Futility Closet - 134-The Christmas Truce

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 piano made of matchboxes to a race on stilts. This is episode 134. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In December 1914, a remarkable thing happened on the Western Front. British and German soldiers stopped fighting and left their trenches to greet one another, exchange souvenirs, bury their dead, and sing carols in the spirit of

Starting point is 00:00:38 the holiday season. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Christmas Truce, which one participant called one of the highlights of my life. We'll also remember James Thurber's Aunt Sarah and puzzle over an anachronistic twin. At the start of World War I, German troops advanced westward across northern France and Belgium, expecting to win the war in six weeks. But when they failed to reach Paris, they withdrew somewhat and began to dig trenches. This trench line, which was still under construction at the end of the year, came to characterize the Western Front. It would eventually snake 475 miles from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. The soldiers in those trenches were curious about one another. In places, the trenches were less than 100 yards apart, so they

Starting point is 00:01:23 could see each other and smell each other's cooking and cigarettes. They were sometimes called to one another. Many German soldiers had lived in England and knew the language, and sometimes one side would refrain from attacking to permit the other to work or retrieve wounded or dead comrades from the no-man's land between the trenches. After nearly five months, it was clear it wouldn't be all over by Christmas as they'd hoped, and a spirit of live and let live was setting in. The weather was wet that December, and two days before Christmas it turned sharply colder and the ground froze, making life in the trenches unbearable. What happened next involved hundreds of soldiers, British, French, Belgian, and German, along the Western Front. No one knows whether it began in one spot or several. The history that's come down

Starting point is 00:02:04 to us is basically a collection of anecdotes gleaned from letters, diaries, soldiers' memories, and some military records, so I'll be skipping around here. It starts on Christmas Eve when Private William Quinton of the Sevikant Bedfordshire Regiment wrote, something in the direction of the German lines caused us to rub our eyes and look again. Here and there, showing just above their parapet, we could see very faintly what looked like very small colored lights. We were very suspicious and were discussing the strange move of the enemy when something even stranger happened. The Germans were actually singing. Not very loud, but there was no mistaking it. Suddenly, across the snow-clad no-man's land, a strong, clear voice rang out, singing the opening lines of Annie Laurie. It was sung in

Starting point is 00:02:43 perfect English, and we were spellbound. To us, it seemed that the war had suddenly stopped. Not a sound from friend or foe, and as the last notes died away, a spontaneous outburst of clapping arose from our trenches. The lights were Christmas trees. As the holidays approached, the German government had sent thousands of small trees and candles for them to the German soldiers. The British government delivered 355,000 brass boxes containing pipes and tobacco products or candy to the British. Albert Morin of the 2nd Queen's Regiment remembered Christmas trees appearing just after dark along the German line near La Chapelle de Montier, which drew applause from some of the English soldiers. He wrote,

Starting point is 00:03:18 It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere. And there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches, and then there were those lights. I don't know what they were, and then they sang Silent Night, Stille Nacht, I shall never forget it. It was one of the highlights of my life. The British shouted for more, and the Germans obliged with O Tennenbaum, and the British sent some flares up in appreciation. Private Frederick Heath wrote, All down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war. English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas. Come out, English soldier, come out here to us. For some little time we were cautious and did not even answer. Officers, fearing treachery, ordered the men to be silent. But up and down our line,

Starting point is 00:03:57 one heard the men answering that Christmas greeting from the enemy. How could we resist wishing each other a merry Christmas, even though we might be at each other's throats immediately afterwards? So we kept up a running conversation with the Germans, all the while our The Penn State historian Stanley Weintraub writes, Almost always it was the Germans who at least indirectly invited the truce. They were winning and had much less to lose by it. Christmas may also have meant more to the Germans. This goes back to 1870. The Germans were so commonly at war with someone that there had arisen sort of this unfortunate tradition of celebrating

Starting point is 00:04:30 Christmas at the front. This was called Kriegsweihnachting, or War Christmas. And both sides here were already weary of this war after only five months. Near Amontier, signboards arose up and down the trenches. The Germans assumed rightly that the English could not read their traditional Gothic lettering and that few of them would understand spoken German. The most frequent message on the signboards was, you know fight, we know fight. A private of the London Rifle Brigade wrote, the Germans started singing and lighting candles at about 7.30 on Christmas Eve, and one of them challenged any one of us to go across for a bottle of wine. One of our fellows accepted the challenge and took a big cake to

Starting point is 00:05:09 exchange. That started the ball rolling. We went halfway to shake hands and exchange greetings. There were 10 dead Germans on the ditch in front of their trenches, and we helped bury these. The Germans seemed very nice chaps, and they said they were awfully sick of the war. On the German side, Lieutenant Kurt Ziemisch of the 134th Saxons wrote in his diary, like most of my men, I stayed awake the entire night, and it was a wonderful night. Private Harold Starden of the 1st Leicestershire Regiment wrote, next morning, so this would be Christmas morning, dawned unnaturally quiet and still, broken only by the squelch of boots in the everlasting mud. Soon a few were bold enough to scramble over the top of the trench, and it became evident that both sides had somehow inexplicably decided to honor the season of goodwill.

Starting point is 00:05:49 Everything was spontaneous and sincere. Perhaps never before, and probably never again, will the world witness such a demonstration of the brotherhood of man between opposing warring forces. Bruce Barron's father, who later became a famous writer, wrote, I awoke at dawn, and on emerging on all fours from my dugout, became aware that the trench was practically empty. I stood upright in the mud and looked over the parapet. No man's land was full of clusters of khaki and gray pleasantly chatting together. Private John Diamond wrote, we made an agreement with the Germans not to fire that day, and it was a sight that you would never believe unless you saw it yourself. First one German came out of the trench shouting out, a Merry Christmas to you, English. And then one of our chaps went out to him,

Starting point is 00:06:27 and they shook hands with each other. Of course, when the boys saw this, they must all go out until there was about 50 of each side out there exchanging articles with each other. We asked them what they thought of the war, and they said they were fed up with it and will be glad when it is all over. They said, it is not our fault we are fighting. We are the same as you. We have got to do what we are told. That's like a really good reminder, right, that it's usually not the troops who decided to go to war. That's true. It's the men in the trenches, the men fighting.

Starting point is 00:06:59 They're not usually the ones who made the decision or maybe even had any cause to want to be at war. These were very young men, and they were really wretchedly miserable conditions. It was freezing and muddy, and, I mean, everyone's heard of the Western Front in World War I. It was just terrible. So they had that in common, whatever their politics and whatever their thoughts about the cause. They were all in this misery together. Yeah. I should say that this wasn't—at the distance of 100 years, there's sort of this romantic legend that's grown up that this was some broad repudiation of the whole concept of war. And it was nothing like it was much smaller than that.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Terry Blom Crocker in her history of this writes, the holiday truce was caused by rain, mud, curiosity, lack of personal animosity toward the enemy and homesickness rather than by frustration and rebellion. It wasn't a protest or a political demonstration or a broad philosophical statement about the futility of war. Young men on both sides were weary of life in the trenches and seized the opportunity for a break. That's really what it was. To them, it was a day off in a conflict that they never doubted was worth fighting.

Starting point is 00:07:53 They used it to satisfy their curiosity about one another and to attend to some tasks without the threat of snipers, which were otherwise constantly a threat. constantly a threat. Private George Ashurst of the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers wrote, It was so pleasant to get out of that trench from between them two walls of clay and walk and run about. It was heaven. Corporal John Ferguson of the Seaforth Highlanders wrote, Here we are laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill. Generally, it was the men themselves who initiated all this, not the officers. All the officers sometimes participated to some degree, and the officers got in trouble for that, some of them afterwards, understandably. But in hindsight, a lot of people say it's not clear how the officers could have stopped this.

Starting point is 00:08:34 Weintraub, the Penn State historian, writes, it's difficult to imagine what field officers could have done if they had actually wanted to do anything to arrest the momentum of the truce. Come Christmas morning, most troops on both sides of the line, it seemed, were eager to see it happen. Also, even if they could control their own troops, they had to worry about the other side coming over with these friendly overtures. They had to do something about that, and it wasn't at all clear what to do. The British officer, Edward Glicken, wrote, what were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men. Let them come? You could not let them come into your trenches. So the only thing feasible at the moment was done, and some of our men met them halfway. We got into trouble for

Starting point is 00:09:09 doing it, but after all, it is difficult to see what we could have otherwise have done unless we shot the first unarmed man who showed himself. Near the village of Frommel, members of the 6th Battalion of the Gordon Highlander Regiment met their German enemies in a no-man's land 60 yards wide. Together they buried about 100 bodies. A service of prayers and the 23rd Psalm was arranged. A 19-year-old second lieutenant named Arthur Pelham Byrne wrote to a friend, They were read first in English by our padre and then in German by a boy who was studying for the ministry. The Germans formed up on one side, the English on the other.

Starting point is 00:09:40 The officers standing in front, every head bared. Yes, I think it was a sight one will never see again. As the dead disappeared, Gustav Ribensam, commander of a Westphalian regiment, wrote in his diary, one had to look again and again to believe what was happening, given everything that had occurred earlier. Behrens' father wrote, I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant, I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons. I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket.

Starting point is 00:10:13 I then gave him two of mine in exchange. The last I saw was one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile Bosch who was patiently kneeling on the ground whilst the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck. I should say a word about football. It's become a legend that both sides forsook war for one big organized symbolic game. That certainly didn't happen. But there are many references to football games that day along the Flanders Front,

Starting point is 00:10:40 perhaps as many as 15 games. These were, after all, young men who'd had no relief or recreation for months now. They were trapped, like one of the other guys, one of them said, he was just trapped in this small trench. He couldn't get out and move around. They had no proper footballs, or not many of them, but they could use a bag stuffed with straw or an empty tin of bully beef, what we would call corned beef. Most of these games were played by each side within its own lines. What's unclear is whether a match was played between the British and the Germans. If this happened, it happened most likely in a turnip field near the village of Mycenae on the border between France and Belgium.

Starting point is 00:11:14 There are two references on the British side to a game being played between the 1st Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment and the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. And here my resources actually contradict one another. Some of them say there's no record of such a game on the German side. The others refer to the diary of a Lieutenant Kurt Ziemisch of the 134th Infantry Regiment, which was found in an attic by his elderly son in the 1990s. So almost a century had gone by before they found his account of it. I think that's what accounts for the discrepancy about

Starting point is 00:11:43 whether there was a German account of this. But Ziemisch's diary for the discrepancy about whether there was a German account of this, but Siemich's diary says, yeah, this diary says soon, a couple of Englishmen brought a football out of their trench and a game started. This was also wonderful and unusual.

Starting point is 00:11:55 That's also how it seemed to the English officers. That's indeed the effect of Christmas, the festival of love that the hated enemy should for a short time become a friend. So if that's authentic, then that pretty well establishes that, at least for a short informal period, there was a game between the two sides. At the end of the day, Percy Jones of the Queen's Westminster's wrote in his diary,

Starting point is 00:12:15 altogether we had a great day with our enemies and parted with much handshaking and mutual goodwill. Rifleman George E. to the 3rd London Rifles had befriended a German artilleryman who said, Today we have peace. Tomorrow you fight for your country. I fight for mine. Good luck. Opposite one British unit, the Germans sang God Save the King from their trenches, and the British offered three cheers. The fraternization lasted into Christmas night and indeed in some areas into New Year's Day. Frank Richards of the 2nd Welch Fusiliers wrote, During the whole of Boxing Day, that's the day after Christmas,

Starting point is 00:12:46 we never fired a shot and they the same. Each side seemed to be waiting for the other to set the ball a-rolling. One of their men shouted across in English and inquired how we enjoyed the beer. We shouted back and told him it was very weak, but that we were grateful for it. We were conversing on and off during the whole of the day. After all this friendliness, it fell to the officers to decide how to get the war started again. This happened in a variety of different ways.

Starting point is 00:13:08 In the trenches occupied by the Royal Welch Fusiliers, Captain Clifton Stockwell climbed up on the parapet, fired three shots in the air, and put up a flag with Merry Christmas on it. His opposite number,

Starting point is 00:13:18 Hauptmann von Zinna, appeared on the German parapet. Both officers bowed and saluted one another. Then von Zinna fired two shots in the air, and Stockwell later wrote, the war was on again.

Starting point is 00:13:28 Wow. During the truce, some soldiers had promised not to shoot at one another when the fighting began. Captain Armies of the North Staffordshire Regiment wrote, I wonder who will start the shooting. They say fire in the air and we will and such things, but of course it will start,

Starting point is 00:13:41 and tomorrow we shall be at it hard, killing one another. Private William Tapp of the 1st War Wrecks wrote in his diary that the Germans, quote, say they are not going to fire again if we don't, but of course we must and shall do. But it doesn't seem right to be killing each other at Christmas time. The fighting gradually did start up again, and in the new year, 1915, vast battles of attrition began in which 10 million men died. That Christmas, 1915, the truces were much fewer due to widespread crackdowns by the authorities, and after that the war had grown so bitter that

Starting point is 00:14:10 the men weren't disposed to fraternize much at all. In that sense, the Christmas truce had signaled the end of the old conception of chivalry in war that had marked earlier centuries. Modris Ecksteins, a cultural historian at the University of Toronto, said, it is the last expression of that 19th century world of manners and morals where the opponent was a gentleman. As the war goes on, the enemy becomes increasingly abstract. You don't exchange courtesies with an abstraction, which is kind of a shame. Overall, the most detailed estimate is that the Christmas truce extended along about two-thirds of the British-held trench line in southern Belgium.

Starting point is 00:14:47 It wasn't universal or particularly large. In some places, the fighting just continued through Christmas. In others, there were ceasefires just long enough to bury the dead. Some soldiers refused altogether to participate, and others met the enemy and then just found themselves resenting them more. In a larger sense, the truce had no effect at all on the war. It didn't shorten it or lengthen it, and it made no difference at all in the way that it was conducted. But for some soldiers, it took on great personal meaning. German Corporal Josef Wenzel remembered singing and dancing with British troops on Boxing Day.

Starting point is 00:15:14 He wrote, For the rest of my life, I shall never forget this scene, which goes to show that human feelings continue to go on, even if in these times men do not know anything but killing and murdering. One British participant, Murdoch Wood, said in Parliament in 1930, The fact is that we did it, and I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since that if we had been left to ourselves, there would never have been another shot fired. This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Harry's, who remind you that guys can be hard to shop for.

Starting point is 00:15:55 It can seem impossible to find something that's a thoughtful gift, but is also useful and practical. That's why Harry's makes the perfect gift. If you haven't heard of them before, Harry's was started by two best friends, Jeff and Andy, who were fed up with being overcharged for razors, so they started their own razor company to give people what they deserve, a great shave at a fair price. I've mentioned Harry's before on this show. The blades are well made and really do give a great shave, and you can't beat the convenience of having them delivered right to your door. This holiday, Harry's has ready-to-gift shave sets at

Starting point is 00:16:21 all different price points, starting at just $15. All come with a razor handle of your choice, shaving cream, replacement blades, and a travel cover. And their Winston set includes an engravable chrome handle if you want to add a personalized touch. Go to harrys.com right now to get a holiday shave set and don't forget to enter code CLOSET at checkout for $5 off. That's harrys.com, code CLOSET. Spoiler alert for the puzzle from episode 121, which involved making British tanks safer by adding a way for the soldiers to make tea inside the tanks, after there were some significant problems with soldiers leaving their tanks in order to make tea during World War II. Ed Kitson wrote to say that he had come across a reference to just how prone the British tank troops were,

Starting point is 00:17:08 even in the midst of active fighting, to stop to make tea. And Ed found this in a book by Kirk Ross called The Sky Men, a parachute rifle company's story of the Battle of the Bulge and the Jump Across the Rhine, which covers the experiences of the F Company of the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th U.S. Airborne Division, which Ed was interested in because his uncle had actually been in this unit. In this book, Ross says that the F Company paratroopers were just perplexed by the tankers having to stop to make tea at least twice a day.

Starting point is 00:17:42 And there is a quote from one of the paratroopers expressing how frustrated his company was with this practice. Only we want to keep the show family friendly, so I can't actually read it here. Let's just say they were pretty frustrated. The tankers would not only stop twice a day for their tea, but Ross says, Even when contact was made with the enemy at the front of the column, an event which often caused those tanks at the rear to stop and wait, the crews on the waiting tanks would employ the time to brew up more tea. And in his book, Ross also reports that the enterprising British tankers

Starting point is 00:18:17 found that they could heat water for their tea by tying jerry cans to the extremely hot exhaust pipes on the tanks. And then for an added bonus, they could curl up next to the hot cans to stay warm during the night. That's nice. That is nice. And I just thought, you know, even at war, you have to have your priorities, right? In episode 132, we heard about residents of small towns in the 1930s and 40s fearing that an unknown assailant was gassing people in their homes. Alex Baumans wrote, Your last podcast reminded me of a passage in My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber, where he lists some of the oddballs in his family.

Starting point is 00:19:04 those was Aunt Sarah Sloaf, who was so afraid that a burglar would come at night and blow chloroform through a tube in her bedroom that she piled up all her valuables in the hallway with a note, this is all I have, please don't use your chloroform. My Life in Hard Times came out in 1933 and purports to depict James Thurber's youth in pre-World War I Ohio. Now it is, of course, very difficult to conclude anything from a James Thurber story. But to me, it indicates that, at least in the 1930s and possibly earlier, the burglar who would gas unsuspecting women in their bedrooms was already a known bugbear. Perhaps the oddness of Aunt Sarah was not so much the scenario itself as her reaction to it.

Starting point is 00:19:41 I wonder whether this was some well-known trope from Pulp Fiction or the movies, which would also help explain why the story caught on so rapidly. That's a good point. Yeah, that is a good point that Alex makes, because if there was already some trope going around about being gassed in your home, then that would help explain

Starting point is 00:19:57 why people believed it so readily and the idea spread so easily. Yeah, in World War II, people were thinking about chemical warfare. But yeah, but obviously this predates... But in the 30s, why would anyone jump to that? Well, maybe from World War I,

Starting point is 00:20:11 you know, the gases that had been used in World War I, that might have started it. Or this was just abroad in the culture in a way that we've forgotten. Right, exactly. And also on this topic of whether there was some pop culture meme

Starting point is 00:20:21 about a mysterious figure going around gassing people, Nelsie wrote, Greg was wondering about possible links between the Mattoon gas attack, mass hysteria, and the earlier event in Virginia. I was reminded of the 1930s comic book hero Sandman, whose shtick was a gas gun, which he used to anesthetize villains. I don't know if the comic book was inspired by the early Virginia attacks,

Starting point is 00:20:43 but it might be a link to the Mattoon incident, just as an idea that was about at the time. And the Sandman, whose alter ego was called Wesley Dodds, is a superhero from DC Comics who first appeared in 1939. He was originally depicted wearing a green business suit, a fedora, and a World War I style gas mask. And he used a gun that emitted a cloud of green sleeping gas that would knock out everyone in his vicinity except for him because of his gas mask. Apparently, sometimes he could also use a gas gun that would compel a villain to tell the truth,

Starting point is 00:21:15 and he sometimes had a small capsule of sleeping gas hidden in the heel of his shoe for situations when his gas gun wasn't available. And so if the Sandman did appear in 1939, as Nelsie noted, that would be after the Virginia attacks and before the Mattoon ones. And so maybe this is some more evidence that the idea of gassing people was more of a familiar trope around that time period. That's an odd idea for a superhero. I mean, of all the things you could come up with, it just seems strange. But you're right. I mean, if that's in even some people's minds,

Starting point is 00:21:46 it would just dispose them. Yeah, and I mean, according to the article that I read on this, I don't know my superheroes, but he was, this Sandman was sort of a bridge between detectives and superheroes because he didn't actually truly have any superpowers, right? He just had this special gas.

Starting point is 00:22:01 Yeah, right. And partly it would sometimes just make people tell the truth. So it was almost like he was sort of coming from the detective genre and moving into the superhero genre. Yeah, that's interesting. And finally, on this topic of gassing people, Bjorn Lindström wrote to tell us about what he called the real life mad gassers of Sweden. And this was in the 1930s. There was a criminal gang called the Sala Gang, as they originated in Sala, Sweden, and they committed a number of murders and other crimes. And one of their murders in 1934 involved drilling a hole in the wall of the home of an elderly woman

Starting point is 00:22:37 and using a hose to fill her house with car exhaust. And this was done in the entirely mistaken belief that she had a lot of money in her house and the gang tried to cover up the crime by burning her house down. But the members of the gang were apprehended a couple of years later and many of the members confessed to their various crimes in a highly reported trial in 1936. Bjorn says that he remembers the gang still being talked about like boogeymen by kids when he was in school in the 1980s. And I guess the gassing incident had made quite an impression on him as he remembered it after all these years when he heard you telling the Mattoon story. Yeah, that seems like a really labor-intensive way to kill someone. Yeah, right. I guess it was something you could easily hide, though.

Starting point is 00:23:20 And there wouldn't really be evidence of it afterwards. Right. And there wouldn't really be evidence of it afterwards. Right. In episode 131, Greg relayed the old story of five incidents but only one indemnity, which involved a series of accidents with a barrel of bricks. Several readers had sent an email about how this story has been made into various songs, and I covered that a bit in episode 132.

Starting point is 00:23:43 But we more recently heard from Daniel Sturman on the topic, who said, the Mythbusters investigated this story and were actually able to replicate most of it, though construction barrels proved to be surprisingly sturdy. In order to get the barrel to break and release its bricks when it hit the ground, they had to deliberately weaken its structural integrity first and strategically place a board on the ground such that it would cut into the barrel when it hit. And Daniel says that a short version of the segment on this can be found on YouTube, and we'll of course have that link in the show notes, but he recommends watching the entire episode if you can, and says it was named

Starting point is 00:24:15 Barrel of Bricks and is from October 10th, 2003. So maybe the story is true. I was thinking, if they made weaker barrels in 1895, maybe the whole thing is true. I was thinking if they made weaker barrels in 1895, the whole thing is true. Maybe it is. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We appreciate hearing your comments and feedback. And so if you have any you'd like to send, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

Starting point is 00:24:50 Greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation and I have to try to work out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This one was sent in by several different listeners, Greg Askin, Stacey Irving, and Donald Mates. Huh. On November 8, 2016, Cape Cod Hospital posted a photo on its Facebook page of new parents Emily and Seth Peterson of West Barnstable, Massachusetts, holding their newborn twin boys Samuel and Ronan. The hospital added, riddle of the day, Samuel was born first, but his twin brother Ronan is older. How is that possible? One was born first, but the other is actually older. Obviously, this obviously happened because three people wrote in about it, and you have a date and everything. Okay. Were they born to different mothers?

Starting point is 00:25:30 No. So one woman bore them both? Yes. Was either of them like implanted, like a fertilized egg was implanted? No. Were they both born by the same method? Yes. Like cesarean versus... They're all good guesses.

Starting point is 00:25:51 Regular delivery. One was born first, but the other was considered older. Yep. But they were both... You said they were twins? Yes. And there's nothing to do with uh artificial uh like in vivo

Starting point is 00:26:08 fertilization or implanting eggs into the woman i mean would you say everything about would you say that pretty much everything about these babies conception and delivery was pretty standard and traditional? Yes, I would. You would. Okay, now I'm confused. Okay, and they were twins. They were born on the same day? Yes. They were born sequentially?

Starting point is 00:26:39 Yes. One after the other? Yes. Within a fairly short time frame like you would normally do with twins? Yes. One was delivered first? Yes. Meaning left his mother? Yes. Earlier? Yes, that was Samuel. The other one? But you would say that Ronan was older? That's right. And by this, are you referring to the babies by saying that Ronan is older? You don't mean the word Ronan, the name Ronan is an older name? No. I mean that the baby that was born second is considered older.

Starting point is 00:27:15 Is considered older. Is considered older by a few minutes? Yes. But just a few minutes? Yes. Why would he? but just a few minutes. Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:24 Why would he, and you would, was there anything about the delivery that you would consider like a complication or, um, where do they Siamese twins? No. Uh, does it matter whether they were identical or fraternal?

Starting point is 00:27:38 No, it doesn't. Is there gender important in any way? No. Is where they were born important? Actually, no. Nothing to do with date lines or I don't know.

Starting point is 00:27:49 You're on the right track there. Would you say that they, would they both have the same birthday? Yes. So it's not that, I don't know, somehow one was born on a different day or, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, it's the time change. Right? It's got to do with the time change. Yes, that's it.

Starting point is 00:28:08 Oh, that's freaky. That is so weird. Samuel was born at 1.39 a.m. on Sunday, November 6th, and then 2 a.m. brought the end of daylight saving time, so the clocks were turned back to 1 a.m. Ronan was then born at 1.10 a.m., giving him an official birth time 29 minutes before his brothers. After Samuel was born, Emily heard the nurses saying something about the time and looked up to see the clock's hands turning backward. She thought, I only had an epidural, so I know I

Starting point is 00:28:32 shouldn't be seeing things. I thought my brain was playing tricks on me. Maternity nurse Deb Totten said, it's the first time I have ever seen this in over 40 years of nursing, but as it happens, a similar story was already in my notes, the same thing that happened in North Carolina in 2007. Peter Sullivan Cerioli was born at 1.32 a.m. November 4th, and his twin sister, Allison Rae Cerioli, was born 34 minutes later at 1.06 a.m., which makes her 26 minutes older than her brother, even though he was born first. The mother, Laura Cerioli, said, We never even thought about it until just after we were born, and then we realized it was going to happen. It was really kind of amazing. even thought about it until just after we was born, and then we realized it was going to happen. It was really kind of amazing. The parents did suspect the coincidence might cause some sibling rivalry when the kids grew up. The father, Jason Cereoli, said, we'll let them work that out

Starting point is 00:29:11 between themselves. I don't want to get in the middle of it. Wow. Wow. That was a really interesting puzzle. So thanks to everyone who sent that in. Yes, thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us, and we really depend on the support of our listeners. While we do sometimes have some advertising on the show, the bulk of our support actually comes from our fantastic patrons. If you would like to help support the show and get bonus material, such as extra discussions, outtakes, and peeks behind the scenes,

Starting point is 00:29:48 then check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the supporters section of the website. And thanks so much to all our patrons who are really helping to keep this show going. 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 Undimas Vedenda. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes.

Starting point is 00:30:17 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 my supremely talented brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 134-The Christmas Truce

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