Futility Closet - 123-Washington D.C.'s Hidden Tunnels

Episode Date: September 26, 2016

  In 1924 a curious network of catacombs was discovered in Washington D.C. They were traced to Harrison Dyar, a Smithsonian entomologist who had been industriously digging tunnels in the city for almost two decades. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Dyar's strange hobby -- and the equally bizarre affairs in his personal life. We'll also revisit balloons in World War II and puzzle over a thief's change of heart. Intro: The melody of Peter Cornelius' 1854 composition "Ein Ton" is a single repeated note. Japanese puzzle maven Nob Yoshigahara devised this optical illusion. Sources for our feature on Harrison Dyar: Marc E. Epstein, Moths, Myths, and Mosquitoes, 2016. Marc E. Epstein and Pamela M. Henson, "Digging for Dyar: The Man Behind the Myth," American Entomologist 38:3 (July 1, 1992), 148-169. Ryan P. Smith, "The Bizarre Tale of the Tunnels, Trysts and Taxa of a Smithsonian Entomologist," Smithsonian, May 13, 2016. John Kelly, "Who Was Harrison G. Dyar?", Washington Post, Oct. 27, 2012. John Kelly, "Inside the Tunnels of Washington's Mole Man, Harrison G. Dyar," Washington Post, Nov. 3, 2012. John Kelly, "A Final Look at D.C.'s Tunnel-Digging Bug Man," Washington Post, Nov. 7, 2012. Associated Press, "Secret Tunnels Shrouded in Mystery," Oct. 21, 1992. United Press, "Scientist Admits He Dug Tunnels That Caused Furore," Sept. 28, 1924. Modern Mechanics published this diagram of Dyar's B Street catacomb in its August 1932 issue. The inset photo at top left corresponds to the 32-foot shaft at right, which was lined in concrete and fitted with iron pipes to serve as ladder rungs. Two more shafts (partially obscured) can be seen to the left. The inset photo at bottom shows the inscription H.G. DYAR FEB 14 1923 on an archway near the cellar entrance. That date was Dyar's 57th birthday. Listener mail: David Hambling, "How 100,000 Weather Balloons Became Britain's Secret Weapon," Guardian, Sept. 15, 2016. Wikipedia, "Operation Outward" (accessed Sept. 24, 2016). Wanderlust has a short video about the operation. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was devised by Sharon, who offers these corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). 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 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 one-note melody to an impossible ledge. This is episode 123. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1924, a curious network of catacombs was discovered in Washington, D.C. They were traced to Harrison Dyer, a Smithsonian entomologist who had been industriously digging tunnels in the city for almost two decades.

In today's show, we'll describe Dyer's strange hobby and the equally bizarre affairs in his personal life. We'll also revisit balloons in World War II and puzzle over a thief's sudden change of heart. On September 25, 1924, a truck backed into an alley in Washington, D.C.'s DuPont Circle neighborhood, and the ground collapsed beneath one of its tires, which revealed a mysterious void with walls not of soil but of brick. One of the property's owners and a janitor lowered themselves through this hole and dropped onto what turned out to be a dirt floor, and they found themselves in a brick-lined hallway that was eight feet high and four feet wide and had an arched roof. They followed this hallway for 60 feet and came to a concrete slab, then turned and followed another tunnel that went down six steps and reached yet another tunnel that had a trap door set on the floor that revealed a ladder leading down into the darkness. They discovered this whole unsuspected network of tunnels that no one had known had been there, just lurking under DuPont Circle, and no one knew where this had come from.

The story was featured in papers throughout the country, and the public flocked to see the maze. The Washington Post reported that, quote, the alley leading to the plot of ground became jammed with automobiles of every description, frantically honking horns and sounding sirens as they endeavored to approach nearer the scene of interest. They discovered a number of other entrances, and finally, uniformed police officers were assigned to guard those in order to prevent a further collapse of the tunnels, wherever they had come from. No one knew what to make of this. The Washington Post ran a headline that said, old tunnel here believed to have been used by Teuton war spies and bootleggers. This was because they'd found a few old German newspapers dated 1917 in the tunnels, which

suggested that Germans had been down there during World War I. Also, since this happened in 1924, prohibition was going on, so they thought perhaps it had something to do with bootlegging, but no one really knew. Other theories included that they had been abandoned sewage tunnels that no one somehow had ever known about. Possibly, I don't know who came up with this. There were two houses nearby. Someone decided that they were occupied by brothers, one of whom had a beautiful wife, and the other brother had dug these tunnels in order to permit trysts underground, which is an awful lot of work to go to. Perhaps they had been built there as far back as the Civil War to protect Confederate soldiers hiding in Washington.

These are all just, I think, made up out of whole cloth. One rumor said that a German chemist named Otto von Golf had used the chambers for underground experiments, but no one really knew. The truck, when it broke through, had been delivering supplies to a construction project at 21st and P Streets Northwest behind the Pelham Court Apartments, and old-timers who lived in the neighborhood remembered that during the construction of those apartments seven years earlier, during the war, a steam shovel had broken through and revealed the tunnels then, but that was during the chaos of the war, and so it didn't attract nearly as much attention as it did in 1924. Anyway, people, a few old-timers, had

known about these tunnels. They said that the land had previously been owned by Harrison Dyer, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution, and suggested that investigators talk to him, since he had owned the house previously. Dyer was the country's leading mosquito expert. Various sources describe him as an irascible curmudgeon and the quintessential Smithsonian eccentric. He'd been born in 1866 and had come to the United States National Museum, now the National Museum of Natural History, in 1897, and still worked there now in 1924 when people started to ask about this. It turned out, he finally confessed, that he had dug all of those tunnels himself under DuPont's circle. He said he just liked digging tunnels for a hobby as a way to relax.

He did it himself, all of that. Dug the tunnels and lined them with brick and plaster and just undertook the whole thing. They were just tunnels. It turned out there were no rooms or anything particularly to do down there. There was just an extensive network of tunnels that extended 200 feet behind that house.

But that would just, I mean, I'm just imagining how many years it would take to do that on your own. Yeah, and it's a strange thing to say you do for relaxation because it's an enormous amount of work to do any digging at all. He had moved across town to a red brick house since then at 804 B Street Southwest across from the museum. They asked him why he dug these enormous tunnels in his backyard, and he told the Washington Star that his tunnel-dugging habit had begun around 1905. And he said, it began very innocently.

He said, Mrs. Dyer, his wife, wanted a bed of hollyhocks and a little garden for vegetables. Well, I volunteered to dig the garden. When I was down perhaps six or seven feet, surrounded only by the damp brown walls of old Mother Earth, I was seized with an undeniable fancy to keep on going. And that's it. He didn't plan this. He just kept on going. So he did, excavating a labyrinth of tunnels six feet high and fanning out 200 feet behind the house with walls of brick and plaster. He made four entrances to the tunnels, concealing one with a little house. He just worked at this. It took him 10 years to do all of it, which I can easily imagine. He kept digging until 1915.

In 1906, in fact, shortly after he'd started, he had bought additional land behind the house, ostensibly to have an alley and more room for a garden, but that actually provided him more room underground for digging. I'm not sure anyone, I think some of the neighbors knew he was doing this, but most people didn't suspect. I mean, none of this was visible. He said he dug the tunnels because he found digging relaxing. He said, I did it for exercise. Digging tunnels after work is my hobby.

They asked where he put the soil, which I wondered myself. He said, the dirt from the tunnels in the rear of my house on 21st Street, I dumped on the vacant lot where the Pelham Courts now stand. He also dumped some soil into the gardens that that would be a lot of soil to dump but i guess over 10 years maybe you can just i i don't know he said my son otis dyer used to play in the tunnels other boys played in the tunnels and while they didn't annoy me they were somewhat of a nuisance to some of the neighbors his daughter dorothy had a halloween party in the tunnels quote with all her friends decorated with jack-o'-lanterns.

The police apparently visited several times, either in response to complaints about the children or simply to investigate, but he owned the land. He wasn't doing anything illegal, so they let him alone. He had once narrowly escaped being buried alive while digging. He did all of this alone. Sometimes his kids were down there helping him, but for the most part, he did it alone. So that's a real danger. digging. He did all of this alone. Sometimes his kids were down there helping him, but for the most part, he did it alone. So that's a real danger. He had come, he came back into the house shaken,

covered with dirt, head to foot, but went back into the tunnels. So he could easily have died doing this, although apparently he was, for an untrained person, he was quite a good engineer. The Star Reporter complimented him on his construction skills, and he said, well, I was never taught engineering or how to lay bricks. I've spent my life chasing bugs, because he was an entomologist. He'd worked on the 21st Street tunnels, as I said, for 10 years and finally left them around 1914 when he moved west for a few years. And after he left, the house was replaced with an apartment building. The reporter at this point asked him rather idly whether he'd ever dug any more tunnels. And he said, amazingly, yes, under the side yard of the B Street house where

he now lives, also in D.C., was a whole multi-level subterranean maze. Like the first set, these tunnels were tall enough for a man to stand in and for two abreast to walk through. I'll put a diagram in the show notes. It's a whole three-level, I don't know what you'd call it, Warren catacomb? John Kelly, a writer for the Washington Post, wrote in 2012, some shafts went straight down and were lined in concrete with horizontal iron pipes arranged as ladder rungs. The ceilings were arched like some medieval catacomb, in places Dyer had sculpted the heads of animals and humans. It was this whole unseen, unsuspected, I don't know what you'd call it, construction project that he'd been working on for years.

And this is not in some out-of-the-way part of D.C. If you know Washington, the first of these networks is in DuPont Circle, across from what is now the Indonesian embassy. The other is now on Independence Avenue, the first of these networks is in DuPont Circle across from what is now the Indonesian embassy. The other is now on Independence Avenue, the site of it, south of the National Mall between the Hirshhorn Gallery and the Department of Transportation. So this isn't in some remote area. It's real prime real estate in D.C. The B Street catacomb was constructed in three levels with steps and ladders connecting the tiers. The maze could be accessed both from the basement of his house or the front yard. He said, for this

one, the dirt from these tunnels is piled in a mound in my backyard, which must have been some mound. Here also, though, he gave a really innocent explanation of how this started. He said he started the B Street tunnels as a way to get from the basement to the ash can on the street without having to walk outside. So I'll build a tunnel. Yeah, one writer said, however hard it is for you to get to the street by walking down your driveway, it's infinitely harder to dig a tunnel to get there. And he said then as before, he just kept going. He just apparently liked digging. Just about the foremost expert on all of this is a writer named Mark Epstein, who is a

Smithsonian entomologist himself and who took an interest in this and just did a lot of researching, has published a book about Dyer. He wrote in American Entomologist in 1992, The tunnels themselves are of a size and extent far beyond what legends convey. They were truly amazing constructions, complete with masonry, artwork, and Latin inscriptions. Which is true. One of the entrances to the B Street tunnel network was through the basement of the house. One of the entrances to the B Street tunnel network was through the basement of the house, and Dyer had built a small Gothic door there in the southeast corner,

and on the arch was inscribed the Latin motto, Facilis Descensos Averno, which is a quotation from Virgil's Aeneid, which means the way down to hell is easy. And as I say, he'd put in niches, sculptures along the way. It's an enormous amount of work, but apparently it really was just because he enjoyed doing it. It didn't have any particular significance beyond that. In fact, if you look at the diagram I'll put in the show notes, it's just a warrant of tunnels. There are no rooms down there. There's really nothing to do but go down and just walk through the network of tunnels and come back up again.

Somehow, though, it seems more important, though. There's something about digging underground that seems atavistic or elemental. I guess because it's hidden, that it seems somehow it's more important than it is. Like it has more significance. Yeah, but when he said it's really nothing to me, it's just I just like digging. That's really the truth. The B Street Tunnel was illuminated with electric lights, and the walls and archways bore sculpted heads of people and animals that he'd placed there, as I said. On one archway near the cellar entrance was the inscription H.G. Dyer, Feb. 14, 1923. That was his 57th birthday. And he would inscribe completion dates on various other

parts of the maze. He still hadn't completed the project by September 1924 when it all came to light like this. Mark Epstein, the Smithsonian entomologist, this is an interesting point, I think. There are two networks of tunnels. One is in DuPont Circle. The other is on B Street. The one in DuPont Circle is sort of long and flat and horizontal, and the one on B Street is deeper. It's three levels deep. And Epstein says that apparently at DuPont Circle, he had a long stretch of land that had only about 50 vertical feet until he hit bedrock. And at B Street, he had a relatively small lot, but 200 feet of digging room before he hit rock.

So he would just fill up the available volume of earth with as many tunnels as he could fit in there. He just liked digging. Dyer's son Wallace said, we loved the tunnels. We'd play down there, and they were quite safe. We couldn't get the cats to go down there. They were scared to death of it. I had to carry them. So apparently the cats did wind up down there. He also recalled telling ghost stories down there sometimes, quote, because it was perfectly dark like the Luray Caverns or any cave. You could scare the wits out of yourself if you wanted to because there was no daylight there. City officials understandably warned Dyer to secure permits for future excavations. He hadn't gotten, apparently, a permit to do this sort of thing. But in early October 1924, they granted him permits to keep digging.

So he was legally allowed to just keep going and i think he did so uh an urban legend held among the many explanations for what accounted for these tunnels was that a man had had two families one of each of the locations and had built a tunnel to travel between the houses so the families didn't know about each other each other just let him travel back and forth the story was told that two kids were talking at school one day and both discovered that they had a father who studied butterflies at the Smithsonian, which makes a great story, but it's not true. This myth lasted for decades and actually produced a limerick. A fabulous man was H. Dyer.

As he aged, he only got spryer. He said to his suite as he dug neath the street with each shovelful darling, you're nigher. But there's actually some truth to this or to the idea behind it. He actually did have two wives and dug tunnels at each house. He dug them at different times and he had a family at each house where he dug the tunnels and a wife at each house. They did know it about each other and they occupied, happened at different times. So the kids were different ages and these were miles apart. So the tunnels didn't actually connect, but there is some truth to this strange story.

So he was married to two women at the same time? Yes. Oh. Well, sort of. Sort of. He married his first wife, Zella, in 1889, and then in the early 20th century, Zella became aware that he developed a fondness for a kindergarten teacher named Waleska Pollock, whom he'd met in 1900 on a Chautauqua excursion in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

He became a convert to her Baha'i faith and made increasingly frequent visits to her house on B Street. In 1906, Waleska married a rather mysterious man named Wilfred P. Allen in Richmond, Virginia. The curious thing about Wilfred P. Allen is no one ever saw him. So ostensibly, there was nothing for Zella to worry about becausealesca was married to someone else, but no one ever saw this man. It was just kind of a dotted outline. And Lalesca started having children at the B Street house, which Harrison kept visiting. She had three sons with ostensibly Wilfred over the next decade. And during this period, Dyer built a home for them on B Street, which is now Independence Avenue.

They've renamed the streets in D.C. So he's not only building this extensive network of tunnels, but he's got the time to have two wives and two families. Yeah, I'm not even talking about his entomology career, which is apparently very impressive and incredibly prolific. Maybe he just didn't sleep. Some people, I just don't understand how they accomplish everything they do, good or bad. In the decades since Waleska's marriage, no one ever saw Wilfred Allen. Dyer and Waleska said that he lived in Philadelphia for financial reasons and that she visited him there. Zella, the first wife, who grew very suspicious,

understandably, wrote desperate letters to Waleska, who said that her feelings for Dyer were purely sisterly. Zella suggested that this invisible Wilfred make a visit to Washington sometime to stem the growing gossip, but he never appeared. Zella finally fed up. In 1915, had the house on B Street searched and filed for divorce because she found evidence that he just had an entirely separate family there. Dyer moved to Reno and suffered a nervous collapse, and Waleska nursed him and sought a divorce herself, which presented an interesting legal problem because she was trying to get a divorce from a man who apparently didn't exist. It took her five years to sort that out, And the two of them finally did get married. Dyer married Waleska in his second marriage and moved into the B Street house. but failed.

Word of the affair reached the administration of the Department of Agriculture, and an investigation found that Dyer had signed Waleska's marriage certificate as Wilfred P. Allen. So that explains that. The Secretary of Agriculture dismissed Dyer in June 1917 for, quote, actions deemed inappropriate for a government employee. Dyer finally died in 1929 after suffering a stroke at his desk. Afterward, this is interesting, the Department of Agriculture bought the B Street house from Waleska,

which eased her financial burden, but they also had an ulterior motive. They knew about this network of tunnels under the house and wanted them for experiments in growing mushrooms, since the tunnels were dark and moist. The question everyone wants to know is, do the tunnels still exist? I think the answer is almost certainly not. The B Street tunnels were briefly considered for use as air raid shelters during World War II, but John Kelly of the Washington Post, who looked into all this in 2012, says everything was demolished in the construction of the FAA headquarters. That leaves the 21st Street tunnels, the ones at DuPont Circle.

An entrance there was exposed in 1958 when a man named Lewis Curd built a wall there. He owns the two houses now. Curd's son Chip told Kelly he's certain that construction over the past 100 years has caused the tunnels to collapse, and that wouldn't surprise me at all because D.C. is, like any big city, continually remaking itself, and it would be surprising if something like this could still exist after that much construction. But even if Dyer's tunnels are gone, there could be additional tunnels under D.C. or indeed anywhere else. Apparently there are people in the world who just enjoy digging, and often even their neighbors don't know about it, so there could be tunnels underground almost anywhere.

Futility Closet is supported primarily by our wonderful patrons. We just wouldn't be able to keep putting in the amount of time that the show takes to make if it weren't for the donations and pledges that we get. If you'd like to make a one-time donation to help us out, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. And if you'd like to join our Patreon campaign and pledge a recurring donation to help keep us going, you can get access to our activity feed, where you'll find outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles and learn what's going on behind the scenes of the show,

including what Sasha, our show mascot, likes to do besides messing with our microphones, which she actually has been doing quite a lot of recently. You can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link at the website. And thanks again to everyone who has been helping out. There wouldn't still be a Futility Closet without you. In episode 111, Greg told us about Japanese fire balloons that were launched during World War II

with the idea that they would float to North America and drop bombs that could start forest fires. with the idea that they would float to North America and drop bombs that could start forest fires. Chris Curtis wrote and said, love the podcast and was interested in the Japanese balloon attacks on the US. I had come across these as part of study into weather with the Japanese discovering the importance of high altitude winds and especially jet streams. By sheer chance, the Guardian here in the UK published a small article today about a simpler scheme called Operation Outward, used by the British in World War II, which seemed to be effective. This deliberately used weather balloons to attack German-occupied Europe.

The idea seemed to come about after accidental escapes of balloons caused problems in Scandinavia. The British apologized, then realized that maybe they could use the same idea where they wanted to cause problems. than realized that maybe they could use the same idea where they wanted to cause problems. So apparently, balloons were used in a lot more ways in World War II than I had ever realized. One use of balloons was for what were called barrage balloons, which were very large balloons tethered to the ground by metal cables, and they were used as a defense against aircraft attacks, either by damaging aircraft that hit the cables or by causing the aircraft to have to fly higher, which would put them more in the range of anti-aircraft fire. Barrage balloons were actually first used by several countries during World War I,

and then were used again quite a bit by the British during the Second World War. By early 1940, there were a number of complaints about damage to power lines caused by barrage balloons that had broken loose of their moorings. And then in September 1940, a gale tore loose several barrage balloons and swept them to Scandinavia, where the balloons trailing steel cables got caught in power lines and shorted them out, disrupted railways and knocked down the antenna of the Swedish International Radio Station. That was all rather unfortunate, but it really sparked an interest in using these types of balloons to cause deliberate damage to the enemy. The Guardian reports that Churchill said, we may make a virtue of our misfortune as he gave his approval for what became Operation Outward.

The estimates are that no more than about 9,000 of the Japanese fire balloons were released, but close to 100,000 balloons were launched during Operation Outward. The British balloons didn't need to travel as far as the Japanese balloons did, so they didn't need to be very sophisticated. Operation Outward was able to use cheap surplus weather balloons that the Navy had an extensive stock of. Latex balloons about 8 feet or 2.4 meters in diameter that were outfitted with simple

timing and regulating mechanisms. Slow burning fuses would release the balloons payloads which were either steel wires that would hopefully damage electrical lines or incendiary devices that were intended to start fires. Soon after the start of Operation Outward in March 1942, interception of German Air Force communications showed German fighters were trying to shoot down the balloons. This encouraged the British as they thought that the harassment value on the German Air Force alone would justify the operation. And later, reports were trickling in about damage to electricity supplies and fires in

farms and in forests and on farms. After the war, German records showed that the trailing wire attacks had indeed caused the Germans considerable trouble, with electricity supplies regularly being interrupted and significant damage to the electrical distribution network. It was more difficult to assess the effectiveness of the incendiaries, as any particular fire could have been caused by a balloon or by a variety of other means, including aircraft-dropped incendiaries. However, reports from newspapers printed in occupied Europe did indicate that some of the fires had definitely been caused by outward balloons. Outward's greatest success came in

July of 1942 when a balloon with a trailing wire struck a power line near Leipzig and caused a short circuit which ultimately destroyed a power plant. The Guardian reports that the damage from this single event was estimated to be five times as great as the entire cost of Operation Outward. I'm amazed at how many similarities there are between this and the Japanese balloons. Although this one seemed a little more successful in its aims, right? Yeah, but I had never heard of this before. I'd heard of the Japanese balloons. The Japanese didn't start it. I went back and looked up in my notes.

Japanese didn't start launching theirs until November 1944, which is two and a half years after the British did theirs. So maybe they got their idea from this. Well, that's what I kept thinking. All my sources said that Japan had just discovered the jet stream a few years before the West, and then this idea was original to them, and that they just sort of came up with it on themselves. But it seems remarkable how similar these two campaigns were if they had nothing to

do with each other. Yeah. And I mean, you know, of course, it's entirely possible that the Japanese came up with it on their own. But apparently reports of these balloons were at least being circulated through Europe, you know. Yes. And all it would take is one person, you know, just a word to get back to the Japanese.

To give them the idea. Just one particular detail, even, the only notable success the project, the Japanese project, had against the American war effort was to destroy transmission lines bringing power from the Bonneville Dam to the Hanford Engineering Works in south-central Washington state. So in both cases, West would prevail. Even more similarities, yeah. But it had one notable success, one particularly notable, that was knocking out some electrical supply. It's just amazing how many similarities there are. Yeah. Well, and like I said at the start,

I didn't know about balloons in the World Wars at all. It's funny, too, that in both cases, they were based on westerly winds. Yeah, and that was really vital. I thought it was kind of unfair that we couldn't retaliate against Japanese because the wind just blows in one direction, but it sort of reversed in Europe. That's right, and the British were concerned

that Germany would try to retaliate using a similar scheme, right? Because, I mean, the Germans obviously could make balloons too, but yeah, the winds tend to blow from west to east, above 16,000 feet in that part of the world, at least. So that really worked out for the British in terms of that Germany wouldn't be able to do a similar scheme. So it's kind of poetic justice. But unfortunately, for the British, winds aren't always precise enough to exactly count on, right? So there was a problem in Operation Outward, where sometimes there was damage that ended up being caused in the wrong places.

So, for example, in January 1944, two trains collided in Sweden after an outward balloon knocked out electrical lighting on the railway lines. And sometimes the balloons were blown back into the UK if the wind would suddenly shift directions. And on one occasion, a balloon knocked out the electricity supply to the town of Ipswich. So that was sort of an oops. By August 1942, Britain was launching 1,000 or more balloons a day, with some attacks involving as many as 1,800 balloons launched over three or four hours. But by May of 1944, changes were needed to accommodate the increases in Allied aircraft activity. So the mass balloon launches were replaced with trickles of balloons launched from different

sites at 10-minute intervals throughout daylight hours. And the last of the Operation Balloons was launched on September 4th, 1944. So like I said at the beginning, way more balloons than Japan ever launched as far as we know. Nobody knows an exact count for Japan, but it was way less. There's a nice little YouTube video on Operation Outward with photos of barrage balloons and the outward balloons, as well as the damaged Leipzig electrical plant. And we'll have that in our show notes for anyone

who's interested in seeing it. And thanks so much to Chris for sending this in to us and to everyone who writes to us. If you have any questions or comments, please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And if it's at all possible to pronounce your name wrong, then please let me know the right way to do it. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him an interesting sounding situation and he has to try to figure out what thinking puzzle. I am going to present him an interesting sounding situation and he has to try to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle was written by me.

Oh, good. Lewis plans a theft and successfully carries it out. He is getting away with his stolen loot when he suddenly acknowledges his crime and asks someone to call the police. Why? Okay, is this true? Yes.

Do I need to know when it happened? No. Do we need to know when it happened? No. Do we need to know where? No. What country? Nope. Do we need to know Lewis's exact identity? No. He's not someone famous? No. You said he commits a crime? He does. He commits a theft. Theft. That's what I thought. All right. Lewis commits a theft and then partway through, you say, confesses it? Yeah. He acknowledges his crime and asks somebody to call the police. Okay. So when he started this theft, did he understand that it was a theft? Yes. Okay. So he understood that he was taking something that didn't belong to him.

Correct. All right. Do I need to know what he was stealing specifically? Yes. Is Lewis human? Yes. Okay. Are there other people involved before I get into that?

No. He confesses the, or he acknowledges the crime to another person? Yes. The victim of the theft? No. Like not the owner of the...

Right, not the owner. Do I need to know more about that person, like their occupation or... Is it an authority or police officer or something like that? I know the occupation of the other person and it's mildly helpful, but not probably the most useful way to go. Do I need to know the owner of the item that was stolen? Not necessarily. All right, so it's really that simple. Yeah.

So why in the middle of getting away with your stolen goods, would you suddenly... Did he realize he was going to be caught? No. So he might've gotten away with this? Yes. Was it conscience or guilt that led him to... No. All right.

Would it help me to figure out what it is that he's stealing? It would, but that's, I know that's a difficult route to go. So there's other routes you could go, but. Okay. If you could narrow it down to like why you would suddenly do this behavior, that might help you figure out what it was. Did he hope to gain somehow by making the acknowledgement in any way to benefit by doing that? I can't even imagine how. I guess you would say to benefit in a very broad sense. Avoid punishment? No.

So he's stealing something and then acknowledges that he was doing that. Is there any element of fiction in this that he's an actor or this was? There's no element of fiction. Was it, okay, was it a living thing? Yes. That was fortunate fortunate good for you um do we need a person no an animal yes he stole an animal yes he stole an animal yes um would it help me to know what kind of animal was it what you would most people would call a pet? No. Livestock of some kind?

No. An animal? Yes. Do I need to know what institution he stole it from? Was it privately owned when he stole it? Or like a zebra in a zoo or something? It was a zoo. It was from a zoo. He stole an animal from a zoo and a zoo or something? It was a zoo. It was from a zoo.

He stole an animal from a zoo and then acknowledged that he'd done it. Yes. Why would you do that? Why would you suddenly, he's getting away with it and then suddenly. Did the animal have some defense mechanism? Yes. Like a skunk or something? Oh, no.

Something like that where you would regret stealing it. I would say he regretted stealing it. Porcupine? No. Something like that, where you would regret stealing it. I would say he regretted stealing it. Porcupine? No. Something like that. Some animal that defended itself when he molested it. And he suffered as a result? Yes.

I'd say that's on the right track. Yes. And then needed some kind of help? Yes. Okay. He was attacked, would you say? Injured? Close.

Yes. Yes. He was injured and needed aid. Yes. And so had to acknowledge that. Yeah. Yeah. Do I need to work to acknowledge that. Yeah, yeah. Do I need to work out? I can tell you what.

He had stolen a highly venomous snake and been bitten by it. That certainly makes sense. Yeah. This happened in 1983. 16-year-old Lewis Morton lived in Washington, D.C. and stole two gaboon vipers from the National Zoo. He had long been fascinated by animals, particularly reptiles, and he thought the snakes were so beautiful that he had to have them. He really didn't,

in a way, see it as a crime. He just thought, I have to own these. I just love them. He broke into the zoo and smashed the glass on the snake's cage and placed two adult vipers into a plastic trash bag. Didn't think this through very well. He took a bus towards his home with his bag of snakes and was like getting away with the whole thing. But as he was getting off the bus, he slung the bag over his shoulder and one of the snakes bit him through the bag. He says, I was getting off the bus and I thought a tree limb had fallen on me. Then I noticed two holes in the garbage bag and all of a sudden blood started coming from my nose and mouth. Apparently these vipers are highly venomous. So panicking, he asked the bus driver for help because he just he thought he was going to die.

Like he thought that's it. I'm going to die. And the driver called the police. Lewis was taken to the hospital in critical condition where he stayed for three weeks before he was finally able to be released. The hospital had to frantically locate and fly in anti-venom from several zoos to try to save him. He has lingering health problems. He's still alive and he has lingering health problems such as seizures that he attributes to the snake bites. But as far as I could tell, he wasn't actually charged with the crime. Maybe they feel that almost dying from it was punishment enough. So yeah, so no one actually died in this puzzle. We have an

almost fatal but not quite fatal puzzle. It's good for us. And if anybody else has a puzzle, fatal or otherwise, that they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9,000 frappant vedenda. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes.

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