Futility Closet - 094-The Living Unknown Soldier

Episode Date: February 22, 2016

A quarter million Frenchmen vanished in World War I, leaving their families no clue whether they were still alive. During these anxious years, a lone man appeared on a Lyon railway platform without memory, possessions, or identification. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the strange story of Anthelme Mangin, whose enigmatic case attracted hundreds of desperate families. We'll also consider some further oddities of constitutional history and puzzle over an unpopular baseball victory. 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 Anthelme Mangin: Jean-Yves Le Naour, The Living Unknown Soldier, 2005. Martha Hanna, "The Tidal Wave of War," European History Quarterly 38:1 (January 2008), 93-100. Stefan Goebel, "Review: Beyond Discourse? Bodies and Memories of Two World Wars," Journal of Contemporary History 42:2 (April 2007), 377-385. Carole Blair, V. William Balthrop, and Neil Michel, "The Arguments of the Tombs of the Unknown: Relationality and National Legitimation," Argumentation 25:4 (November 2011), 449-468. "Unknown Soldier Claimed as Own by 15 Families," Reading [Pa.] Eagle, March 19, 1926. Minott Saunders, "Two Mothers Battle for Memoryless War Veteran," Ottawa Citizen, June 30, 1928. "French Derelict Is Unidentified," Eugene [Ore.] Register-Guard, July 2, 1928. Adam Nicolson, "A Living Ghost From the Trenches Whose Plight Confused a Nation Riven by Grief," Telegraph, Jan. 16, 2005. Listener mail: Hershey Community Archives, in particular the history of the Hershey bar. Wikipedia, Titles of Nobility Amendment (accessed Feb. 19, 2016). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Keith Noto. 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 94. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. A quarter million Frenchmen vanished in World War I, leaving their families no clue whether they were still alive. In today's show, we'll tell the poignant story of one disoriented French soldier and the desperate families who tried to claim him.

We'll also consider some further oddities of constitutional history and puzzle over an unpopular baseball victory. and puzzle over an unpopular baseball victory. On February 1st, 1918, a lone man was found wandering the platforms of the Lyon-Bretaux railway station in France. He'd arrived with a group of 65 traumatized soldiers who were being repatriated from a German prisoner of war camp, and he had no identity papers, no memory of his past, and no identifying marks or possessions. He'd lost his dog tag, and the number of his regiment had fallen off his overcoat. The authorities, in trying to find out who he was, searched his pockets and found only a cigarette lighter. He was semi-incoherent. They couldn't get much clear out of him. When they asked him

his name, he said something that sounded like Antoine Margin, which became the name that they referred to him by because that's all they could get out of him. And over the next 15 years, he became the focus of the whole nation's grief. There were thousands of families who had lost soldiers whose relatives had simply disappeared in the war. And there were other people in the same situation as Margin who came back and couldn't be identified, but one by one, they were either reconciled or died off. And he became the last unidentified soldier in france and so sort of the the focus of these families grief came to came to rest on him which was a measure of the disastrous toll that world war one had taken on france more than 1.4 million frenchmen died in

world war one which is tragic enough but during the same period, more than 250,000 soldiers vanished, meaning their bodies either were never identified or never found. So if I, for example, disappeared at war, all you would find out is that I had ceased to become accounted for on a certain date and in a certain location, but that's all they could tell you. You wouldn't know whether I was dead or perhaps had been captured by the Germans and was being held in captivity and unable to communicate, which happened. Most of the unaccounted men were in fact dead, and most of them had died in the earliest months of the war. The heaviest losses came in August and September 1914, which is a period of really strong fighting when the French were in retreat. The Western Front famously was a huge sea of mud, and the oncoming Germans meant that if a French soldier was killed and just left there or swallowed up in the mud or

vaporized by artillery or something, the Germans would come and claim that ground so they couldn't even go back and search for the body. So all the records could show was that that soldier just vanished, was ceased to be accounted for. And the families, that's all they knew. They couldn't know whether he'd actually been captive or had been killed. And that meant there was this sort of painful emotional suspense that those 250,000 families had to go through, not knowing whether their loved one was actually dead or just in captivity somewhere. One French newspaper in 1937 put it this way, somewhere in France, in some village, on the column of a war monument somewhere,

one name is engraved that should not be there. Meaning there's one French soldier who's actually this enigmatic man who wound up in an asylum in the town of Rotez. He's actually someone's brother or father or husband and not the dead man that his family thinks he is. But because he wouldn't communicate, because he was so incoherent, there was no way to get a clue from him as to who he actually was. And it became kind of a riddle that plagued the whole French nation at this time. I said that most of these missing soldiers were dead, and that's true. But if you have to decide between believing that your loved one is dead or just held captive, you'll cling to any slender hope that you can find. And there are some very strange stories about how sometimes this happened.

The arm of one French soldier was found on the battlefield with his wrist still bearing the regulation identity tag. So they issued a death certificate certificate and his wife remarried. A widow could legally remarry after 10 months. And she found out only afterward that after he'd lost his arm on the battlefield, he'd been taken captive by the Germans and recovered there and so was still alive in a German prisoner camp, even though she'd married again, thinking him dead. That's just one example. Here's another one that's told by a Red Cross nurse. One wounded Frenchman was lying in a hospital and put in bed with a card indicating his identity. And then the Germans swept through the area,

took the hospital, took that soldier, wounded soldier out of his bed and into captivity, put a badly wounded German soldier in the bed in his place, leaving the identity card in position. They did this deliberately to confuse people? No, it was just chaos of war. It just drowned out that way, okay.

Then that badly wounded German soldier died in the bed shortly before the French swept back through, retook the hospital, found a dead body in the bed with that identity card, and issued a death certificate assuming that the French soldier had died when in fact he was alive and in captivity in a German camp. Both of those are very unlikely situations, but again— Right, but if your son or your husband is missing and you hear these stories, you think, oh, you know, he could still be somewhere.

There's some faint hope that that, you know, something like that happened to my brother or whoever it was. somewhere. There's some faint hope that that, you know, something like that happened to my brother or whoever it was. It's not known whether the man, Mahjong, again, his name, who wound up in the asylum, he was almost a perfect enigma. He couldn't communicate very well, and what he told him didn't make much sense. It's not known whether he lost his senses on the battlefield. It appeared he'd been wounded in the right leg and then taken prisoner by the Germans. It's not known whether he'd started to lose his senses before or after he was taken into captivity. He was diagnosed by the French with persecution complex withdrawal or dementia precox

and recommended for keeping among the mentally disturbed. I don't know what that actually means. I was asking you about this before. Dementia precox is no longer an active diagnosis. I understand it was associated with what's now called schizophrenia. Yeah, at some point, yeah. It wouldn't surprise me.

It was sort of a grab bag diagnosis, I think, for things that turned out to be different things. But at least some of it turned out to be schizophrenia. But in this case, it seems like if you can't communicate with him, you can't even know for sure what state his mind is in. That's true. And certainly, he'd gone through enough traumatic stress that it could have been, I suppose, any number of things. He gave his birth date as March 1st, but he said he didn't know the year. When they asked him his residence, he named a street that turned out not to exist. It was just a perfect riddle.

He wound up, as I said, in the asylum at Rodez under the care of the heroic asylum director named Fenneru, who took it on himself to try to find out who he was. named Fennerou who took it on himself to try to find out who he was. And he put his photo in newspapers and advertisements throughout the country in 1922, and these hopeful, desperate relatives began to converge on the asylum from all corners of France, as you can understand. The asylum's archives have letters from 292 families who all either requested information about him or asked for permission to meet him, hoping that he'd be their lost relative. requested information about him, or asked for permission to meet him, hoping that he'd be their lost relative. Here, just for some example. Of 100 letters the asylum received in April 1922, 69 of them came from women.

Most of the inquiries were from women. Of the total known requests, one-seventh concerned a missing brother, one-fifth a husband, and half of them a son who had never returned from the war. They came from every social class and even from other nations. Sometimes his story was just written up as a curiosity in the newspapers of other nations, and people even there would write in hoping that he was their missing relative. They got letters from Switzerland, England, Latvia, Germany, and Canada. Here's one representative letter. Since 1914, I have been looking for my son, who was inducted in 1913.

I have done the most meticulous research throughout the French sectors and in German camps. Most of these families had never even begun to grieve. If you lose someone and you know he's dead, even a loved one, that's devastating, but at least you can begin- You have closure, yeah. With time, you can sort of reconcile yourself to the loss and find a way to go on with your life. These people couldn't even do that because they didn't know whether their son was dead. They just were trapped in this emotional suspense. One mother wrote to Feniru, I ask you only to tell me the truth, no matter how painful, to get me out of this nightmare,

which would just go on forever until she could find out what had happened. And I guess they knew so little about him, they didn't even know his exact age, so he could fit so many different people. And a lot of it's really tragic to read about. A lot of them were so desperate that they would see things or invent stories just to make sense of what they saw, just to find a way to continue to believe that this one man was their brother or whoever it was. I'm getting a lot of this from a book called The Living Unknown Soldier by the French historian Jean-Yves Le Nair. He writes about,

typically what would happen is if you petitioned to see this enigmatic asylum inmate thinking he was your loved one, Fenner would meet with you and say, okay, can you tell me something about your missing brother that would identify him uniquely? Does he have a scar or a birthmark or, you know, is there something that we could use to identify him? And they'd give him whatever they knew, and he'd write that down and then bring in Manjean. And he'd say, could you please show us your left arm or whatever it was just to see. Here's this French historian's description of how these interviews typically went. The patient's appearance was always a shock.

Some visitors were stupefied or else showing their doubt. They scrutinized him attentively. But those who made up their minds immediately were demonstrative. They extended their arms toward Mongeant. They caressed him. They gave him presents. They overwhelmed him with tender words, with tears, or with long monologues containing endless lists of familiar places, friends and relatives, and memories of happy times, of childhood or of peacetime. They spoke

to him in every possible dialect. They showed him photographs of objects charged with meaning. Mostly these were women meeting with him, mothers, wives, and daughters. But Mahjong, he either maintained this blank silence or he fingered their lace collars or buttons with a mild curiosity, but nothing more than that. He just wouldn't respond emotionally at all. They'd show him pictures. He would look at those occasionally. Reading material didn't interest him, and he took no interest in packages that were sent to him once he actually fell asleep during a visit. So he's just not giving them anything back. There's nothing to go on. And as a result, they were pushed to some sort of desperate measures to try to find any way to get a clue as to who he was or whether he was any of these people who were trying to connect with him.

Some of the families consulted mediums for guidance to see if that would tell them anything about who he was. The asylum employed a handwriting expert and a medical lawyer to help decide some of these cases. And I think most pathetically, they would try to put tools and instruments into his hands to see if he had any familiarity with them. So they thought, okay, perhaps he was a shoemaker, and they'd get shoemakers tools and give them to him hoping that even if he didn't respond to them intelligently, he might show by the way he handled them, that he had some familiarity with that trade. Even that didn't work. They gave him a sickle to go out and do some reaping on the asylum grounds to see whether he had any talent for agriculture that

didn't yield anything. They just didn't get any clue as to who he was. The one ray of hope that came in came from an unexpected direction. It seemed that he might be a French soldier whose name had been Octave Mongevin, who had worked as a waiter in a succession of cities before the war and wound up in London working for two years in the Ottoman embassy as a bellhop and sometimes as a cook. When the war had broken out in London working for two years in the Ottoman embassy as a bellhop and sometimes as a cook. When the war had broken out, he'd returned to France for his military service and gone to war as part of the 95th Regiment, and he was wounded in Blamant and taken prisoner on August 18, 1914. So he was in captivity with the Germans. He sent news to his family until February

1916, and then it just stopped. But it appears that he hadn't died because no death certificate was drawn up. Officially, he wasn't dead, and the Germans had made so no declaration that he was dead. He had just stopped communicating. So all of this came to light only because his brother, Joseph, who was also fighting in the war, got out and started to see if he could find his missing brother and failed and sort of eventually in time reconciled himself to the idea that his brother had simply died in captivity. But he appealed to the French government saying, look, if my brother died fighting for France, would it be possible to get his pension reassigned to my father because he needs the money? That was his only interest. He had no interest in any unknown soldier somewhere.

He just was trying to get money for his father to support him. any unknown soldier somewhere. He just was trying to get money for his father to support him. And it was the French authorities in looking into the case that started to think that maybe his missing brother was this unknown soldier in the asylum in the Lourdes. And they're the ones who sort of pursued it. They brought this to the attention of the asylum director, who actually read the text of three of the postcards that Montjolain had sent to his family as a prisoner, and at one of them, Marjolain is said to have expressed a rather marked nervousness, which isn't much to go on, but usually Marjolain didn't give them any kind of emotional reaction at all. That's what I was going to ask. Like, was he just really non-responsive? Like, when they tried to do things, he just was

non-responsive. So, okay, so I guess getting any response at all might be a clue. And he would tend to get irritable, which I think is understandable because they had to ask him in just scores of these interviews to endure the same questions and people just fawning over him, hoping he was their brother or something. But a lot of the details of the two cases matched up. The dates and locations match and the descriptions, physical descriptions of the two men match. So it seemed like there might be something there. So in January 1931, they invited Joseph, Octav's brother, to come and meet the asylum patient, saying, we think perhaps your brother isn't dead.

We think he might be this enigmatic patient we've got here. Would you like to come and see him? He didn't respond. He had to practically be begged to attend. He didn't respond to the first inquiry, and when they asked him again, he said he couldn't afford the trip to the asylum. They finally granted him 200 francs to cover the expense, just to get him to come at all. The meeting took place at the beginning of April 1931, and it was somewhat anticlimactic. Joseph didn't really recognize his brother in the patient, and as usual, Magin himself was indifferent.

But a lot of time would have passed since he would have last seen his brother in the patient and as usual manjuan himself was indifferent but a lot of time would have passed since he would have last seen his brother yeah and he said as much manjuan told a journalist i was very moved i tried to question him but i got nothing his voice was not the voice i remembered but in 15 years a man changes he told another journalist to tell you the truth the first impression left me perplexed this man in front of me was unreacting motionless with a lost look i hardly recognized recognized my brother. So if it had been his brother, there wouldn't be much there to recognize. Yeah. But nonetheless, the asylum director, Feneru, who was normally very skeptical, was convinced that there

was a match here, that they were the same man. And he enlisted Sohail, the handwriting expert, who also agreed. So they thought that they'd finally solved the riddle. And that gave them another avenue to pursue. They knew something more about Marjuanuan's history he had been wounded in the right leg and uh captured by the germans so they pursued that to see what had happened what was known about what had happened to him now that the war was over they found a comrade of his in the prison camp in

germany uh who had remembered his progression into dementia he said i saw him once or twice through the bars on the windows with the same look lost in oblivion. I hadn't heard anything about him since then. Still, I remember very clearly his emaciated face and his curly chestnut hair, as well as his dirty, ragged clothes, the tunic with the number from the 95th Regiment. Now that the war is over, they could ask Germany, could you look into your records and tell us about this one French captive you had during the war? And they said that he'd been treated for a fracture of the right leg and had been developing dementia precox. So it matched.

Everything seems to match. It's not conclusive. But in order to try to decide it, they decided on this strange experiment. They thought, okay, we have this enigmatic patient who won't communicate and whose identity we don't know, but we have a guess as to who he was. So let's take him and put him in the childhood village where Marjuan had grown up and just watch him and see what he does. And they actually did this. On September 27th, 1933, a car dropped him off at the train station of the village where Marjuan had grown up and just left him free to go

where he wanted and watched him. From the train station, the village wasn't visible. It was behind a stand of trees, and to get to it, you had to walk down the road and make the correct turn at a fork in the road, and he did this correctly. A passerby confirmed that he was Octave Marjouin. He stopped at a café where he sat down for a time and then resumed his way toward the street where his father's and grandfather's houses stood. He actually entered his father's house decisively,

and his father was in there at the time, but he didn't recognize him and he displayed no emotion. When he returned to the car, he was driven by the church, and he said his only utterance on this whole trip, which was, the church has changed, which it had. The bell tower had been struck by lightning a few years earlier, and they'd repaired it, but the restoration was still visible. That's all he said. That's semi-conclusive, but the other families who are still claiming him said that it wasn't really enough. His responses were ambiguous. Perhaps he'd been guided. Perhaps he should be, for fairness, he should be introduced into the childhood towns of all the other claimants.

So it came down to this final climactic struggle in the court system. They issued summons to, there were still 19 families claiming him. They issued summons to—there were still 19 families claiming him. When they issued summonses to them, all but four of them dropped out because it seemed so compelling, this other case that was building. The final trial took place on October 1937 and determined that they were the same man. Antoine Marjon was Octave Marjon. Three of the four families appealed the case. In 1939, the appeals court upheld the original verdict, but one family held out and appealed it to the French Supreme Court. Unfortunately, all of this

took time. As you say, Akhtov's father during all this time, Pierre, was now a very old man, and his brother, Joseph, was ailing heavily kicked by a horse. And unfortunately, both of them died before the Supreme Court could make its final ruling. So even if the Supreme Court had upheld the earlier decisions and decided finally what this man's identity was, there was no family left to restore him to. And then the whole thing finally ended, I think, in the most tragic possible way. While the Supreme Court was reaching its final decision,

a whole new world war broke out and interrupted all these proceedings, and then Mongeau died in an asylum on September 10th, 1942, without ever learning officially what his identity had been decided to be. And as I say, his family was already gone at that point. Just to be clear, it is thought today that they were on the right track, that his identity was Octave Marjane, and the death certificate, in fact, was made out in that name. The death certificate, in fact, was made out in that name. But it wasn't in time for him to know who he had been or for anyone else really to find out what the climax to the whole story had been. And of course, the new world war brought another round of this. This happens in every war. There's a whole hundreds of thousands of families just know that their loved one has disappeared in the war and they never find out really what happened. The Marjan had been the last unidentified prisoner in World War I. The last prisoner from World War II, unbelievably, was identified only in the year 2000.

He was an autistic Hungarian named Andras Tomas who had been locked up in a Russian psychiatric hospital for 50 years. 50 years. And Lennart, the French historian whom I'm following here, says before an investigative committee identified him, just as before, dozens of families claimed him as their brother, uncle, father, or husband. He writes, it took only one amazing news item to rekindle the hope of seeing a loved one who had gone missing nearly 60 years earlier. at least 60 years earlier.

This podcast is supported primarily by our fantastic patrons who are making it possible for us to keep making the show. A lot of work goes into researching and making each episode, so if you like Futility Closet and want to support the show, we could use your help. If you pledge at least a dollar an episode, you'll get access to our activity feed where you can find outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles and look behind the scenes of the show. For higher pledges, we offer special thank yous and a weekly email telling you what the upcoming topics will be.

For our super patrons, we have a monthly bonus episode where Greg and I try to stump each other in a brain-teasing game that you can play along with us. So if you want to help us keep making Futility Closet, check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in our show notes. And thanks again to everyone who has been supporting the show. Thank you for supporting the show. Matt Sargent wrote in response to episode 90, where we discussed the candy bar strikes that were organized by Canadian teens after the price of candy bars rose from 5 to 8 cents in 1947. Matt said, interesting story about the chocolate price strikes. In the U.S., the Hershey Company managed to avoid such problems. In 1900, the Hershey bar was first sold for five cents, and it wouldn't be until after a man had walked on the moon that the price would change. They did this by simply changing the size of the

bar, as ingredient prices dictated. They also saved some money along the way by dumping the embossed label they used to use. They finally had to bite the bullet and drop the five-cent bar for a ten-cent bar on November 24, 1969. As it was more than twice the size of the bar it was replacing, no one minded too much. And that seemed pretty impressive to me that they managed to keep the price the same for 69 years. It's interesting, too, that people don't complain. As long as the price stays the same, they don't mind that the bar changes sizes. Maybe they don't even notice. But if you stays the same, they don't mind that the bar changes sizes. Maybe they don't even notice. But if you change the price, they do complain.

Yeah. And I looked into this after Matt sent it, and it turns out that there is a Hershey Archives online, which I suppose makes as much sense as anything else you find online, but it had just never occurred to me that there would be one. And we'll have a link in the show notes for anyone who wants to learn all things Hershey's, but they covered it on their site. And as Matt says, the Hershey chocolate company started selling its standard size chocolate bars for a nickel in 1900, and that set the standard for the industry. It sounds like it said it may be even for Canada, because that's what the original price had been in Canada, was that same five cents.

When the prices for cocoa beans fluctuated, Hershey's just changed the weight of the bars accordingly in order to maintain the same price. And I was thinking it's too bad the Canadian candy companies didn't follow suit as then they might have prevented the whole candy bar war that they started up there. That makes sense. And as Matt noted, they finally had to raise the price in 1969, but they introduced a new standard size that was more than twice the original standard size. And to me, that's like a whole other topic about the increase in American portion sizes over the years. Listener Daniel Sturman had previously sent us

a very comprehensive assessment of the burning legal question of who is currently in possession of Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday. At the time, he had noted, I'm not a lawyer, but I sound like one in emails, which we actually found to be the case. Episode 92, about how a college student made it his mission to get a 200-year-old amendment added to the U.S. Constitution, gave Daniel, still not a lawyer, Sturman, something more to chew on. Daniel wrote, you brought up the idea that it would be very strange to ratify an amendment that

might no longer represent the popular will. My initial instinctive reaction was that this isn't true. If the amendment hadn't been ratified yet, then clearly there is still some action that remains to be taken before it takes effect. That action usually won't be taken against the will of the entire country. But then I thought, what if you could construct a scenario in which the amendment wouldn't need any action to become law? Take, for example, the Titles of Nobility Amendment, which would strip U.S. citizenship from anybody who received a noble title from a foreign country. This amendment has been ratified by 12 states, most of them in or near the mid-Atlantic region of the country. Now imagine if something were to happen to eliminate almost all of the states that haven't ratified the amendment. Perhaps most of the country is conquered by some invading force,

or perhaps 35 of the non-ratifying states decide to merge into one huge megastate. It might take some years for people to notice, especially in the U.S. has been conquered scenario. But sooner or later, somebody will realize that three quarters of the currently existing states had at some point ratified that amendment. It might become law without a single vote being cast, but I'm sure somebody would bring a legal challenge to this. Thankfully, even if the challenge is rejected, if the country isn't happy with the result, it can always pass an amendment to repeal. But that's an interesting thought experiment. I hadn't thought about that yet. Theoretically, some of these amendments

that are still technically floating around. We're used to thinking of the number of states increasing, but it could decrease. Decrease somehow, yeah. And I looked into this, I hadn't heard of this before, the Titles of Nobility Amendment that Daniel was referring to. And it was approved by Congress in 1810 and submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. And as Daniel noted, it was ultimately ratified by 12 of the states, which meant that on two occasions between 1812 and 1816, it was within two states of the number needed to become a valid part of the Constitution. The number of states needed for ratification kept changing as new states were being added to the U.S. As with the 27th Amendment, Congress didn't set a time limit for its ratification. So technically, it is still pending before the states. At this point in time, it would take ratification by an additional 26 states in order for this amendment to be adopted.

So unless we have one of Daniel's scenarios here of, you know, the U.S. being conquered by someone else, probably not going to get passed. But interestingly, there has actually been some confusion in history as to whether or not the amendment had actually been added to the Constitution or not. It was erroneously referred to as the 13th Amendment, even in some printings of the Constitution. referred to as the 13th Amendment, even in some printings of the Constitution, after an 1815 printing of the government-contracted laws of the United States included it as the 13th Amendment. Apparently, the authors of that work acknowledge in their introduction that they hadn't been able to verify whether the proposed amendment had indeed been adopted or not, and thought it best to include it just in case. I mean, it would boggle our mind today when it would seem like, how could it be possible that you couldn't figure out whether the amendment

had actually been passed or not? But I guess that's the state of information in 1815. Yeah, because it's so ubiquitous now, it'd be easy to look it up. But it seems an odd decision anyway, if you're not sure, to go ahead and throw it in. Well, because they figured the book isn't going to be reprinted for who knows how many years or decades. And they thought, well, if it has been passed or does get passed, we better have it in there. So they had that caveat in the introduction. But apparently people at the time either missed or disregarded that caveat that we're not positive that this is passed.

And the laws of the United States was very widely distributed as a standard reference on U.S. laws. And so this error continued to be seen for the next 30 years until that reference work was replaced with a new one in 1845. And the funny thing is that to this day, there are still a few people who try to claim that the Titles of Nobility Amendment had indeed been fully ratified. And some have even tried using it as defenses in their court cases, but no court has ever actually upheld it. I read just a little bit about this amendment when I was doing the research for that episode. And another misconception about it is that it's sometimes how that one of the titles of nobility is Esquire, which attorneys, at least in this country, use after the name that could be Sharon Ross Esquire if you were an attorney. Some people try to claim that that's a title of nobility and that if you use that title,

that it's unconstitutional and your citizenship is revoked. Right. And that's what some people have tried to claim in their defenses and court cases. So therefore, the whole legal system has to be thrown out. It's invalid, yeah. Right, because all the people practicing law aren't citizens. Yeah, and so far, no judge has actually bought that. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us.

We don't always have time on the show to read all the emails that we get, but we do actually read them all ourselves. Yes, thanks for sending them. So if you have any questions or comments for us, please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd-sounding situation, and he has to try to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions.

Are you ready? We'll see. We'll see. This one was sent in by Keith Noto. A baseball player gets a hit that wins the game for the home team, yet fans boo him. Why? Okay. Did this really happen?

This really happened. Do I need to know when? No. So it could have happened with whatever the current rules are? Sure. I don't know much about baseball. Yes. A baseball player gets a hit that wins the game for the home team, but the fans boo him.

All right. Okay. But the fans boo him. All right. Okay. Do I need to know the broader circumstances? Like, are they booing because he won the game? Not exactly, no. I mean, they weren't somehow hoping that he wouldn't win? No, yeah, that's... And when you say wins the game for the home team, that actually happened?

Yes. I mean, the final score showed that the home team had won the game. All right. So I need to figure out specifically what happened. Yeah. Gets a hit, meaning hit a pitch. Yes. And drives a run home.

Yes. Is it a home run? He doesn't get a home run, no. Okay. So there's someone else on base when he hits the ball. Yes. And that person reaches home. Yes.

And scores a point that wins the game. Yes. And the fans are unhappy. Unhappy at that? Do any of you know what happens, like, whether it's a single or a double or anything? That doesn't matter. He just gets on base. Yeah.

Safely. That doesn't matter. So he just drives home a run. Yes. And the fans boo him. Yes. Because he won the game. No.

For some other reason. Yes. Is it something to do with the other player? What other player? The player who scored. No. Does that have something to do with the statistics, actually? Like this did something for some player's record

that they, for some reason, didn't want? Yes. For the batting player's record? No. For someone else? Yes. Oh, I think I see where we're going. For someone on the opposite team?

No. You're sort of on the right track, but not thinking of it quite right. Okay. But you're sort of on the right track. All right. Okay, so this player hits the ball. Yes. Which affects his own statistics and those of the scoring player,

but neither of those are the reason that the fans are booing. But it's not the fielding team. Right. Is it's not the fielding team. Right. They're immaterial. Is it the pitcher? No. You're still vaguely on the right track. Is it someone else in the batting lineup?

Yes. Yes. Oh, I see. That's very clever. Okay. So there's someone else behind him in the lineup who would have batted if this guy hadn't ended the game. Yes.

And that guy was on the verge of, I guess, setting a record? Yeah. That's really good. I can't believe you got that. I think I'd be still floundering around out there. This happened in Milwaukee County Stadium on August 26, 1987. Paul Molitor of the Milwaukee Brewers had hit at least one hit in 39 consecutive games, but was hitless in the current game so far and scheduled a bat next when teammate Rick

Manning singled in the winning run in the bottom game so far, and scheduled to bat next when teammate Rick Manning singled in the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning. So it even had gone into overtime, and the fans were waiting for this guy to get up and get his hit, right? So the fans were silent and several booed because they felt Molitor had been robbed of one last chance to extend his prestigious streak, which stands today as the fifth longest in baseball's modern era. So even though their team won.

Yeah, they wanted Molitor to get a chance to get 40 hit and 40 consecutive games, and he didn't get it. That makes a good puzzle. I mean, I guess you'd feel pretty bad if you were the guy who, you know, was like, I won the game, and people are mad at me. So thank you, Keith, for sending that in. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

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