actually know if this was intended as a children's game.
Like in the U.S., this was entirely a game played by like six-year-olds, very young children.
The children's game?
Like in the U.S. this was entirely a game played by like six-year-olds, very young children.
But I mean, you know, and maybe, but in India it's like, you know, lust and murder and theft.
I mean, is that an appropriate children's game?
But, okay.
Also, how did a children's game find its way into a Nazi POW camp?
I mean, why were they, of all the games they could have been playing. I know, that's why I questioned it when you raised it.
Like, why this game?
Because it's usually played by such young children.
But maybe the British game is played by older kids or adults.
It's so luck-based that I don't know.
But the game was changed somewhat when it was brought to England,
but that was in the Victorian era too.
So I don't know how popular this was around World War II,
or maybe they were just counting on the Germans not to know it.
That I could see.
But when it was brought over to England,
it then was changed to reflect the Victorian values.
So players would reach squares of fulfillment, grace, and success by using ladders that were called thrift, penitence, and industry.
The good old Victorian virtue of industry.
That's really overbearing.
And snakes of indulgence, disobedience, and indolence caused you to end up in illness,
disgrace, and poverty. Also, the English version contained the same number of snakes and ladders,
so that better reflected a cultural idea that for every sin you commit, there would exist a chance for redemption. It was more balanced between the virtues and the vices. So this was all, to me, this all seems very serious.
I mean, you know, it's like you end up in disgrace and poverty, you know, kind of thing.
And the U.S. version was just so trivial compared to this.
So there's no morality in the U.S. one?
It's not as nearly as heavy of morality.
First of all, when it was released as Chutes and Ladders in the U.S., and then that was by Milton Bradley in 1943, they changed the snakes to Chutes because just snakes were just
too upsetting for U.S. children. So they've already kind of dampened it down and made it
a little more silly. But so you have what looked like sort of playground slides, and they called
them Chutes. And I didn't actually remember what the board looked like until I saw a photograph of it. But here they had like more ladders, which would show a child doing a good or sensible deed,
like eating a sandwich, and then moving up a ladder and being big and strong, you know.
And the chutes, there would be children engaging in mischievous or foolish behaviors, like pulling
a cat's tail and then ending up scratched.
So that's your great morality lessons
got moved down to a child eating green apples
and then getting sick to its stomach.
So it's really watered down from the heavier, older versions.
But there's still consequences.
There still were consequences, right, for your behaviors.
And apparently the game has been used
in a number of countries
and to teach different types of lessons
and with variations in other countries,
including, I thought this was cute,
a Canadian version that used toboggan runs
instead of chutes or snakes.
I think she needed to know that in Canada.
It's too cold for snakes there, I don't know,
or too cold for slides.
Another question I raised during episode 76 was whether a compass wouldn't be too big to fit inside a Monopoly board,
as all the compasses I've ever seen are definitely too large for that.
Lachlan at Cliff wrote in to say,
Hey, Futility Closet, I can answer the question posed in your podcast about how you fit a compass in a Monopoly board.
As it so happens, there is a book published in the UK written by former members of MI9 in
World War II who worked on the escape aids, and it's called Escape and Evasion. The writers there
go into more detail. The compasses they hid were actually small magnetized bars with the directions
marked in luminous paint, with the idea that the POWs could rig them up on a piece of string or
float them in a cup of water. These little bars could also be hidden in pens as the clip and tie pins.
There were also tiny floating compasses hidden in airmen's buttons that could be unscrewed.
An amusing little tale says that partway through the war,
the Germans worked out the button trick,
so the British changed the direction of the screw thread.
Other highlights were saw blades hidden in the metal strips
used to bind the boxes together in transit.
Devious.
It is.
The book Lachlan mentioned sounds absolutely terrific,
but we weren't able to get a hold of a copy in time for this episode.
But what Lachlan describes certainly does help answer my question
about fitting a compass in such a small space.
And we got further help on both this question and our question
about why you might want playing cards to be flammable. Remember we were
wondering that? From Moritz Stocker
who wrote to say, I'm very
excited to be able to contribute for once and
even though I'm probably not the first or the
only one to write in on this. Secrecy
spies and ciphers being a major hobby
of mine, I remembered reading about escape
playing cards in a book and looked it up.
The cards actually had maps
underneath the top layer. Each card had a different part of a larger map and a number and looked it up. The cards actually had maps underneath the top layer.
Each card had a different part of a larger map and a number to identify it.
That way, prisoners could copy out important routes and other information useful for escape
attempts.
If the cards you mentioned were similar, that would explain the need for them to be flammable.
I see.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
That would make sense if there was something incriminating on them that you needed to destroy.
The book Moritz was referencing for his email was Ultimate Spy by H. Keith Milton.
And Moritz had attached some images of some pages from the book in German.
And I was very fortunately able to get a hold of an English copy of the book, as my German is nowhere near as good as Moritz's English is.
And this book does show pictures of playing cards where you would soak off a top layer
to reveal these hidden map sections
as Moritz had mentioned
it also has photos of things
like a really teeny compass
and other aids hidden in a hairbrush
a pen and a pipe
interestingly you could even smoke the pipe
with like a map hidden in it
and a little tiny compass in it
and that showed how really tiny a compass could be
they have like just a little red dot
to indicate north.
And they really were much, much smaller than any compasses I've ever seen.
And similar to Lachlan's information about the buttons with reverse screw threads,
Ultimate Spy showed a pen with such threads so that if you tried to unscrew the ends
with the usual counterclockwise motion, you would only end up tightening them.
So that was similar to Lachlan's mention of the buttons.
It's funny how game-like this all feels.
I mean, I know it's all best for wartime measures, but it just feels like there's dueling clevernesses.
Almost like a chess game, but more 3D.
That's funny.
Well, thanks so much to everyone who wrote in to us.
And if you have any questions or comments for us, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.
Greg's going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.
I'm going to present him with an odd-sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions.
Are you ready?
I hope so.
You hope so.
We have a David White puzzle to do
today. Excellent. Excellent. David sent in this puzzle. A man stepped onto the front porch of a
house in New York and lit a cigarette. He wasn't aware that the state of New York required that
cigarettes be made with fire safe paper to prevent accidental fires. Because of his ignorance of that All right.
Did this really happen?
It sounds like it did.
Yes, this did really happen.
Do I need to know when it happened?
No.
Do I need to know where?
No, other than, I mean, it's in New York, but that's not material.
Okay.
Is his identity important?
His specific identity?
He has a specific identity, but I don't think you would have heard of him.
Uh, is his occupation important?
Uh, only indirectly.
Okay, a man steps onto the front porch of a house in New York.
Yes.
With a house.
Yes.
And lights a cigarette.
Yes.
The cigarette hadn't been made with the regulation fireproof paper?
It had been.
What kind of paper did you say this is?
It's, um, fire safe paper, which David explains, What kind of paper did you say this is? It's fire safe paper,
which David explains, because I didn't know this either. It's a safety measure for cigarettes that
will cause them to self-extinguish if left unattended so that they won't start accidental
fires. That sounds like a good thing. It sounds like a good thing. But because this man was
unaware that New York required that of its cigarettes, he ended up being sentenced to a
lengthy prison term. Okay, got it. But you're saying, just to be clear here, he was unaware of it, but nonetheless,
the cigarette did have this paper. Right. It was the correctly made cigarette. Yes.
Okay. So it met the law.
Does the fact that he did this on the porch matter? Is that important?
Not highly. I mean, it would, the same, whatever happened,
the same thing would have happened if he was inside the house, say.
Okay. Are other people involved?
Yes.
More than one other person?
I'm not sure.
Was a fire started?
At some point?
No.
I mean, apart from lighting the cigarette.
Right, yes.
No.
No.
Okay.
The cigarette acted as it's supposed to, according to New York law.
Meaning it went out.
And self-extinguished, yes.
Okay.
All right, let me back up.
You said other people are involved.
Yeah.
And I didn't get what you said.
You said probably more than one other person?
Yeah, I don't know exactly how many people.
So I'm not supposed to have a number of people.
Yeah, at least one other person.
Should I go for the number?
No, no, no, it doesn't matter.
Were they in the house, these other people?
Yes.
So he's on the outside of the house.
Right.
The other people who were involved were inside the house.
Right.
Do we need to know more about the house?
No, no.
It's just an ordinary house.
Yes.
Do we need to know specifically where it is in New York?
No.
It's just a house in New York.
Yes.
Okay, so he goes on the porch.
Do I need to know why he's on the porch?
Yes.
Did he go out to smoke a cigarette?
No.
Okay. It's just getting more interesting. porch do i need to know why he's on the porch did he go out to smoke a cigarette no okay a man yes okay he's in the house with all these other people no no a man steps on the porch
steps under the porch of a house in new york yes in which there are some people yes of whom he is
not one correct lights a cigarette yes but not to smoke it correct
but by cigarette we mean the little tobacco we sure do device just like anyone would expect
um okay he doesn't light the cigarette till he gets onto the porch right is he planning to enter
the house no is he planning to set a fire not Not exactly. Okay. Close, though. Okay.
But then you said the man's occupation is important.
He's not important.
It is for the whole answer, but not for solving the puzzle.
Is there a crime here involved?
Yes.
Is the man intending to commit a crime?
Yes.
Okay.
To harm the people inside the house?
Yes.
Is there some past history that I need to uncover about?
There's a past history, but you don't need to get that.
All right, so he just wants
to harm these people in some way.
But not by setting a fire.
Not exactly.
Okay.
That's vaguely close,
but that's not the exact game.
Okay, got it.
So they're inside the house.
He steps onto the porch.
He lights the cigarette.
Right.
Successfully.
Yes.
The cigarette is made
of this fire-safe paper.
Right.
He lit the cigarette intending that it would burn for some time. Yes. But it went out. Yes. The cigarette is made of this fire safe paper. Right. He lit the cigarette intending that it would burn for some time.
Yes.
But it went out.
Yes.
Because he didn't plan on that.
Right.
But I still need to work out why he would step onto a porch.
Right.
Why else?
Light a cigarette without planning to smoke it.
So he lit the cigarette and just let it burn?
Yes.
Did he leave?
Yes.
So he goes onto the porch.
He goes onto the porch. Lights a cigarette. Yes. Does something with it. I he goes on to the port. He goes on to the port, lights a cigarette.
Yes.
Does something with it.
I'll come back to that.
Right.
And departs, expecting something to happen.
Yes.
All right.
That's exactly right.
Okay.
Was he using it as a fuse?
Yes.
Of some kind?
Yes.
All right.
For a bomb?
Yes.
An explosive of some kind.
And it just went out.
And it went out.
Leaving the evidence there. Leaving the evidence there with his dna on it yay that's as much as you're going to be able to get
which is great and it's very nice because nobody actually died somebody was intended to but nobody
actually prevented some people from dying um david says the man in question was stephen rossi
um head maintenance man and dictator over the Schenectady School
District in the early 2000s. Within his small kingdom, Steve's tyrannical rule extended over
not just his employees, but teachers, staff, and affiliates of the school district. While his
superiors remained ignorant or turned a blind eye towards accusations, Steve used his fiery temper,
outrageous and inappropriate behavior, manipulation, and severe retribution to control those around him.
He demanded absolute loyalty and encouraged a culture of backstabbing and ratting people out.
And when that didn't work, he resorted to more cruel actions.
Vandalism, arson, slashing tires, and even bombing houses of those who crossed him.
In 2001, Steve Rossi planted a homemade bomb on the front porch of a woman who had offended him.
He lit a cigarette and used it as the fuse for his bomb.
He was not a smoker, however, and didn't realize that cigarettes in New York were made with safety paper
designed to self-extinguish if left unattended.
As a result, the bomb failed to go off, and the police were able to get DNA evidence off the cigarette
that linked Steve Rossi to the crime.
In 2009, Steve was convicted
on 18 counts of felony, including arson and terrorism, and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
It's really funny that that's what got him.
Yeah, it's just his ignorance of how cigarettes worked in the state of New York.
It's a good thing they used that paper.
Well, thank you, David, for sending in another excellent puzzle. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.
That's another episode for us.
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Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. Thank you.