Futility Closet - 116-Notes and Queries

Episode Date: August 8, 2016

In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll explore some curiosities and unanswered questions from Greg's research, including the love affair that inspired the Rolls Royce hood ornament, a long-distance dancer, Otto von Bismarck's dogs, and a craftily plotted Spanish prison break. We'll also run after James Earl Ray and puzzle over an unsociable jockey. Intro: Workers constructing Washington's Grand Coulee Dam in 1942 fed a cable through a 500-foot drain by tying a string to an alley cat's tail. A 2001 earthquake in Olympia, Wash., drew a graceful rose with a sand-tracing pendulum. Sources for this week's feature: The best source I can find regarding the origins of the Rolls Royce hood ornament is this Telegraph article from 2008, in which Montagu's son says, "My father and Eleanor shared a great passion. It was a grand love affair - perhaps even the love of his life. All this happened before my father met my mother. But I understand my father's first wife knew about the mistress. She was very tolerant of her and they got on very well." But this quote is given in the service of promoting a film about the affair, which makes it less objective than I'd like. (Paul Tritton of the Rolls-Royce Owners' Club of Australia disputes the story here.) Alexandre Dumas' habit of eating an apple every morning beneath the Arc de Triomphe is described in this New York Times article, among many other modern sources. The earliest mention I can find is a 1911 article in the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, attributing the intervention to Hungarian physician David Gruby. I've confirmed that Gruby served as a physician to Dumas (père et fils), but I can't find anything about an apple. The incidents of the Savoy Hotel cloakroom and the Travellers Club suicide are both described in N.T.P. Murphy's A Wodehouse Handbook (2013). The suicide rule is mentioned at the end of this Telegraph article, which gives me hope that it's true, but I can't find anything more comprehensive. The story of the Providence United Methodist Church is told in both Randy Cerveny's Freaks of the Storm (2005) and Rick Schwartz's Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States (2007). Snopes says it's "mostly true." In Constable's Clouds, published by the National Galleries of Scotland 2000, Edward Morris writes, "It is this moment of early morning light -- and what has been described as 'the atmosphere of stillness tinged with expectancy' -- that Constable translates into the finished canvas." Judith Collins mentions Joseph Beuys' responsibility for snow in her introduction to Andy Goldsworthy's Midsummer Snowballs (2001). Reader Olga Izakson found the description of Tiras, Otto von Bismarck's “dog of the empire,” in Robert K. Massie's Dreadnought (1991). A few further links. The role of Esperanto in the planning of the 1938 San Cristobál prison break is described (I think) here. In 1600 William Kemp published a pamphlet chronicling his 1599 morris dance to Norwich, Kemps Nine Daies Wonder, to quiet doubters. The allegation that Margaret Thatcher ordered the identities of British government employees to be encoded in the word spacing of their documents appears in Gregory Kipper's Investigator's Guide to Steganography (2003). I've found it in other technical documents, but these tend to cite one another rather than an authoritative source. Listener mail: Madison Kahn, "60 Hours of Hell: The Story of the Barkley Marathons," Outside, May 8, 2013. Wikipedia, "Barkley Marathons" (accessed Aug. 6, 2016). Wikipedia, "Kaihogyo," (accessed Aug. 6, 2016). Adharanand Finn, "What I Learned When I Met the Monk Who Ran 1,000 Marathons," Guardian, March 31, 2015. Associated Press, "Japanese Monks Endure With a Vow of Patience," June 10, 2007. Here's a corroborating link for this week's lateral thinking puzzle (warning: spoiler). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music 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 on the Support Us page 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 [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a cat that wired a dam to a rose drawn by an earthquake. This is episode 116. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll explore some curiosities and unanswered questions from Greg's research,

including the love affair that inspired the Rolls-Royce hood ornament, a long-distance dancer, Otto von Bismarck's dogs, and a craftily plotted Spanish prison break. We'll also run after James Earl Ray and puzzle over an unsociable jockey. This is just a collection of notes and some open questions from our research. We've done this before from time to time, just miscellaneous items. These are not connected and they're in

no particular order. Here we go. The hood ornament on Rolls-Royce cars is a flying lady known as the Spirit of Ecstasy. It's a woman leaning forward with her arms extended behind her so it looks as though she's flying. There's a story that this commemorates a secret love affair between J.W.E. Douglas Scott Montague, who was a pioneer of the automobile movement, and the model for the emblem, a woman named Eleanor Velasco Thornton. The two of these had fallen in love in 1902 when she served as his secretary at the Carr Illustrated magazine, where he was editor, and they kept the affair secret or known only to their circle of friends for more than 10 years. They had to, in part, because of the enormous difference between them in social class. Montague, when he decided he wanted a hood ornament, chose the English sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes, a friend of his, to design it. And Sykes, the story goes, chose eleanor as his model uh allegedly an early version of the ornament had eleanor holding a finger to her lips to symbolize the secrecy of their affair this is one of those stories that's so great that it tends to get just bandied about without much concern for how accurate

it is i certainly uh she from what to understand, the two of these did have a relationship and she did pose for the emblem, but whether it was meant to represent her or symbolize the relationship is a lot murkier. Sykes, the sculptor himself, described the figure as, quote, a graceful little goddess, the spirit of ecstasy who has selected road travel as her supreme delight. And in a 1986 article for the Rolls-Royce Owners Club of Australia, Paul Tritton wrote, Although Eleanor probably posed for the specific purpose of helping Charles develop his design for the mascot,

it is not in its finished form a figure of her or any real person. I had hoped at one point to do a whole podcast feature on this, but it's just so hard to pin down the actual facts that I've kind of backed off from it. But if anyone out there knows more about this, I'd just like to know it because it sounds like an interesting story, whatever the truth is. I'm just kind of tickled that maybe it's supposed to represent the goddess of automobile travel. It just seems like whatever information I can find about this, someone is given by usually someone who's selling something or other.

It's hard to get just a clean, clear, objective accounting of what the actual facts were. It's often said that Alexandre Dumas ate an apple every morning at dawn beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Allegedly, he did this under doctor's orders. The doctor was hoping to force him into a regular schedule of waking and sleeping. For all I know, that's true. It's bandied all over the place these days in collections of the interesting habits of famous writers, but I went back to see what the earliest mention I could find is. That turns out to be a 1911 article in the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette

attributing the intervention to Hungarian physician David Gruby. I've confirmed that Gruby served as a physician to Dumas, both the father and the son, but I can't find anything about an apple. The timing looks reasonable. The elder Dumas, both the father and the son, but I can't find anything about an apple. The timing looks reasonable. The elder Dumas died in 1870, so it could be true for all I know, but it just sounds so pat that it makes me a little suspicious. I've been reading a book by N.T.P. Murphy called A Woodhouse Handbook from 2013 that details the now-vanished world of the British aristocracy as described in the comic novels of P.G. Woodhouse, which has some wonderful anecdotes, but some of them are a little hard to confirm. I'm hoping someone will be able to help us with that. One is that in the late 1920s at London Savoy Hotel, customers would simply hand their things to the cloakroom attendant without receiving a ticket in return.

You just give him your hat and coat, and then at the end of the evening when you came back, he would wordlessly and correctly hand the back to you and you'd walk away flattered that you were either so distinguished or striking or good looking that he could know you at sight and give you your your correct articles back murphy writes the bubble burst when the attendant was suddenly taken ill one evening and the owners had to identify their own belongings to their embarrassment and indignation they found that each hat had a scrap of paper inside with a succinct description of their appearance. Hobo was the least impolite description recorded. I hope that's true. I dearly want that to be true, but I haven't been able to confirm it. In particular, I'd like to get a list of the epithets that he'd used. It said that thereafter,

the hotel adopted this ticket system where when you handed your hat in, he gave you a ticket in response that you could use to redeem it later on. So if anyone knows about that, please write in. Another anecdote from the same source, I'll just read this paragraph. In 2001, the August Travelers Club in Palmao decided to open its archives. They include the eminently sensible reaction of the committee when Mr. Percival Osborne committed suicide in the lower billiard room in 1905. Unfortunately, the bullet went on to damage the billiard table as well as Mr. Osborne. To minimize future damage to the club fittings, the committee posted a notice advising members that if they wish to commit suicide on the club's premises, they should do so in the downstairs lavatory. That one I have a bit more hope is true.

I found a reference to it in an article in The Telegraph in 2001, which I'll put in the show notes. If anyone has any more details about that, please let us know. Here's a good one. The Providence United Methodist Church in Swan Quarter, North Carolina, was supposedly moved by the hand of God in 1876. The story goes that in 1874, the congregation wanted to build on prime property in Swan Quarter, which is a village on Pamlico Sound in northeastern North Carolina, not far from here actually. The owner of the land refused to sell to them, so they put up the building elsewhere, but just before the building was to be dedicated, a hurricane blew through the area during September 16th and 17th, 1876, and the water rose and engulfed the town, lifting the sanctuary off its foundations. A church brochure explains what

happened next. A miracle was happening. The church was floating down the foundations. A church brochure explains what happened next. A miracle was happening. The church was floating down the road. The church moved by the hand of God. It went straight down the road to a corner and bumped into a general store owned by George V. Creedle. The corner is now Oyster Creek Road and U.S. 264 Business. Then a curious thing happened. The building took a sharp right turn and headed down the road for about two city blocks until it reached the corner of what is now Church Street. Then it moved slightly off its straight-line course, took another turn to the left, crossed the Carawan Canal directly in front of the place where people desired the church to be, and settled exactly in the center of the Sam Sadler property, the site which had been refused.

In other words, the church made its way to the land that they intended it for anyway and took up residence there and remained there. The land was subsequently sold to the congregation, so they got what they wanted. The church was originally called the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the name was changed to the Providence United Methodist Church as a tribute to what the members saw as divine intervention. I set this down in my notes with the two words, gigantically doubtful, but I mention it here because I've seen it mentioned in two different books written by atmospheric scientists. One of these, Hurricanes in the Middle Atlantic States by Rick Schwartz, says that in some

tellings the landowner, after this miracle, sees the owner of his ways and deeds his property to the church. But Schwartz writes, recent genealogical research shows that rather the owner, his wife, and their child actually happened to die shortly afterward, and the church paid a small sum for their property in a court-approved auction in 1881. Snopes, the internet fact-checking site, lists this whole story as mostly true, believe it or not. The church has now been extended as brick and massive, but the smaller wooden rear part apparently actually did float to the current location. Oh, so it was just part of the church, not the whole church. Yeah, we should drive up there sometime and just see what we can find out.

Here's a small one and a long shot. In Constable's Clouds, which is a book about the English romantic painter John Constable, and particularly his paintings of clouds, published by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2000, Edward Morris writes, It is this moment of early morning light and what has been described as, quote, the atmosphere of stillness tinged with expectancy that Constable translates into the finished canvas. He quotes, puts quote marks around that phrase, the atmosphere of stillness tinged with expectancy, which I love but haven't been able to track down. I love the early morning myself.

The whole world has this sense of being a play before the curtain has risen. And I think that's a perfect way of putting it, but I haven't been able to find out whom he's quoting there. As I say, that's a long shot, but if anybody can find out where that phrase comes from, I'd love to know. A bit of conceptual art. In episode 68, I mentioned that the artist Stanley Brown in 1960 mailed out invitations proclaiming the shoe stores of Amsterdam to be his artwork, or their arrangement, I guess. Here's another. stores of Amsterdam to be his artwork, or their arrangement, I guess. Here's another. In 1969, the German artist Josef Beuys accepted full responsibility for any snow that fell in Dusseldorf between the 15th and 20th of February. I don't know whether any did. Here's an old one, I'm afraid. Reader Olga Isaacson wrote to me in December 2011. I'm sorry, Olga, I've sat on this

for five years. She writes, Hey, Greg, I'm currently reading a book called Dreadnought by Robert K. Massey, which is about the events and people that led up to World War I. And while it is full of really good tidbits for the futility closet, my favorite so far is this one. This is about the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. While the Chancellor worked, his giant dog, Tyrus, lay on the carpet, staring fixedly at his master. Tyrus, known as the Reichshund, or Dog of the Empire, terrorized the chancellery staff, and people speaking to Bismarck were advised to make no unusual gestures which Tiras might interpret as threatening.

Prince Alexander Gorchakov, the elderly Russian foreign minister, once raised his arm to make a point and found himself pinned to the floor, staring up at Tiras' bared teeth. Apparently, this is true. The name Tiras was given to a whole succession of dogs some of which were great danes i mean they were just enormous massive dogs and apparently were known for striking terror into various foreign ministers who dealt with uh bismarck in digging around on this i found one other description this is from a 1921 lecture on

international relations by the diplomat james bryce i remember an anecdote which illustrates the way in which a man may use opportunities and try to read the character or to obtain an obvious advantage when dealing with a foreign minister. I do not vouch for the truth of the story, but tell it as I heard it in Berlin. One of the admirers of Prince Bismarck had presented to him as a gift a large and powerful dog. It was, I think, a wolfhound or something between a wolfhound and a mastiff, a big animal of formidable appearance.

It had a habit of growling and sometimes even of snapping when it found reason to suspect that anyone displeased its master. Bismarck frequently kept this dog, which is known in Berlin as the Reichshund, the hound of the empire, by his side when he received foreign ambassadors. The story went that the dog would now and then growl and show its teeth in a threatening way at the foreign ambassador, who was seated hard by, not far from the creature's fangs bismarck seemed to relish the uneasiness which the ambassador could not help showing at the behavior of the dog and he derived from his visitor's embarrassment and advantage in his negotiations similar to that which is i believe sought in the game of baseball by the practice of what you call rattling the pitcher so that appears to be true and is a good lesson in statecraft from

bismarck i was gonna say i'm surprised that more world leaders don't adopt that. Yes. It's easy to do, I guess. Here's a good one from reader Joe Antonini. The prisoners behind the largest prison break in history communicated in Esperanto to hide their plans. Nearly 800 prisoners escaped from the San Cristobal prison in northern Spain in 1938, many of them loyalists. But the prison break wasn't very effective as most were recaptured and around 200 were shot after being found. Only three made it to the French border. My notes say this appears to be true, but it's very hard to find sources in English, which is surprising given the size of the exploit. 800 prisoners is a lot of prisoners. The most detailed article I can find on this is itself in Esperanto, which ironically prevents

me from learning about the prison break. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes if anyone out there knows Esperanto. I'm interested in learning about the prison break itself, but also in particular the role of communicating in Esperanto. It seems like a clever way to hide your plans. I'm just curious whether any of our listeners know Esperanto. I guess we'll find out. From listener Tyler St. Clair, he writes, Hi Greg, I'm doing some research for a concert of colonial Christmas music, and while I was looking up the history of one of the songs, I found a story I thought you'd like. Kemp's jig was seemingly written to commemorate William Kemp, who on a bet, of course, Morris danced his way from London to Norwich in nine days, a distance of around 100 miles.

This appears to be true. Kemp was one of the players in Shakespeare's early plays, and apparently extremely popular in his time and under a bet engaged to dance his way 100 miles between these two cities. In fact, there was some doubt about this. It appears that he made the journey in either 1599 or 1600 and published a pamphlet in 1600 commemorating this called Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder to Quiet Doubters. Here's an excerpt from that. This is about the seventh day's journey being Friday of the third week. Upon Friday morning, I set on towards Thetford, dancing then ten miles in three hours, for I left Barry somewhat after seven in the morning, and was at Thetford somewhat after ten that same forenoon.

But indeed considering how I had been booted the other day's journey before, and that all this way are the most of it was over a heath, was no great wonder for i fared like one that it escaped the stocks and tried the use of his legs to outrun the constable so light was my heels that i counted the 10 mile no better than a leap at my entrance into that for the people came in great numbers to see me for there were many there being size time the noble gentleman sir edwin rich gave me entertainment in such bountiful sort during my continuance there of Saturday and Sunday that I want fit words to express the least part of my worthy usage of my unworthiness. And to conclude liberally as he had begun and continued at my departure on Monday, his worship gave me five pound. I wonder what he would think to know that

people remember this 400 years later. It seems like a small thing, but it's surprising what gets remembered sometimes. Finally, here is an interesting passage from Gregory Kipper's book, Investigator's Guide to Steganography. Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, used a method of invisible watermarking in the 1980s. After several cabinet documents had been leaked to the press, Thatcher ordered that the word processors being used by government employees encode their identity in the word spacing of the document.

This allowed for disloyal ministers to be quickly found out. That's very interesting to me in part because if you're old enough to remember the word processors of the 1980s, they were infuriatingly difficult to use, and it impresses me that it was possible even to do this. They would slightly alter the word spacing in documents so they could be tied to the people who had written them. I think this is true. I found it mentioned in several technical documents, but these tend to cite one another rather than some authoritative government or news source. So if anyone knows any more details about that, I'd love to find out about it. I will put links and citations to all of these things in the show notes as usual. If you have

any answers to the questions or anything at all to say, please write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Harry's. You know how razor companies keep putting out new models and raising their already high prices? Well, our friends over at Harry's don't believe in upcharging. They've just made a bunch of improvements to their razors and they're keeping prices exactly the same. They're still just $2 per blade compared to the $4 or more you'll pay at the drugstore. Harry's five-blade razors now include a softer flex hinge for a more comfortable glide, a trimmer blade for hard-to-reach places, a lubricating strip, and a textured handle for more control when it's wet.

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moisturizing shave cream, three precision-engineered five-blade cartridges, and a travel cover, all for just $15. And for a limited time only, there's a special offer for fans of the show where you can get it for less. We've partnered with Harry's to give you $5 off your first purchase with promo code CLOSET. Go to harrys.com right now and enter code CLOSET at checkout to claim your offer. That's harrys.com and enter the code CLOSET. In episode 108, I discussed some extreme races that people subject themselves to in search of extraordinary challenges. Charles Hargrove wrote in to add a couple more to the

list, starting with the 40 people who attempt the Barkley Marathon every year. It's a 100-mile run through the mountains of Tennessee inspired by the escape of James Earl Ray from prison. There are many years when no one finishes. And the Barkley Marathon is actually a rather crazy race. The organizers have been selecting 40 people each year to run it since it started in 1986. It's less of a race than an extreme challenge where the point seems to be simply to attempt to complete it. So far, only 14 people have managed to do that. And if someone does complete it, they try to make it harder for the next year. 14 people since 1986?

Yes. And they do 40 people a year, right? In 30 years. Yes. And 14 people have managed to finish it. Gary Laz Cantrell, one of the race's co-founders, said of the race, After James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., he was held in the park in Brushy Mountain State Prison,

which is where they kept the worst of the worst because it's surrounded by the Tennessee mountains. They call those mountains the third wall. If you get over the first two walls of prison, you're not going to escape the third. When Ray escaped, he was out for 54 hours, and they found him only eight miles from the prison. So, yeah, that's pretty daunting.

And so Ray only managed to cover eight miles in those 54 hours, and so the organizers started the race at covering 55 miles in 60 hours. I don't even know where they got that from. And it took four years of races for anyone to be able to finish that. So after someone finished it, they decided, well, now we need to make it 100 miles, which took another six years until someone was able to finish that one. But someone did. Someone did, yeah. Well, 14 people have in total, and now it's 100 miles, which took another six years until someone was able to finish that one. But someone did.

Someone did. Yeah. Well, 14 people have in total, but, and now it's a hundred miles. Yes. Cantrell has said, the best description of the course I've heard, someone told me that every ultra has its signature hill, the nasty one that's totally unreasonable and makes or breaks the race. The Barkley is like all those hills just put end on end. breaks the race. The Barkley is like all those hills just put end on end. Besides the extreme difficulty of the course, one of the challenges of the Barkley is just figuring out how to compete

in it. The registration date and requirements aren't posted and can be rather unusual, such as having to bring a pair of socks for the organizers. Beverly Abbs, a two-time Barkley competitor, has said, There's an email listserv for the Barkley, and when a new person gets accepted and starts asking questions on the listserv, the veterans will just lie. They'll put up amazing stories about what needs to be done and what happens. For a virgin, half of getting to the start line is working through the lies. The Barkley will start anytime between midnight and

noon on the race day with one hour before the race being signaled by the blowing of a conch. So apparently you just wait around listening for that. The race officially begins when a cigarette is lit by the race director. And in addition to running, the competitors have to find between 9 and 11 books along the course and remove the page corresponding to the runner's race number from each book as proof that they've completed that task. For those who want to learn more about the Barkley, Charles notes that there is a documentary about the race available on Netflix called The Barkley Marathons, The Race That Eats Its Young.

And just in case that didn't sound daunting enough, Charles also let us know about an ascetic practice performed by some Tendai Buddhist monks that is rather a supreme test of determination and endurance. It's called the Kai Ho Gyo, or Circling the Mountain, and this is a 1,000-day challenge that involves walking a route on Mount Hiei, and it takes seven years to complete the full course of it.

In the most extreme version of the challenge, during each of the first three years, the monks walk or run 40 kilometers or almost 25 miles a day for 100 days. So that's basically a marathon a day for 100 straight days. And that goes up to 200 days in a row for years four and five. Then in year six, it's 60 kilometers or about 37 miles a day for 100 days, with year seven being 84 kilometers or 52 miles a day for 100 days, followed by another 100 days of 40 kilometers each. And then in addition, during the fifth year, the monk is required to spend several days without food, water, or sleep, sitting in the lotus position

in the temple, continuously reciting a mantra for one of the gods, with a monk on either side of him to be sure that he doesn't fall asleep, stop, or pass out. Wikipedia reports that this period lasts for seven and a half days, but both The Guardian and The New York Times report that the period is actually nine days and that the point of it is to push yourself almost to the edge of death. It sounds like it would. Yeah, I wasn't aware that you could go for nine days without sleep or water. I mean, I think water is even more believable than sleep. I thought people started to hallucinate and stuff when they don't get sleep for many days,

but I don't know. I guess you have a monk on either side of you to keep you from getting too weird. When a monk starts the whole challenge, after the first 100 days, he has to petition the senior monks to be able to continue. And if he does that, that then commits him to completing the whole course. So after day 101, a monk must either finish the course or take his own life. And it said that the mountain contains many unmarked graves of the monks that were unable to complete the challenge. Now, supposedly, nowadays, the requirement is a little more symbolic than literal, and the selection process is designed to ensure that those who do commit to the course will likely finish it. But the New York Times interviewed Genshin Fushinami,

a monk who completed the Kaiho-gyo in 2003, and he said that during the challenge he carried a length of rope and a short sword so that if for some reason he could not finish one of his daily treks, he could use one of those to kill himself. Fushinami told the Times, I would have chosen the rope over the knife because it's faster and cleaner, but fortunately it rarely comes to that. Only 46 men have completed the 1,000-day challenge since 1885,

and of these, three have completed the circuit twice, most recently Yusai Sakai, who first did the circuit from 1973 to 1980, and then after a half-year pause, did it again, finishing his second round in 1987 at age 60. So he spent seven years doing that and then turned around and do it again. Yeah, six months later, he's turned around and started again, so don't I feel like a slacker. The lateral thinking puzzle in episode 114 was about a listener trying to figure out why his stepfather's computer seemed to be turning on the radio. Tony Hart wrote, when I first heard the description of the lateral thinking puzzle, it immediately brought to mind a

demonstration I had seen using an IBM 1130 mini computer in high school in 1969. Like most computers of the time, the 1130 put out electromagnetic noise which could be picked up on an AM radio. Some bright coder somewhere figured out how to write a program on punch cards in those days that modulated the noise to play a tune on a transistor

radio. Great music it wasn't, but for someone like me who had access to a computer for the first time, it was a neat trick. It is a neat trick. And that is just so cool to think, like, just in the lifetime of some of our listeners, how much things have changed. Like, wow, it's amazing. And Jesse McGee wrote, the story of Pop's radio that was mysteriously turning on when his computer was locking up reminded me of the following story I was told by a good friend. My friend was in the TV electronics repair business for years.

They had a single and by his reports quite attractive young lady purchase a new console model television from the shop where he was employed. A month or two later, she calls to say she's having a problem. deployed a month or two later she calls to say she's having a problem every day between 10 and 11 a.m the tv would either turn itself on or off depending on the state it was in on the time at the time the tv had no timer of any sort wasn't connected to a timer and there was nothing odd about the power coming into the house they brought the unit into the shop and couldn't replicate the problem after the set was returned she reported the same problem again, and this went on for months. They replaced the remote, the remote sensor, numerous parts. Nothing worked. Then they didn't hear from her for a month or two. She came into the shop for another reason and reported the problem had stopped, and there was much rejoicing as nothing frustrates repair people more than a

nitpicky problem they can't find. A few months later, the problem began to occur again. Between 10 and 11 a.m., the TV would power on or off. Perplexed and single as it happened, one of the techs decided to go out and sit in her house to see what was happening, and he found the problem. At that time of the year, the sun was lined up in such a way that it reflected off the building across the street, into her window, and struck the front of the television, thus causing one of the few parts they'd failed to replace, the power switch, to heat up and either lose or make contact. He suggested she close her curtains when she went to work, which solved the problem.

Thanks for a great podcast and blog. And Jesse's friend's story would make a pretty good lateral thinking puzzle in itself if anyone wants to try to use it to stump their friends. That's a good idea. Yeah. Although if you'd given it to me as a puzzle, I think I would have had a hard time believing that that would really happen. And I guess that just shows life truly is stranger than fiction sometimes. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. And if you have any questions or comments, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And please add some hints on how to pronounce your name.

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 figure out what's actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. Ready? I hope so. A jockey loses his first steeplechase race, but wins the second by a head. After the race, rather than celebrating, he doesn't speak to the horse's owner and in fact never races again.

Why? Okay. When you say he loses by a head, I mean, does somebody or something actually lose a head? No. I'm happy to say no. Just checking. Some gruesome accident. You never know with these things.

Well, that would explain it. We should do that one sometime. Okay. Do I need to know more about the details of a steeplechase race? Is there some important detail about a steeplechase race? It's just a horse race. Does the exact time period matter? No.

Does the location matter? No. Okay. Is the jockey's identity important? No. Is there some specific characteristic about the jockey that's important, like gender or abilities or some defining characteristic? I'll say no. I don't think there is. No.

Okay. So a jockey loses the first steeplechase race, but then wins a second one. Yes. Is the second one somehow connected to the first one in some way? No. No. It's just a different race.

Yes. On the same horse? Does it matter? It doesn't matter, actually. I don't know the answer to that. But he was racing for the same owner uh not necessarily okay so there there is a jockey who has some relationship to the owner of horses yes and he's racing for this horse owner yes and he wins the second race

but doesn't speak to the horse's owner right and never races again correct is the jockey a he should i say he yes okay does the jockey feel um would you say that the jockey feels ashamed of something that happened no i wouldn't say that guilty no is the jockey dead yes the jockey did lose his head where did that come come from? You went from ashamed to guilty to dead. Because you were sort of trying not to smile. I'm looking for every clue I can get here. And I'm like, okay, it's not that the jockey's ashamed or guilty. So the jockey's dead.

The jockey died during the steeplechase race? Yes, you basically got it. This actually happened. On June 4th, 1923, 35-year-old jockey Frank Hayes won a steeplechase at Bel Yes, you've basically got it. This actually happened. On June 4th, 1923, 35-year-old jockey Frank Hayes won a steeplechase at Belmont Park in New York State. Riding a horse

called Sweet Kiss, he won by a head, beating odds of 20 to 1. Apparently, he died in the middle of the race, but he was still in the saddle at the finish, making him the first

and so far the only jockey to have won a race after death. He was discovered to be dead only when the horse's owner came to congratulate him after the race.

It's thought that he had a heart attack possibly due to the strain of slimming down from 142 to 130 pounds shortly before the race. At the discovery of his death, the jockey club dropped all the customary regulations and declared him the winner without the customary weighing in. He was buried three days later in his racing silks. So there isn't actually a rule that you have to be alive at the end of the race in order to win. There wasn't in 1923, apparently. Very good.

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