Futility Closet - 125-The Campden Wonder

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 self-administered appendectomy to a spirit that visited Theodore Dreiser. This is episode 125. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. When William Harrison disappeared from Camden, England in 1660, his servant confessed that he and his family had murdered him. The events that followed showed the truth of the matter to be more bizarre. In today's show, we'll describe

Starting point is 00:00:39 the Camden Wonder, a mystery that has endured for over 300 years. We'll also consider Vladimir Putin's dog and puzzle over a little girl's benefactor. All right, the Camden Wonder. The English historian John Cannon calls this perhaps the most baffling of all historical mysteries. Sir Thomas Overbury, the Justice of the Peace who conducted an investigation into this strange happening, calls it one of the most remarkable occurrences which have happened in the memory of man. The facts are quite simple. William Harrison was a 70-year-old man who lived in Chipping Camden, which is a small market town in central England. On August 16, 1660, Harrison left his house in the morning and walked two miles to Charingworth to collect his lady's rents. Harrison left his house in the morning and walked two miles to Charingworth to collect his lady's rents. He served as steward to the Viscountess Camden and had done so for 50 years. He had a family, had a very stable life, and he did this periodically. She owned the land that these people

Starting point is 00:01:32 worked in periodically. He'd go out to collect rent from them. It was very straightforward. He was out all day and the evening finally closed in, and between eight and nine, his wife, old Mrs. Harrison, sent their servant, a young man named John Perry, to find his master and just meet him on the way home. Neither man returned that evening. In the morning, Harrison's son, Edward, went out looking for both of them. He didn't find his father, but he met Perry returning alone. Perry said he hadn't found his master. Together, the two of them visited a couple other villages and learned that Harrison had collected some of the rent and had been making his way home the previous evening. He just hadn't made it all the way home for some reason.

Starting point is 00:02:06 While they were out, they heard that a poor woman had found on the highway a hat, a neckband, and a comb that had belonged to Harrison, to the apparently vanished man. There was some blood on the neckband. And these were found within about half a mile of his house. So at this news, it seemed something bad had happened, and people rushed to look for Harrison's corpse or some evidence of what had happened to him, but found nothing more than these three things. Suspicion fell on John Perry, who apparently

Starting point is 00:02:35 had kind of a bad reputation. His whole family apparently had some low repute. You can sort of, reading between the lines, it seems to look that way. Because all Perry had done at this point was just gone looking for his master. He was hailed before Overbury, the Justice of the Peace, and he said he'd gone out to find William Harrison, as asked the previous evening, and had encountered two men named Reed and Pierce on the way. So Reed and Pierce were called by the Justice of the Peace and corroborated this story as far as they knew it, as did two men at Charingworth. It seemed that it really was that simple, that Perry had just gone out looking for

Starting point is 00:03:08 his master and hadn't found him. But they put him in prison anyway for a week until August 24th, and now things get interesting. He started telling various tales. He said that either a tinker or a servant had murdered his master and hidden the body, and he gave various locations where they went looking for it and didn't find anything. Finally, he summoned Overbury, the Justice of the Peace, and said he would tell him and no one else what had really happened. He told him that his mother and brother, Joan and Richard Perry, had murdered Harrison, and he also said that Richard, with John Perry's help, had robbed Harrison's home of 140 pounds the previous year. The house had been robbed the previous year,

Starting point is 00:03:45 but it's thought that neither of these brothers had anything to do with it. He just suddenly confessed to this, as well as this apparent murder of Harrison, whose body still hadn't been found. He explained that Joan and Richard had often asked him to tell them when Harrison had gone to collect rent. Harrison would go out periodically this two miles to Charingworth to collect the rent. So they knew that he was this old 70-year-old man who'd be coming back alone on the road with a lot of money, and it would be— A good opportunity. A good opportunity.

Starting point is 00:04:12 If he wanted to rob someone, that would be a really good time to do it. So he said this time he took them up on it. He said that he'd set out with his brother on the evening of Harrison's disappearance, saying that the two of them had chased Harrison, as he came home that night, into Lady Camden's grounds where their mother was, and that basically Richard there had strangled Harrison and killed him. They had seized his money and planned to put his body in a cesspool there. John said that he left them to do that and that he himself had carried the hat, the comb, and the band away from Harrison's body, cut them with his own knife, and then throw them into the highway just to throw off the searchers. And John said, then picks up his old story where he met this man

Starting point is 00:04:50 named Pierce, and it goes on from there, forgetting that he'd already said that he'd met a man named Reed in this interval. So there's already a distinction between his corroborated story that's already been proven to be what actually happened, and this strange confession to a murder that he just there's just a conflict between them yeah and he only started even mentioning this murder once he was in jail his whole conduct through this whole thing is just very bizarre um in fact the scottish writer andrew lang writes on the strength of this impossible farrago of insane falsehoods joan and richard perry his mother and his brother were arrested and brought before the Justice of the Peace. The cesspool and the Camden fish pools were searched for Harrison's

Starting point is 00:05:28 body, and they didn't find anything. On August 25th, the three Perrys were examined by Overbury, the Justice of the Peace, and Joan and Richard insisted they were innocent, quote, with many imprecations on themselves if they were in the least guilty. John, their son and brother, kept insisting that they were, that the three of them had conspired to kill Harrison. Richard, the brother, admitted that he and John had spoken on the morning of the disappearance, he said, but nothing passed between them to that purpose. They just emphatically denied they had nothing to do with any murder or any crime of any kind. But John just keeps insisting that they had done it. Yes, that the three of them had conspired to murder William Harrison.

Starting point is 00:06:02 As the three of them were being marched back from Overbury's house to Campton, John was foremost in line and Richard was a good way behind. Richard dropped something that in the language of those days was called an ankle. It's basically a cord. One of the guards picked it up. He dropped it from his pocket. One of the guards picked it up and Richard said it was only his wife's hair lace. In one end, there was a slipknot.

Starting point is 00:06:23 The guard took it up to John, who hadn't seen his brother drop it, and asked him if he knew it. John said that to his sorrow he knew it, for that was the string his brother strangled his master with. And John swore to this in the ensuing trial. So he's really emphatically insisting that his whole family had conspired to kill someone, despite his own previous accounts that they'd done nothing of the kind. There were two assizes, and an assize is basically a court proceeding to address matters such as this. The first of them was held in September 1660, and the Perrys were indicted both for the robbery of the house the previous year and this apparent murder in 1660. The judge, Sir Christopher Turner, refused to convict them of murder as there was still no proof of the death of the alleged victim. They still

Starting point is 00:07:03 hadn't found a body, and he said, I'm not going to convict anybody of a capital murder if we don't, we're not even sure it's taken place. They did plead guilty to the robbery because someone urged them to do this. This is apparently just bad advice. The crime, basically they knew they could plead guilty to that. And under the crime of the day, it would be immediately pardoned. There was something called the act of pardon and oblivion that had been passed by Charles II. So on bad advice, they agreed to say that they had robbed the house the previous year, knowing that they'd be immediately pardoned for it. And they thought they can at least put that part of the whole business behind them. That was a mistake. There was no evidence connecting them with the robbery. As I said,

Starting point is 00:07:40 it's thought today that they probably had nothing to do with it. But the confession made them look guilty and probably changed public sentiment against them. They later withdrew the confession, but it really didn't make any difference. The second assize was held in March 1661, and things were getting much worse now. The Perrys were tried on the charge of murder. They still hadn't found a body. Andrew Lang, this Scottish writer, notes that the account of the trial is not in the record house, but he says probably it was assumed at this point Harrison had been gone for between nine and ten months, and I thought, well, if he were alive, it's increasingly likely he would have shown up

Starting point is 00:08:12 by now. So it just looks more and more convincing that he was murdered somehow, and his body just hasn't been found. So people are generally more willing to believe that he was actually murdered. All three Perrys at this point pleaded not guilty. So John had stopped insisting that his family had committed murder, and now all three of them were pleading their innocence. When they told John, you had confessed earlier, he told them he was mad and knew not what he said. Hard to know what to make of that.

Starting point is 00:08:39 This new judge, a different one from the fall, Sir Robert Hyde, accepted the jury's verdict. They were guilty and sentenced them to death. And all three of them were hanged, all protesting their innocence. Everyone, all modern historians or everyone who's looked at this has condemned this Robert Hyde for being willing to convict the family of a murder when they still hadn't found a body. He seems to have been inexperienced. of a murder when they still hadn't found a body. He seems to have been inexperienced.

Starting point is 00:09:07 He was appointed on May 31, 1660 by the influence of his cousin, the Earl of Clarendon. So I think as a man of law, he was just very inexperienced and apparently prejudiced against this family. Anyway, a family of three people went to the scaffold because one of them insisted

Starting point is 00:09:22 they had committed a murder for which there was no real strong evidence. Insisted for a time, but then changed his mind about it. But that's not the crazy part. That's not why all this is famous. The crazy part is that two years later, the dead man came home. William Harrison showed up again after two years and gave a crazy story of his own as to where he had been. He said he'd left the house on August 16th, 1660, as everyone had

Starting point is 00:09:45 thought, went to Charingworth to collect the rents, but found most of the tenants out harvesting, so he couldn't get much. On his way home, probably at dusk, he said he met a horseman who stabbed him in the side. Two other horsemen came up. They didn't take his money, but put him behind one of them on horseback, handcuffed him, and threw a great cloak over him. Then he says they stuffed his pockets with a great quantity of money and rode to Deal, which is on England's southeast coast, where they sold him to a man for seven pounds. After six weeks at sea, he was transferred to a Turkish ship and left near Smyrna, where he was sold to an 87-year-old physician who employed him in his still room and as a hand in the cotton fields there, and gave Harrison the silver bowl. And

Starting point is 00:10:22 finally, after a couple of years, the Turk just died of old age, and by selling the bowl, he was able to make his way first to Portugal and finally back to England. No one believes this. Almost no one believes that story. It's just full of holes. Lang calls it a delirious tissue of nonsense. You can find the holes yourself there. If you were out to kidnap someone to sell them into the slave trade, would you choose a 70-year-old gentleman from the of england who you'd have to transport across the country and then accept only seven pounds for him when you it was already clear that at least he says you already have a great quantity

Starting point is 00:10:53 of money there's just none of this it makes any sense if they'd wanted to make for sea from chipping camden they would naturally have gone to the west coast of england rather than down to the southeast uh he's also said harrison also insisted that there were many other slaves on this slave ship where he was taken if that were the case there should have been corresponding disappearances in england which there weren't oh yeah uh the country as i said was in that time in a comparatively lawless state and kidnappings were common but none of this explains uh any of the larger mystery uh undeniably harrison wasn't killed, and that makes Perry's actions unaccountable. Why now then did John Perry insist that not only he, but his brother and his mother conspire in a crime that had never happened? So like none of it makes any sense. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:11:34 really there are two linked mysteries. That's the Campton wonder. That's why it's called a wonder, because it's just so baffling. Why did John Perry confess to a murder that had never happened? The English historian John Cannon writes, And why implicate his family? It's one thing for John Perry to say, I killed him. That's crazy enough on its face, but why implicate his mother and William Harrison, who had led this very stable life for 50 years serving this ficantus in the middle of England, suddenly, for some reason, disappear somewhere for two years and then reappear again. I will run down a list of explanations I have compiled here, but I'll tell you at the start that none of them are really satisfactory. People for three and a half centuries have been trying to find a way to connect all these dots to make sense of everything I've just explained, and no one's really been able to find an answer that everyone thinks is likely the case. The first and most appealing, honestly,

Starting point is 00:12:37 possibility is that it's all just fiction, that it's just a crazy story somebody made up, and so there's nothing to explain because none of this actually happened. That doesn't seem to be the case. The most telling reason I say that is this Sir Thomas Overbury, the justice of the peace who conducted the investigation. This is in the 17th century, so there certainly was a lot of superstition. In fact, Joan Perry, the mother who went to the scaffold, was reputed by some people to have been a witch. But Overbury was apparently an eminently rational, reasonable, level-headed, thoughtful man, and everyone seems to trust his account. He wrote in 1676, he said that this whole affair, he called it that,

Starting point is 00:13:15 no less strange than unhappy business, which some years since happened in my neighborhood, the truth of every particular whereof I am able to attest, and I think it may very well be reckoned amongst the most remarkable occurrences of this age. So that's, he's probably the best person on earth to have had an intelligent, informed opinion about these matters, and that's how he characterized them. The second reason, in 1945, E.O. Winstead of Oxford's Bodleian Library discovered that the two earliest accounts of the mystery, at least one of which was published within a few months of William Harrison's return. So this is

Starting point is 00:13:48 just a couple years after Harrison came back, which was only two years after the hangings. One of these was a pamphlet bearing the date 1662. The other is a broadside ballad with no date, but both say that the Perrys contrived to murder Harrison and that Joan, a witch, spirited him to Turkey after the robbery. So leaving aside the witchcraft part, they both agreed quite closely to the facts of the matter. And this was just a couple of years after they happened. Three, in August 1662, the Oxford antiquary Anthony Wood noted that, quote, Mr. Harrison, supposed to be murdered two years ago, came out of Turkey to his home in the country. Four, there is proof that the trials took place. In 1926, an eminent lawyer, Lord Justice Atkin, found the court records for the period in question and for the

Starting point is 00:14:29 Assize of 1661, the second one where they were actually convicted. The entries were complete. They say in Latin, John Richard and Joan Perry pleaded not guilty to the murder of William Harrison, gentlemen, and were sentenced to be hanged, which is about as clear as you can possibly get. Finally, in the 1950s, the English historian Sir George Clark found that the Chipping Camden Grammar School, there was a grammar school in the town that apparently William Harrison and Thomas Overbury both, they were on sort of a board there and would meet twice a year to go over the accounts. And you can actually see William Harrison's signature there, and sure enough, his signature disappears. He attended quite regularly, and then his signature drops out between April 1660 and October 1663, which is consistent with the period when he was supposed to be absent.

Starting point is 00:15:10 That doesn't prove the whole story, but it is consistent with it. So it does seem that something extraordinary happened in Chipping Camden in 1660, but what it is, no one's ever been able to figure out. I'll run down a little list of guesses here from various historians, but they're all somewhat speculative, and they're all, we don't really have positive evidence for any of them. The first concern is Harrison's son, Edward. Harrison was 70 years old, and when he passed away, Edward would become the new steward, and it's possible that he was impatient to inherit this position and arranged to have his father kidnapped. There's no evidence at all for this. This is just sort of kind of surmise.

Starting point is 00:15:48 But it's hard to believe he'd allow three innocent people to be killed when he knew that his father had merely been transported. Yeah. That just, it's hard to accept that. And it doesn't explain why Perry would not just confess himself, but implicate his mother and his brother. There's just a lot of explaining left to do there. Also, young Harrison didn't have a lot of money to finance such a crime. It's very speculative. Andrew Lang thinks that perhaps Harrison's presence at Camden was politically inconvenient to someone. This was a relatively lawless period of English history,

Starting point is 00:16:17 the interregnum between the execution of Charles I and the restoration of the son to the throne. Some historians call this anarchy. So it's thought that possibly because he was in a relatively privileged position, he might have overheard something, some secret of these troubled times, and so was spirited away, either to protect someone else or to protect himself. But then it becomes, even Lange says, it's only an amazing coincidence

Starting point is 00:16:39 that caused Perry to go mad at the same time and admit to a murder that had never happened. So that explanation covers Harrison's end of it. There's two linked mysteries here. There's Harrison and there's Perry. And it is possible that maybe there's just a separate explanation for both parts or something. Yeah. Similarly, British judge Frederick Mom proposed that Harrison had arranged himself to disappear

Starting point is 00:16:59 for reasons of his own and had enlisted Perry as an accomplice to plant his hat, comb, and neckband where they would be found to suggest murder. This had all been Harrison's idea for some reason no one's been able to fathom. But would Perry go to the scaffold for that? Would he be willing to die in order to cover Harrison's escape from whatever this was? Again, that seems hard to believe. Some say Harrison never left England. I mean, almost nobody thinks he was actually spirited off to Turkey. He could have been hiding in someone's attic, for all anyone knows. But that doesn't really explain anything. It was certain he was away from his own habitation, employment, and relations for nearly two years,

Starting point is 00:17:32 and if he wasn't carried away, it's hard to see why he would flee a comfortable association he had enjoyed for 50 years, forsaking his wife, his children, and his reputation. It's just entirely out of character for him to do that. One thing I don't have that I wish I did, I guess everybody does, is when he came back, presumably people said, you know, three people were hanged for your murder. Right. And how did he react to that? What do you think about that?

Starting point is 00:17:53 And that must have, I should think that happened many times after he came back, but it just, it hasn't been recorded in the information that's come down to it. So I don't know. Almost any answer he gave would shed a lot of light on this, I think, but we just don't have it. Mental illness. This is just my own speculation yeah actually it's also by shared by 19th century english barrister john paget he says he thinks perry had what he called a disease and then it seized on the opportunity when the cord fell from his brother's pocket actually he starts acting strange right from the very beginning of this story that's what you were

Starting point is 00:18:21 saying and then he himself said that he'd had like a period of madness, that he was mad. And that's why he had said what he did. Um, it's mom says he seems to have been a very foolish person. I'd put it a lot more strongly than that. If you read about this on paper, he seems to be either floridly insane or perhaps of extremely low

Starting point is 00:18:40 intelligence. I said, when, when all this first happened, he was sent out to find his master who hadn't come home. He came back and when questioned said, well, I went out looking for him and couldn't find him. Here's what he actually said. He said that after setting out to seek his master at about 845 the previous evening, he met William Reed of Camden and explained to him that

Starting point is 00:18:57 he was fearful of traveling in the dark and would return to get Edward Harrison's horse. He did this and Reed left him at Mr. Harrison's court gate. Then Perry dallied there until a man named Pierce came past, and together the two of them went a bowshot into the fields. He didn't say why, and then he came back again to Harrison's gate. Then he lay for an hour in a hen house, then rose at midnight, now that the moon had risen, thinking he could finally go. Then he lost his way in the mist and slept under a hedge,

Starting point is 00:19:22 and finally proceeded in the dawn to Charingworth. The road proceeded along between two hedges. It's almost impossible to get lost there, even in heavy fog. And he knew this area like the back of his hand. It's only two miles. It's just, it seems very erratic. Even his original story just seems like a very strange way to behave. So this is just my own speculation, but I wonder why no one has considered that he might have been tortured in jail. Because he started talking, as soon as he was jailed for this, he started saying, well, perhaps a tinker or another servant had killed Harrison. And then started saying, my own mother and brother helped me to kill him.

Starting point is 00:19:55 Like maybe a forced confession kind of thing? Yeah, no one at all that I've been able to find says that, but it seems to make a lot of sense. As I say, the family seems to be of low repute there seems to be some suspicion on them all along and so you can think that the authorities could have leaned on him saying i bet you killed him yourself and i bet your whole no good family was in on it and if they lean on him hard and if they'll say yes i did it myself on my whole no good family they could have threatened him with something yeah yeah but that doesn't explain harrison's end of it like why did he disappear at the same time so even that doesn't explain Harrison's end of it. Like, why did he disappear at the same time? So even that doesn't explain everything. I will close by just mentioning, there's one detail that's been kind of haunting me through all this.

Starting point is 00:20:31 I said there were two assizes, and in the first one, they refused to consider a murder charge. On that one, John Perry declared that his mother and his brother had tried to poison him in prison. And John Perry was saying so many crazy things at that point that most historians just note that and dismiss it but it I Think it might be true If you think about it this whole episode was a nightmare for the Perry family Right all three of them were being held now in prison against the day when they might be charged and executed for murder right and Awful as it sounds I think the mother and the brother realized that their choice was between all three of them dying or perhaps if

Starting point is 00:21:03 They could somehow get rid of John, awful as that sounds, that might be their only chance of surviving. So all of this, like so much in the story, is just open to speculation, but I worry that that might be the case. Listener Seth Leventhal wrote to us and said, you mentioned in podcast 116 Bismarck's tactic of using his large dog to unsettle visiting dignitaries and questioned why this isn't used nowadays. In fact, it is by Russian President Vladimir Putin. And it would have had a particular effect against his target in this case, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has a deep-seated fear of dogs to begin with. Of course, Putin did say he didn't mean to scare Merkel. And Seth is referring to an incident from

Starting point is 00:21:50 2007 where President Putin brought his large black Labrador into a meeting with Chancellor Merkel. And there's a photo of the event in which Merkel is looking distinctly uncomfortable, while Putin appears to look rather pleased. Actually, CNN and The Telegraph describe Putin's expression as smirking, while The Guardian describes his expression as a sardonic grin. For years, there have been rumors that the move had been a deliberate ploy on Putin's part to intimidate Merkel, as she has been afraid of dogs since being bitten by one in the 1990s. But several years after the event, in 2012, Putin told a German newspaper that he had no such intentions and hadn't known that Merkel didn't care for dogs. As far as I can

Starting point is 00:22:31 tell, Merkel has not said anything herself about the incident. And it's possible that the photographer just happened to capture a moment where Merkel looked pretty stiff and Putin looked oddly pleased. Interestingly, though, The Guardian reports that when Merkel had visited the Kremlin for the first time as chancellor, Putin gave her a toy dog as a gift. So make of that as what you will. That just seems, I wonder if Putin knows about Bismarck. That's not impossible. In episode 121, the lateral thinking puzzle involved guessing what addition to British tanks had improved the safety for the men serving in them. Adam Baring wrote and said that he and his girlfriend had come up with several ideas, such as the addition of ventilation, seatbelts, or even chamber pots. And that last one made a

Starting point is 00:23:15 lot of sense to me. Those are all good. Yeah. Adam also said, though, one thing that came to mind that would increase the safety was a removal instead of an addition. There is an effect called spalling that is the flaking of material due to a number of causes. In the case of tanks, it would be the flaking of paint on the interior of the tank due to the impact of an explosive that isn't powerful enough to pierce the armor. The shockwave from the explosion would cause the paint to break off and essentially become shrapnel inside the tank. Thus, removing the painted interior would lessen the effect and increase safety. And I hadn't heard of spalling before, but it turns out this really is a thing.

Starting point is 00:23:53 Apparently, there is even a type of anti-tank munition that flattens itself against the armor on the tanks before it explodes, and that causes shockwaves that create spall, or flakes of material, on the interior that can partially or even completely disable a vehicle or its crew. So in that case, it actually does fit the puzzle requirement of an addition made to tanks in that many armored vehicles such as tanks are now equipped with spall liners inside the armor. So that even fit. That makes sense. Donald Simmons had yet a different answer that fit the puzzle. that even fit. That makes sense. Donald Simmons had yet a different answer that fit the puzzle. He said, during the Normandy invasion in World War II, when Allied soldiers who were supporting tanks needed to talk to the tank commanders, they had to climb up on the tank to yell down the hatch.

Starting point is 00:24:35 This made them easy targets for enemy fire. So telephones were placed on the back of the tanks connected to their interiors so the infantry could communicate with them while staying undercover. According to the Antony Beaver book D-Day, one of the British tank commanders always answered by saying his London phone number, which he found hilarious, but apparently wasn't so much appreciated by the soldiers under fire outside. I shouldn't laugh, but that is kind of funny. Yeah, and Beaver quoted it this way in his book, a captain in the fifth cold stream who cranked the telephone wildly while bullets whistled around him did not appreciate the compulsive flippancy of his brother officer from the 1st Battalion inside the Sherman. The tank commander would always say on picking up his handset, Sloan 4929. Funny for him, but not so bloody funny for me.

Starting point is 00:25:27 funny for him but not so bloody funny for me and we have another follow-up to report on episode 111's japanese fire balloons that targeted part of north america in world war ii taylor bauer wrote i've been a reader of the futility closet website for a number of years and earlier this year finally started listening to the podcasts which had become my wife and i's go-to way to kill time on road trips i've learned a ton from futoset and appreciate all the work you both put in. It's amazing to me that as long as you all have been at it, you keep unearthing interesting facts and stories that have fallen by the wayside. I hail from the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle, and a story that has always fascinated me, yet is hardly known outside of the area,

Starting point is 00:26:01 is that of the Boy City bombing. On a summer night in 1943, the residents of Boy City were awakened by several loud noises outside and came out to find several practice bombs littered throughout the city. It turns out the bombs were dropped by a misguided B-17 from a nearby Air Force base in Dalhart, Texas, who had mistaken lights in Boy City, a small farm town, as the bombing range they were to practice on several miles away. The damage to the town was thankfully minimal. Reportedly, a few windows were busted in a local church.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Otherwise, I can imagine this would be a much bigger story. This obviously caused quite a scare to the residents of the town, but over the years, this event has become a badge of honor for Boy City. There are a few varying details to this story, most notably about the reaction of the crews who errantly dropped the bombs. Some accounts say they eagerly shared stories of it later on, but none of the crew attended an anniversary event

Starting point is 00:26:53 in the 90s, reportedly because no one wanted to own up to having been a part of the mistake. I bet. I believe this is technically the only time a town in the mainland U.S. has been bombed from a plane. I would have just said airily bombed until I listened to the podcast about the Japanese fire

Starting point is 00:27:09 bombs. The story that Taylor sent in is kind of a funny story now, but as you might imagine, it was pretty terrifying to the citizens of the town at the time. Four B-17 bombers were on a nighttime training run that was going to have them dropping practice explosives that were filled with four pounds of dynamite and 90 pounds of sand on a target roughly 20 miles from the Dale Hart airfield. The navigator made a 45-mile mistake, and unfortunately, the lights in Boy City's main square roughly fit the description of the intended practice target. The explosions were loud enough to wake pretty much the whole town of 1,200 people and caused

Starting point is 00:27:44 craters three and four feet deep. Of course, at the time, the residents didn't know who was bombing them, so it was pretty alarming. Some of the bombs hit within feet of a gasoline storage tank and a fuel transport truck, so it was really lucky that the town had as little damage as it did and that no one was hurt. Yeah, he's right. That would have been a huge disaster and a big news story. Yeah, apparently one of the bombs almost hit like an apartment complex too, with several families inside. An article in the Oklahoman noted that although they were in the wrong place entirely, all of the bombs did hit within 93 feet of what they thought was the target. So I guess that's

Starting point is 00:28:19 something. One of the sources that I read for this story said that Boy City is the only continental American town to be bombed during World War II. And I guess it is the only town that we know of, although we certainly know it wasn't the only bombing. And it turns out it wasn't even the only bombing from a plane. The Boy City News reported in 1945 that two Army planes, apparently also from the Dale Hart Airfield, dropped two bombs on a ranch just west of the town, only one of which exploded. The explosion started a fire which destroyed 2,000 acres of grass and five miles of fence. And I don't know whose job it was to have to try to explain

Starting point is 00:28:56 how they managed to do that twice. And obviously these bombings don't begin to compare with what some of the European cities had to face during the war, but it was just completely news to me to learn that there had been any at all here in America. Obviously, these bombings don't begin to compare with what some of the European cities had to face during the war. But it was just completely news to me to learn that there had been any at all here in America. So thanks to everyone who wrote in to us. And I want to thank Taylor for also sending along some very helpful tips on how to pronounce the place names, as I certainly would have gotten the pronunciation of Boy City wrong otherwise. If anybody else has any questions or comments for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com and pronunciation tips are always appreciated.

Starting point is 00:29:36 It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I am 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. This one comes from Paul Sloan and Des McHale's 2014 Remarkable Lateral Thinking Puzzles. Kelly is a little girl who was diagnosed with a deadly disease. Doctors advise her parents that the only cure is a bone marrow transplant from a brother or sister and it is needed within one month. Kelly is an only child. Her parents have never had any other children, and her mother is not pregnant.

Starting point is 00:30:11 How was Kelly saved? Wow. What an elaborate question. Is this true? Did this really happen? Oh, probably not. But it could. It could.

Starting point is 00:30:21 She needs a bone marrow transplant from, you said, a brother or sister. Yes. And she doesn't have those. Right. And you said that she saved them. She does get a bone marrow transplant? She does. That matches the requirements?

Starting point is 00:30:34 Yes. All right. She doesn't have brothers or sisters. Her mother is not pregnant, so she doesn't get a brother or sister. Correct. And there was one other proviso that you said? Oh, that it had to be within a month. That's just so they can't go make a brother or sister for her.

Starting point is 00:30:49 All right. Do I need to know anything technical about bone marrow to figure this out? Nope. Did you see something that's like a genetic match? Yeah. That I guess her body won't reject? Yeah. And where does that come from?

Starting point is 00:30:58 Did they somehow use part of her own body? No. Or her parents, one of her parents? She was injected with a bone marrow transplant. Yes. In the end. Yes. From another person.

Starting point is 00:31:12 Yes. That she didn't reject. I'm just, obviously we've covered all this ground. Yeah. Is from another person, from a relative of hers? Yes. Not her parents, not a sibling? Right.

Starting point is 00:31:33 Do I need to know how old she is? No. Um, she's not a childbearing age. She's not. She's a little girl. She's a little girl. Uh, an extended relative, like a cousin or something yes is it a cousin it is one of her cousins do i need to know express expressly how they're related

Starting point is 00:31:55 a relative of her mother's no you don't need to know on which side it's just it's just um she needed it to be genetically as close as a brother or sister. So how did they make a cousin work? Okay, a cousin would be like her mother's brother's daughter. And this worked. Do we need to know about, is it genetics? Like I have to work at the genetics of what relative would be plausibly a match? I don't know if, Maybe you need to be more specific because I'm not sure how you're thinking of that question.

Starting point is 00:32:27 Okay. Did either of her parents have an identical twin? Yes. Does it matter which one? Her mother? Do you know? One of her parents had an identical... Maybe both of them did.

Starting point is 00:32:37 One of her parents had an identical twin. No. You sort of just said it. Both parents had identical... They had two. Wow. Yes. Both parents have an identical twins. They had two. Oh, wow. Yes.

Starting point is 00:32:48 Both parents have an identical twin who married each other. So they had two children, which would be genetically equivalent to a brother and a sister for Kelly. That's clever. And one of them provided the transplant. I like that one. I just kind of stumbled into it, but that's a clever puzzle. If anyone has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you've been enjoying Futility Closet and our recent string of almost but not quite fatal puzzles, then please check out the support us section of our website to learn how you can support the show and help us keep making it.

Starting point is 00:33:21 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 extonious evulgations. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 125-The Campden Wonder

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