Futility Closet - 093-The Old Flying Days

Episode Date: February 8, 2016

In the early days of English aviation, journalist C.C. Turner seemed to be everywhere, witnessing bold new feats and going on some harrowing adventures of his own. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll sample Turner's record of Edwardian aviation, including his own clumsy first attempt to fly an airplane and a record-setting balloon voyage to Sweden. We'll also ponder the nuances of attempted murder and puzzle over a motel guest's noisemaking. 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. Sources for our feature on early aviation in England: Charles Cyril Turner, The Old Flying Days, 1927. Charles Cyril Turner, The Marvels of Aviation, 1917. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listeners J.C. and Brenna Lundberg, who found it in this collection. Sources for listener mail: Wikipedia, "Death of Sammy Yatim" (accessed Feb. 2, 2016). Diana Mehta, "Toronto Cop Found Not Guilty of Murdering Sammy Yatim, But Is Found Guilty of Attempted Murder," National Post, Jan. 25, 2016. Jillian Bell, "Forcillo Attempted Murder Verdict Explained," CBC News, Jan. 25, 2016. Alyshah Hasham, "Forcillo Guilty of Attempted Murder in Shooting Death of Sammy Yatim," Toronto Star, Jan. 25, 2016. Wendy Gillis and Alyshah Hasham, "'Mystery' Charge Only One That Sticks in Sammy Yatim Slaying," Toronto Star, Jan. 25, 2016. 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. 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 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 93. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In the early days of English aviation, journalist C.C. Turner seemed to be everywhere, witnessing bold new feats and going on some harrowing adventures of his own.

In today's show, we'll sample Turner's record of those exciting times, including his own clumsy first attempt to fly an airplane and a record-setting balloon voyage to Sweden. We'll also ponder the nuances of attempted murder and puzzle over a motel guest's noisemaking. And just a quick programming note, this coming week, Greg and I are going to be slogging through our taxes, which... I can't believe it's been a year since we said that. I know. We still remember it so vividly from last year.

And so our next new episode will be out in two weeks on February 22nd. I've been reading this week about the Edwardian journalist Charles Cyril Turner, who was the world's first modern aviation correspondent. He was a newspaper reporter in England at about the time that the first real significant advances were being made in aviation in the early years of the 20th century and sort of became interested in it himself and started writing about it both for other aviators and just for general newspapers at the time. And he has a gift that I found that only some writers seem to have, which is both to recognize that there was a really significant event happening in technological history and having a gift for sort of presenting that in a way that's

really accessible, both to people of his own time and to people today. We're sort of jaded now that the first human-made machines are now leaving the solar system. It's easy to forget that only 100 years ago we were still struggling to get off the ground at all. And Turner, what I like about him is that he understood how important that was and wrote it down for people today to read about. Here's an excerpt from the preface to his 1927 memoir, which is called The Old Flying Days. This seems the right moment to attempt to place on record a very remarkable and extraordinarily interesting struggle, a struggle against the unmeasured forces of nature, a struggle against inertness, even prejudice, not only of the community generally,

but of scientific men, a struggle marked by heroic sacrifice of life and by a noble giving of means and leisure by many who preferred to pursue in faith a glorious idea than to give their energies to work which promised more immediate and more solid reward. The press, at least the European press, was skeptical about this whole endeavor of trying to get up into the air, and they would tend to dwell on misfortunes and difficulties rather than successes. The Daily Mail described the Wright Brothers' invention as a balloonless airship, which is a

strange way to put that, and this poem won a Limerick Prize in the London Opinion in 1907. There was a young man of Mark Lane who constructed an aeroplane. It flew, so we heard, like a beautiful bird. His tombstone is pretty but plain. Anyway, Turner seemed to understand all this and wrote about it entertainingly and beautifully. Here, just as an example, is a description of his own first flight in an airplane. This is on April 11th, 1911, which is eight years after the Wright brothers' first flight. This is what it was like for him. The mechanic starts up the propeller and you hear your own voice say, contact, switch off, contact, off, until the propeller runs and the mechanic steps back. You know the moment has arrived and you've got to raise that right

hand of yours as a signal to the mechanics who are hanging onto the machine to let go. And then there's nothing for it. You've either got to attempt that flight or else to switch off, turn off the petrol, step out of the machine, and say that on the whole you think you'd better give up the silly idea of flying. Well, of course, you cannot do that. Up went my right hand, and the machine began to move forward. I managed to keep it straight, and the business had been so well drilled into me that at the right moment, when I could see the ground sweeping past at the usual rate, I kicked off with the very slightest preliminary depression of the elevator, followed by an instant pulling back of the lever. The machine was off the ground, but good heavens, I was not going straight, wobbling from left to right and right to left. After all, my hands were

the hands of a clodhopper, and there was the end of the ground. I had got to come down somehow from my lofty 30 feet or so. I switched off in panic and came to a stop on the ground, looking about me in bewilderment as I realized that I had not wrecked the machine. There I waited for the arrival of the doubtless, agitated, and mocking school and an indignant Joulerot. That's his instructor, Henri Joulerot. Instead, Joulerot runs up and says, very good old chap, now we'll turn you around and you must do it again. In fact, on a later flight, Turner comes down rather hard and actually breaks a skid on his undercarriage, and Joulerot only tells him, no pilot is any use until he has broken wood. So that gives an example of what this was like even for the aviators. They were figuring this out as they went along and making a lot of mistakes, but they were making steady and quite rapid progress at this moment in history.

The other thing I like about Turner is that he writes beautifully. His prose is beautiful, I think, and he's one of those writers who doesn't seem to realize that he writes beautifully. I just can't describe it. Here are some examples of that. He went up also in every kind of aircraft. He wrote quite a lot, and he's up in everything that was in the air in those days. A lot of the times he was in balloons. Here's an example just to show you what his prose is like. He says this is written about an experience alone in a very small balloon over Surrey on the last day of a beautiful May. And the thing I like about this is that he notices details, particularly here sounds that I think other writers might not have noticed.

Very slowly I approach a big wood. It would better express the situation were I to say that very slowly a big wood comes nearer to the balloon, for there is no sense of movement, and the earth below seems to be moving slowly past a stationary balloon. Fifteen hundred feet up in almost absolute silence, broken occasionally by the barking of a dog heard very faintly, or by a voice hailing the balloon, and by an occasional friendly creak of the basket and rigging if I move ever so slightly. Then, quite suddenly, I am aware of something new. and rigging if I move ever so slightly. Then, quite suddenly, I am aware of something new. Surely the most wonderful and the sweetest sound heard by mortal ears.

It is the combined singing of thousands of birds, of half the kinds which make the English spring so lovely. I do not hear one above the others. All are blended together in a wonderful harmony without change of pitch or tone, yet never wearying the ear. By very close attention, I seem to be able at times to pick out an individual song. No doubt at all there are wrens and chaffinches and blackbirds and thrushes, hedge sparrows, warblers, greenfinches and bullfinches, and a score of others by the hundred, and their singing comes up to me from that ten-acre wood in one sweet volume of heavenly music.

Here's one other example. This is also in a balloon. Here he is crossing the North Sea toward Belgium, and again he hears something that you can't hear in any other way. We were far from the coast and could not hear the thunder of waves breaking upon reefs or beach. But below us were the North Sea waves with white tops where the wind caught them. And we could hear the incessant murmur of the commotion of waters as the countless millions of waves and ripples sang together. Surely there is not in nature any sound quite like this, and only in a balloon can it be heard, for by the shore one hears only the turbulent noise of the waters breaking on land, and in any sort of ship the

noise of the ship itself makes what to our ears would seem discord. In 1907, the French aeronaut A.E. Goudron told Turner that he hoped to break the world record for distance, which at the time was a little more than a thousand miles, which is a lot. Goudron had already had one companion set up for this venture, and he wanted one more, and so he was approaching Turner about that, and they agreed that Turner could come along if he could get a newspaper to send him as a representative and to share in the cost, which he did. He got the Daily Graphic interested, and they took off from London on October 12, 1907. One of the things I like about this account is you get an actual description of what London looked like in 1907 from the air.

We don't have many of those. Yeah, yeah. I hadn't thought about that. I mean, you know, like you said, today we take it as commonplace that people can see or hear things from up in the air, but... But this is all brand new, which is really exciting. And it would just be such a different perspective on things that nobody had ever had before. Yeah, but it wasn't really in the public consciousness yet how momentous it was.

I mean, no one in those days could imagine what this was all going to turn into. What it was going to, right, exactly. So for now, it's a novelty, but if nothing else, like you say, it just gives you a new perspective on things that nobody else had ever had. So this is London from the air by night in 1907. Within a few minutes of leaving the ground, we were rewarded with one of the finest spectacles ever seen by the airmen. London's 150 square miles were spread westwards before our eyes as we crossed the Thames not far from Greenwich and gazed at the vast panorama. A crescent moon was not powerful enough to dim the stars, and we seemed to be poised in

the center of a vast illuminated globe whose dark sides were frosted with silver and gold, the roof glittering with the constellations seen at our height of 2,000 feet, as they never appear to the eyes of the Londoner. Below us lay the millions of lamps patterning the great city, the wide well-lit highways such as Oxford Street, conspicuous, and the dark band of the river braceleted by the lights of the bridges. The roar of the traffic came up to us in endless murmuring, and the whistling of trains and the barking of dogs came clearly to our ears. They passed over some quiet, dark country. Again, this is at night, and presently they had to decide whether to land or to cross over the North Sea. The wind now was taking them almost directly northeast. And he guesses they would have to go about 300 to 400 miles.

The striking thing about his account, to my mind, is that he doesn't seem, he never writes how dangerous all this was. If you're in a balloon, you can't really control where you're going, at least in 1907. And if they're going out over the North Sea, if the wind changes or if they just lose their way or come down too soon. Or anything goes wrong. That's it. The balloon was good for two days and nights, and he guessed that they had to go 300 or 400 miles,

but they can't even see at this point where they're going because it's dark. Anyway, he doesn't say any of that. That's just me making an observation that they're all risking their lives here. Anyway, they decided since the balloon was good for that long that they were going to make the attempt. So they crossed the coast near Yarmouth, he says, knowing that we were in for a long night vigil over the sea. Here's a little scene from early in their voyage. Before we left the coast

and shortly afterwards, Goudron provided us with a novel spectacle. He had brought some colored flares and lowering these to the end of our trail rope, he lighted them by electric current so that first green and then red and then white flares burst out below us, wasted their rays in the emptiness around,

but lit up the balloon itself so that the great globe above us and every rope was dazzlingly illuminated. They floated on, admiring the stars in the silence, but not really knowing quite where they were. And finally at 5 a.m. as the light began to,

as dawn began to approach, he could make out the clouds and he says the cloud scenery began to bestir itself. And here's just a description of some of the, what they saw. Again, these are all new to human eyes, mostly no one's, or almost no one is seeing clouds from this altitude so far in history. As if for our sole benefit, it began a long series of wonderful groupings. Across the northeast sky, a straight row of fantastic shapes appeared black as ink against the lightning sky. They resembled gigantic trees rearing themselves from a flat land covered with white mist. A red tinge appeared behind the row of cloud trees, which became blacker and more sharply defined. A lovely green hue suffused the

sky above the red. Almost suddenly, the row of strange tree shapes lifted to a higher level, or we sank. Then imperceptibly, they dispersed, and a series of mysterious and ever-changing cloud forms took their place. In the far south, a limitless stretch of cloud peaks looked like Switzerland molded in snow. Finally, at 8.20, when the sun was up, they were relieved to learn that they hadn't drifted off course, so they'd be safe, and could now determine their location and direction. He says also, moreover, they'd established a world record, not the record for distance, which, again, was a little more than 1,100 miles. It turned out they found out later they'd covered 703 miles as the crow flies, so that wasn't the record. But they had established a record for the longest sea crossing by a balloon that had been made to that point, which is 360 miles, just for the record.

So they did accomplish that. And at the time, that was the longest voyage made from England. So that's pretty significant. They couldn't have known this up in the sky, but where they were was over Sweden. They were approaching Lake Värnern, which is the largest lake in Sweden.

So big, in fact, that they thought it was the ocean or the sea, because it extended to the horizon. Yeah, I mean, that's another thing that we just didn't think of today, that you could get so turned around or so not knowing where you are. You know, with all the instruments and navigational aids. Yeah, now that's just about impossible. I mean— But back then, it was almost impossible to know where you were. That they just wouldn't even know where they were.

So Goudron didn't panic, but had a lot of concern because he thought that was the the sea and that if they they were coming to the end of the land and that if they didn't get down quickly they'd be lost because he he didn't realize it was it was a large lake if they just stayed in the balloon they just pass over the lake and come out to the land they would have been fine uh but he he uh vented the balloon and they came down quite quickly and in fact when they got down to a thousand feet uh gudrun asked them all to kneel on the edge of the basket facing in because he thought he was afraid and was right about this that when the balloon came down and hit the ground it was probably going to just bounce up again and they couldn't really control

it or stop it in any way so their their only was, only hope was to get out of the balloon at that moment rather than risk getting carried out to sea. He writes, in a few moments we could see the trail rope was in the trees and tearing through them, setting up a continual jolting in the basket. Now we all hung outside holding on to the rigging, and thus we crashed down through the trees to the sound of rending branches, nevertheless striking the ground heavily so that willy-nilly we all fell off. The balloon paused for a moment as if to take breath and then away it went with a force a hundred men could not have stemmed we saw the balloon go out to sea its basket half underwater with all our gear and we saw it clear the water and sweep away toward the north where sky met sea

in level line so they don't even know what country they're in at this point and they've lost all their stuff it sounds like yes they've lost the balloon. And this is only 100 years ago when things were this frighteningly sort of primitive. And you were saying that he never seemed to recognize for himself, or at least express, that they were in any kind of danger or anything.

No, in signing onto this, which he volunteered for, just to cover it for a newspaper, he was risking his life. He writes, so they spent an hour picking their way out of the woods and finally met some people and were informed where they were. The balloon had been blown across the lake, and he

says it made a perfectly good landing of its own account. So they would have been dragged across the water, but they would have been fine in any case, which I guess was good to know. So they set that record and returned to England. He says, after returning to London, we received this letter from Sweden, and I'll just read this letter. We cannot resist the temptation to tell you how delighted we are to have seen that seldom wonderful sight of your balloon on the 13th of October, half past ten in the forenoon. We are living in a little town in the north of Denmark between Ulborg and Tistel, a mile from the sea Skagerrak.

We heard the children in the garden cry, A balloon, a balloon. We ran out and did not believe our own eyes, seeing a white round thing flying rapidly through the fresh, sun fresh sun shining air like a wonderful bird from a fairy tale. Through a telescope, some of us could even confirm that there were persons in the gondola, and a strange feeling of joy and enthusiasm overcame us. All the day we only thought and spoke of the wonderful view and discussed from where and to where you were going. Two days later, we had the great joy to read in the newspapers about your bold trip over the North Sea, half a mile over the globe on the high road

of the future never before used of any human being. We congratulate you to the record you have set, and it's just signed two sisters. That was in 1907, and the sisters could not have imagined the explosion in aviation that the new century would bring. I don't know how long Turner lived, so I don't know how much of it he was able to witness himself. But Orville Wright took his last airplane flight in 1944 when Howard Hughes flew him from Ohio to California in just a few hours in a Lockheed Constellation, so he got to see that much. And that plane's wingspan, 126 feet, was six feet greater than the length of Orville's entire first flight in 1903. If this isn't your first episode of our show,

you might have noticed that the sound is a little different this week. We have finally upgraded our audio equipment at long last. We'll probably be making some tweaks to it over the next few episodes, hoping to optimize the new setup. But this upgrade was made possible by the one-time donations that we get from some of our fans. Thank you all. Our show is supported primarily by its listeners.

Our fabulous patrons pledge ongoing donations that basically keep the lights on and allow us to put the time in each week that it takes to make the show. And that's something we can count on week after week so that we can keep doing this. But the individual donations are a big help too and allow us to spend money on one-time expenses,

such as getting the new audio equipment. If you would like to support the show, you can make a donation on the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to become a patron to help keep us going, you can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. We can also always use help spreading the word about the show, and we appreciate everyone who's been pitching in there too. Thanks so much to everyone who helps support the show. pitching in there too. Thanks so much to everyone who helps support the show. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation and I have to try to work out what's going on asking only yes or no questions.

This is from listeners JC and Brenna Lundberg. Okay. A man leaves a motel room, goes to his car, honks the horn, and returns. Why? Okay. And this isn't the one like the one where, I don't know, he calls the other room to get the guy to stop snoring. No. Although I did like that one. That would work too if you honked the horn, it would get the guy to stop snoring.

Okay. Okay. A man is in a hotel room. Yes. Okay. Physically in a building that you would call a hotel? Motel, yes. Motel.

Oh, okay. So he was physically inside of a building that you would consider to be a motel. Yes. And he physically leaves the building. Yes. And goes to a full-sized automobile. This isn't like a Monopoly board or something

where there's like hotels and cars. Okay, full-sized automobile. This isn't like a Monopoly board or something where there's like hotels and cars. Okay. Full size automobile. And he honks the horn of his automobile. Yes. And then you're saying he leaves the automobile and goes back into the motel? That's right. Okay. Does it matter where this happens? No. Does it matter the time period? No. Are there other people involved? Yes. Okay. Does the man do any other important actions in the time frame of this story other than the ones we've specified? No. No. Okay. So what's important is the other people.

Is there one other person? No. Multiple other peoples. Yes. Okay. Hmm. Is he trying to send a signal to someone or some group of someone's? I think technically I'd have to say yes. Is his occupation important? No. Is the occupation of anybody important?

No. No. Do I need to know how many other people there were involved? Not really, no. It's not a specific number of people. It's just a group of people? Yes. Would this be a group with a name like it's a football team? No. Like it's a specific group of people like that?

No. Okay, it's just other people. That's right. Other people in the motel? Yes. Just the regular guests of the motel that are important? Yes. As opposed to like the staff motel that are important? Yes. As opposed to like the staff or employees or something?

That's right. Okay, so he is doing this in some way connected to the other guests of the motel. Yes. Is the time of day important? Yes. Is it the middle of the night? Yes. Is he trying to warn people about something? No. He's trying to wake people up? Yes. Is he trying to warn people about something?

No. He's trying to wake people up? Yes. For benevolent reasons? No, I wouldn't say so, no. Oh. Oh. Well, you said his occupation isn't important.

I had the idea of like he woke people up and they left their rooms. He could go steal things, but you said his occupation isn't important. No, that's a good thought, but that's not it. Okay, so a man is deliberately trying to wake up the other occupants of the motel. Yes. And I have to work out why he would want to do this. That's right. Other than just like a prank, obviously.

That's right. Right. But you're saying it's not a benevolent reason. It's not like he's trying to warn them or help them in some way. That's right. Right. But you're saying it's not a benevolent reason. It's not like he's trying to warn them or help them in some way. That's right. Aha. So is there some kind of backstory here? A bit of one, yes. Does it relate to his previous interactions with the hotel?

No. Like he's got a grudge against the hotel and he's trying to make everybody mad. And you said the time period and the place isn't important. So I have to work out what his motivations for wanting to wake. Does he want to wake everybody up as opposed to some specific people? Yes. He wants to wake everybody up. And that's important that it's everybody.

That's right. He wants everybody in the hotel to be awake because he wants them to see something or witness something no because he uh doesn't like sleeping people because he can't sleep himself i'm trying to think of a hint yeah i'm just i'm like and you said okay okay his occupation isn't important but does are there any other characteristics about him that are important that i am that i need to know about uh arguably you wouldn't put it that way but yes some other some some kind of uh trait or care or personality um nothing nothing like his hobby you said not his occupation but um huh like how do you like he went to the car to get something. You don't need to know what it was.

I'm trying to think of broad hints. Had something happened to him and he's trying to figure out who the culprit was? Like something had happened to his car? No. No. So I have to figure out why... Did he...

Okay, does he believe that everybody in the hotel, all the occupants of the hotel are asleep or does that matter? No, he does believe that. He does believe that they're all asleep. Yes. Okay. Because is he trying to learn something

by what he's doing? Yes. Okay. He's trying to learn something, but I have to figure out what it is he's trying to learn. And you think, he thinks everybody's asleep. It's not like he's checking to see who's awake or who comes out the fastest or something like that. Whether lights go on in particular rooms?

Yes. He's trying to figure out which rooms are unoccupied? No. He's trying to figure out which rooms are occupied. Yes. But you're on the right track. Okay. He's going to watch and see where lights go on?

Okay. Sorry. Does he go back into the motel? Yes. Afterward? Yes. Yes. Oh.

Okay. Because I said something about he wants to see what rooms lights go on in, but that he would have to be still outside the motel to see that. No? I'm confused. Yes. But then after that, he goes back into the motel. Then after that.

So he waits to see which rooms the lights go on in is he looking for a particular person yes um a deaf person he's looking for a deaf person yes he believes there is one deaf person in the hotel yes and he wants to figure out where that deaf person is exactly because the lights won't go on in that room. Right. And why might he want to know that? Why would he want, and you said it's not for an occupation. Does he have a previous history with this deaf person?

Yes. You're almost there. You're right on top of it. So does he have a personal relationship with this deaf person yes it's his wife yes and his wife he believes is at the motel yes for having an affair no no no he leaves the motel room goes to the car to get something and then honks the horn to get all the other guests to turn on their lights why might he do that? I could just tell you.

You're right on top of me. Wait, wait. And he thinks, okay, that his wife won't turn on her light because she's deaf. Was he in the room with her before he left the room? Yes. And he thinks,

I go, and you said it doesn't matter what he goes to the car to get. Right. And he didn't plan to do any of this when he went to the car. He. Right, and he didn't plan to do any of this when he went to the car. He was hoping just to get whatever it was. Because he found something about his wife in the car,

something that gave him more information about his wife in the car. I should just tell you, you have all the facts. Yeah, I'm so not seeing this. He forgot which room he was in. Oh, my! He figured if he honks the horn, he'll get everyone else to turn on their lights, and then he'll know that the room that remains dark has his sleeping deaf wife in it. That's a really bizarre way to find out what room your sleeping deaf wife is in.

You got 99% of it. Anyway, thanks, JC and Brenna, for sending that one in. Yes, thank you. We're doing our listener mail segment this week after the puzzle. Usually we do it before, but this time it concerns last week's puzzle, which was the one about a man being convicted of trying to murder a corpse. So if you haven't yet listened to last week's puzzle and don't want it spoiled for you, you can go ahead and stop listening to this episode now.

But let me just first remind you that we'll be doing our taxes next week, so the next new episode will be on February 23rd. And if you already did hear last week's puzzle, or you don't mind hearing a spoiler for the answer, then we have an update for it. Unbeknownst to us, there was actually a Canadian case that was in the news just days before our last show came out. A number of listeners wrote very thoughtful and helpful emails letting us know about this case, and we want to thank everyone who did for taking the time to inform us about it because we didn't know anything about it.

As an example of one of the emails we got that was letting us know what we'd missed from the Canadian news, Josh Ginsburg wrote, I'm a longtime listener of the podcast and particularly enjoy the lateral thinking puzzles. Listening to episode 92 about the man convicted of attempting to murder the person he killed, I was convinced that the puzzle was plucked from last week's

newspapers here in Canada. Precisely the same legal situation played out here as the culmination of a very sad story. In July 2013, an 18-year-old boy caused a disturbance on a Toronto streetcar by exposing himself and brandishing a small knife. All of the passengers fled and the boy was confined to the empty streetcar. Although the boy was penned in with no hope of escape, a police officer arriving on the scene shot him nine times. The killing shocked the public and the Crown decided to criminally charge the officer. Forensic testing revealed that the first three shots were fatal,

while the rest either missed or caused wounds that would not in themselves have been life-threatening. The Crown split its case into two charges, second-degree murder for the three fatal shots and attempted murder for the rest. This decision caused much head-scratching, but hindsight revealed the Crown's strategy. Splitting the charges gave the jury the option of compromising. It could find that the officer was justified in firing the first three shots, but that it was not reasonable for him to have fired the rest. The Crown, therefore, could still get a conviction,

even if it failed to make the case for second-degree murder. As it turned out, the jury decided to take the compromise route, acquitting the officer of second-degree murder, but convicting him of attempted murder. As it turned out, the jury decided to take the compromise route, acquitting the officer of second-degree murder but convicting him of attempted murder. As you might imagine, the verdict has been quite polarizing. Some criticize the compromise as a product of reluctance to punish police officers. Others see it as evidence that the police are not above the law. And as I said, Greg and I hadn't heard of this case, but from what our listeners said

and from the newspaper accounts that I read about it, the incident sparked quite a lot of public outrage in Toronto with hundreds of people who took to the streets in protest after the killing. Also, the legal strategy taken by the Crown of having the two different charges and then the ensuing verdicts on the charges were apparently very controversial and generally confusing to everybody.

Even some Toronto defense attorneys seemed confused by the verdicts and what exactly they meant. It was just a very unusual case and a very unusual strategy that was taken. It seems that similar to the Australian case, the attempted murder part comes down to that the victim was either already dead or fatally wounded. So the shots fired after that were not actually murder per se, but just showed an intent to murder, like we discussed last week, which is just kind of a weird way of thinking about it. I'm trying to remember how in the puzzle you gave, it was based on an actual case in Australia. How did that work? It was one man shot another.

That was a very simple puzzle, I remember. Yeah, that was a little more straightforward. He had shot the man accidentally in a scuffle and then thinking that the man was still alive, shot him again because he thought he had mostly killed the guy, but not completely killed him. But that was based on a real case too.

That was based on a real case too, right That was based on a real case, too. Right. And so they broke it into the two parts also with like the first shot in the Australian case was considered accidental. And therefore, he wasn't convicted of a crime. But then he was convicted of attempted murder for the second shot. I see. And the attempted part comes down to that you can't actually murder somebody who's already dead or dying, but you had the intent to murder them, so it's attempted murder. It must be hard for the jury to—I mean, how do you make a decision like that?

Yeah, I mean, that's—well, as the analysts were saying, they thought that this really was a compromised position. You know, this way you find him, you find the police officer guilty of a lesser charge so that you don't let him get off completely. But he still is convicted of something. I can see that, I guess. Overall, the case in Toronto was extremely rare for a number of reasons. The Star newspaper reports this is the first case of a charge of murder against an on-duty police officer in Ontario since 1990. So, I mean, just for that reason alone, it would have made big news, I suppose, in Canada. But they also, they say, a verdict of attempted murder in a case where the injuries were in fact fatal appears to be exceptionally uncommon. And they went looking for other cases.

for other cases. Interestingly, they didn't cite the Australia cases, but they were able to find three other cases in the last several decades was all they were able to turn up, all of which had been in the U.S., interestingly, because I don't remember hearing about this before. But this one was apparently very big news, though, in Canada, just because of the whole circumstances. That's surprising, especially if it's so rare, it's all the more surprising that it would come up on the very... I know, I know. The verdict came down just days after. I mean, we did our puzzle just days after the verdict came down in Toronto. It was just bizarre timing for such an extremely rare case.

As usual, of course, we'll have links in the show notes for anyone who wants to learn more about the case in Toronto. There's a whole lot more to it than I was able to cover here if people want to find out more about the details. And thank you again to everyone who wrote in about this. And if you have something you'd like to say to us, you can email us at 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 or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 8,000 extraordinary ephemera. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast

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