Futility Closet - 136-The Boston Molasses Disaster

Episode Date: January 9, 2017

In 1919 a bizarre catastrophe struck Boston's North End: A giant storage tank failed, releasing 2 million gallons of molasses into a crowded business district at the height of a January workday. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Boston Molasses Disaster, which claimed 21 lives and inscribed a sticky page into the city's history books. We'll also admire some Scandinavian statistics and puzzle over a provocative Facebook photo. Intro: In 1888 three women reported encountering a 15-foot flying serpent in the woods near Columbia, S.C. In 1834 the American Journal of Science and Arts reported the capture of a pair of conjoined catfish near Fort Johnston, N.C. Sources for our feature on the Boston Molasses Disaster: Stephen Puleo, Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, 2003. Fred Durso Jr., "The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919," NFPA Journal 105:3 (May/June 2011), 90-93. Sean Potter, "Retrospect: January 15, 1919: Boston Molasses Flood," Weatherwise 64:1 (January/February 2011), 10-11. Kaylie Duffy, "Today in Engineering History: Molasses Tanker Explodes, Kills 21," Product Design & Development, Jan. 15, 2015. Steve Puleo, "Death by Molasses," American History 35:6 (February 2001), 60-66. Chuck Lyons, "A Sticky Tragedy," History Today 59.1 (January 2009), 40-42. Dick Sinnott, "21 Persons Drowned in Molasses Flood," Reading [Pa.] Eagle, Jan. 15, 1959. Edwards Park, "Without Warning, Molasses in January Surged Over Boston," Smithsonian 14:8 (November 1983), 213-230. "12 Killed When Tank of Molasses Explodes," New York Times, Jan. 16, 1919. Ferris Jabr, "The Science of the Great Molasses Flood," Scientific American, Aug. 1, 2013. United Press International, "The Great Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919," Jan. 17, 1979. Peter Schworm, "Nearly a Century Later, Structural Flaw in Molasses Tank Revealed," Boston Globe, Jan. 14, 2015. William J. Kole, "Slow as Molasses? Sweet but Deadly 1919 Disaster Explained," Associated Press, Nov. 24, 2016. Erin McCann, "Solving a Mystery Behind the Deadly 'Tsunami of Molasses' of 1919," New York Times, Nov. 26, 2016. (The corn syrup video is midway down the page.) Jason Daley, "The Sticky Science Behind the Deadly Boston Molasses Disaster," Smithsonian, Nov. 28, 2016. Jennifer Ouellette, "Incredible Physics Behind the Deadly 1919 Boston Molasses Flood," New Scientist, Nov. 24, 2016. The Boston Public Library has photos and newspaper headlines. Listener mail: Erik Bye's song on the 15th Wisconsin Regiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o5TUozjQXw Statistics Norway's names database. Wikipedia, "Old Norse" (accessed Jan. 5, 2017). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Tommy Honton, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils 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 flying snake to a double fish. This is episode 136. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1919, a bizarre catastrophe struck Boston's North End. A giant storage tank failed, releasing two million gallons of molasses into a crowded

business district at the height of a January workday. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Boston Molasses Disaster, which claimed 21 lives and inscribed a sticky page in the city's history books. We'll also admire some Scandinavian statistics and puzzle over a provocative Facebook photo. January 15, 1919 dawned like any other day in Boston's North End neighborhood. The sun rose over Paul Revere's house, a district of blacksmith shops, the trolley company's freight sheds, and the homes of hundreds of Italian immigrants. Towering over all of this was an immense steel tank owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company. 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, it stood in the center of Boston's busiest business district and at the

edge of one of its most densely populated residential neighborhoods. The tank held 2 million gallons of molasses, about 8,000 cubic meters, which was delivered here by ships from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the West Indies, and later transported by rail car to the distilling plant in Cambridge, where it was converted to industrial alcohol for use in munitions. After its completion in December 1915, the tank should have been tested by filling it with water, but the owners had skipped this step because a shipload of molasses was due to arrive in a few days. An engineering analysis published in 2014 showed that in fact the steel was half the necessary thickness for a tank of this size, and that it lacked manganese, which made it unusually brittle.

When they filled it with molasses, it began to leak almost immediately. Streaks of molasses quickly appeared on its surface. Neighborhood children dipped sticks into it, and people gathered it in cans for use in their homes. Everyone heard ominous groanings and rumblings, but the company's managers refused to investigate. In fact, Isaac Gonzalez, the company's general man, was so worried that he even took to sleeping at the tank. He told his wife, I'm afraid the tank is not safe, and if it should start to fall, I can sound a warning. On this morning, the tank was full almost to capacity with 2.3 million gallons of molasses. It had been topped up a few days earlier by a cargo ship from Puerto Rico, which had pumped in 600,000 gallons,

and it now held more fluid than any above-ground receptacle in the city's history. This new molasses, warm after its trip from the Caribbean, mixed with the cold, thick molasses that had been congealing in the tank for weeks and began to ferment, releasing carbon dioxide. In a tank that's nearly full, that increases the pressure against the walls. An MIT professor later testified that the pressure on the inside of the tank should not have exceeded 18,000 pounds per square inch. Now it reached 31,000. At 12 30 p.m. as the local workers were taking their lunch break, police patrolman Frank McManus was making a telephone report to headquarters when he heard a sound like a machine gun followed by an unearthly grinding and scraping sound. He turned to look and shouted into the phone, send all available rescue vehicles and

personnel immediately. There's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street. Witnesses said they felt the ground shake and variously said they heard a roar, a rumble like that of an elevated train, a crashing, a growling, and a thunderclap. The machine gun sound that McManus had heard was the rivets popping out of their places, releasing a wave of molasses more than 25 feet tall and 160 feet wide, which drove through the streets at 35 miles an hour, propelled by its own weight. 25 feet tall is almost as tall as a two-story building or a football goalpost. The wave pulverized the entire waterfront and a half-mile stretch of Commercial Street. Nearby buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Author Stephen Palaio writes, the molasses tore the north end paving yard buildings into kindling, ripped the Engine 31

firehouse from its foundation, and nearly swept it into the harbor, crushed freight cars, autos, and wagons, and ensnared men, women, children, horses, dogs, rats, wood, and steel. The molasses wave crashed across Commercial Street and into brick tenements and storefronts, rebounding off the buildings and retreated like the outgoing tide, leaving shattered windows and crushed walls in its wake. The flood inundated cellars and smothered men who were working below ground. A truck was picked up and thrown into Boston Harbor. A one-ton piece of the steel tank cut through a column of the elevated railroad nearby, and the track's overhead collapsed almost to the street. One engineer in an approaching train spotted the danger and ran backward through four cars to engage the rear engines and reverse the train. It jumped the track but screeched to a stop just in time.

At the firehouse, three firefighters had been playing whist. One of them, Bill Connor, later said, There was an unusual noise like a crash, a building collapsing. I looked out the window and saw a wall of molasses rolling like a wave at the seashore. I put my hand on the doorknob and the molasses surrounded the building, shut off the light, and the next thing I knew I came to under the building. The firehouse, which had been three stories tall, had been torn from its foundations and the top floor pancaked down onto the first, trapping the three men in a space 18 inches high. Connor said it seemed weeks we lay there. The flood of molasses at times flowed up to our ears. We bumped our heads on the floor above, trying to keep our noses and mouths above the fluid. It took two hours to free them. One of them drowned in molasses. But just, you know, just imagining, you know, hearing about this, about the people smothering in it and drowning in it. And there was no, it's also surreal. And

there was no real warning. I mean, you were just eating your lunch literally one moment and then drowning in molasses. And I guess one moment and then drowning in molasses. And I guess you can't really swim in molasses. When it was over, the molasses covered several blocks of downtown Boston to a depth of two or three feet and six wooden buildings were destroyed. The Boston Post wrote, molasses waist deep covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled to form whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mess, showed where any life was. Horses died like so many flies on sticky paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings, men and women, suffered likewise. The first to the

scene were 116 cadets from the USS Nantucket, a training ship of the Massachusetts Nautical School, which was docked nearby. They ran to the scene, prevented curious onlookers from interfering with rescuers, and waded into the knee-deep mess to pull out survivors. They were soon joined by the Boston police, the Red Cross, and the Army. The glazing of molasses made victims hard to recognize. When Suffolk County Medical Examiner George McGrath arrived, several bodies had been pulled from the mess. He said they looked as though they were covered in heavy oil skins. Their faces, of course, were covered with molasses, eyes and ears, mouths and nose filled with it. I can't imagine what that's like. In a makeshift hospital at Haymarket Relief Station, about half a mile from the waterfront,

volunteers removed molasses from victims' mouths and noses so they could breathe. The Boston Post wrote, those already on duty were soon covered from head to foot with brown syrup and blood. The whole hospital reeked of molasses. It was on the floors, on the walls. The nurses were covered with it even in their hair. Pileo writes, within an hour the wheeled stretchers became immovable because the hospital corridors were covered with congealing molasses. Corridor floors and walls became so slippery with molasses that dripped from the clothing of the injured that attendants found it necessary to repeatedly swab the

entranceways with hot water. The rescuers searched for four days before giving up the final body, that of Cesare Niccolo, was pulled from the water under the commercial war four months after the flood. The cleanup took 87,000 man-hours, you can imagine. The mess wouldn't yield a fresh water, so cleanup crews used salt water from Boston Harbor, which they sprayed from a fireboat, and that left the harbor brown into the summer. The fire department used pumps to remove thousands of gallons of molasses from local cellars. As it hardened, they turned to chisels, brooms, and saws to get it out. Altogether, the flood damaged more than $1 million worth of property, which is about $100 million in today's money. As I worked on this story, I kept thinking, how could molasses cause

that much damage? And then I gradually realized that I've only ever seen a pint of molasses at one time. This was 2 million gallons, which is a quantity that literally defies imagination. In his opening statement at the trial, Damon Hall, the lead attorney for the victims, said, when we speak of 2.3 million gallons of molasses, it is impossible for the mind to work readily to conceive what that means, and so I want to just use one or two illustrations to show the weight of molasses in that reservoir at the time this thing occurred. 2,300,000 gallons of molasses is something over 26 million pounds, 13,000 tons. One of our big mogul locomotive engines weighs about 100 tons.

So this steel reservoir contained on the day of the accident a weight of molasses equal to 130 hundred ton locomotive engines, or 13,000 Ford automobiles, which weigh about a ton each. You can see the scale of the flood in a video that I'll link to from the show notes. In 2016, some students at Harvard did experiments in a walk-in refrigerator using corn syrup, which has about the same consistency as molasses. They released it into a scale model of the North End. It's a lot of molasses. Whatever you're imagining, it's even more than that. It's a ludicrous amount. Their results generally matched the reports of the time. The molasses in the tank had been slightly warmer than the surrounding air, but it cooled as it spread, making it more viscous. Remember, this was in January. The molasses was waist deep, so it would

knock you down and then congeal quickly in the cool air, making it hard to escape, and then your struggles would work you in deeper as with quicksand. Oh, man. It's an awful way to die. For this reason, the flood was more fatal in January than it would have been in warmer weather when the molasses would have flowed farther but stayed thinner. Yeah. On the other hand, if this had happened in summer when school was out, there would have been 25 to 30 children playing in North End Park, all of whom would likely have drowned. And in warm weather, the molasses would have attracted hundreds of rats and millions of flies.

Ugh. As it was, rescue workers, cleanup crews, and sightseers tracked molasses throughout greater Boston, so it was said that everything a Bostonian touched was sticky. Subway platforms, streetcar seats, telephone handsets, the streets themselves, and homes. I saw one report that molasses even got as far as Worcester, which is 39 miles or 62 kilometers away, and the whole city smelled of molasses. By August 1920, 119 separate lawsuits were filed against USIA. These were consolidated into one case to be heard by an auditor. The company argued that anarchists had blown up the tank with dynamite. There you go,

blame the anarchists. Because the alcohol had been used to make munitions for World War I. They noted that leaflets threatening violence had been found posted in the neighborhood only days before the disaster and a bomb had been discovered at another USIA facility in 1916. They even tried a demonstration with a scale model and a single stick of dynamite and tried to argue that the results matched the aftermath of the flood. The plaintiff's attorney, Damon Hall, argued that the tank had been built in a hurry due to pressure to fill war orders. The steel company had delivered material that didn't meet the required specifications. The company had conducted only one partial leak test,

filling the tank with just six inches of water, and no architect, engineer, or any other person familiar with steel construction had ever inspected it. Oh, wow. Altogether, it was the longest and most expensive civil suit in Massachusetts history. 3,000 witnesses gave 45,000 pages of testimony. Colonel Hugh Ogden, who presided over the trial, found against USIA, noting that all experts agreed that the tank should have been built with a greater factor of safety. He recommended $300,000 in total damages, about $30 million today, which is relatively small considering the harshness of his report.

In private negotiations, Hall, the plaintiff's attorney, eventually got the company to pay more than twice this. Municipal Court Chief Justice Wilfred Bolster, who conducted the criminal inquest, blamed the public for the disaster, with some justice, I think. In his report, he wrote, There was no supervision of the construction of this gigantic steel tank. The plans went through the building department, and persons passing on them were incompetent to determine structural steel construction. As long as the public keeps one eye on the tax rate and provides itself with an administrative department only 50% qualified, it has no right to complain

if it does not get 100% protection and production. So you think, though, that the citizens should have somehow known how qualified the building department was to judge these sorts of plans? Well, apparently what happened is they were so keen on keeping the tax rate down that they wouldn't pay to have qualified people reviewing the plans. I mean, certainly there are people, engineers, who could have spotted the danger and stopped it, and they just weren't engaged to do the work because they would have been too expensive, apparently. Oh. And Bolster's point is that if you do that, you're sort of—certainly we all want to keep the tax rate down, but not so low as to endanger public safety. So he said if you don't provide yourself with adequate safeguards, you sort of are endangering yourself. I guess the problem is, is until a disaster happens, people don't maybe even recognize the potential danger, so they don't think that you need to do this. Sadly, it takes something like this to happen. And in this case, that's actually sort of what happened. After the disaster, the Boston Building Department began requiring that all new plans that

were filed with the city must present the calculations of the engineers and architects involved, and that all drawings must be signed. With time, this practice became standard across the country. Eventually, every state required its engineers to be certified, and today all plans for major structures must be sealed by a registered professional engineer before a state or municipality will issue a building permit, an important advance that helps to explain why the rest of us aren't covered with molasses today. There's no sign of any of this in Boston's North End today, only a small plaque commemorating the tragedy. But for decades after the disaster, residents claimed that on hot summer days, you could still smell molasses in the air. This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Harry's.

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One of our listeners, Justin Davis, wrote to us to say, The other night I went for my nightly 5-kilometer run. The thermometer read 10 degrees Fahrenheit and there was a bitter wind. It was also very dark as I ran through the wooded road, and I recently found out that my area is home to a small number of coy wolves. Despite the harsh conditions, the run felt very easy. A piece of cake, really. Why was that? Answer? I had just listened to your story about the unlikely ultra marathoner, and compared

to what that guy did, my little run was nothing. Thanks for the great show. And Justin is referring to episode 130 and the conditions endured by Cliff Young in a 500 mile race between Melbourne and Sydney. I think Justin makes a good point that people can try to keep in mind when they feel inclined to grouse over their own exercise routines. I probably should try it myself. Also in episode 130, we had some discussion of what is the best way to answer negative questions. Richard Kirk had some further thoughts on that. We used to have two words, no and nay, that worked differently. The Japanese hi and iye work as that is correct and that is incorrect. So they largely do the other job that yes and no don't do. However, they may mirror

yep and nope. You are not going out tonight? No. Ambiguous. Yes. Ambiguous. Nope. Not ambiguous. Not going. Yep. Also not ambiguous. Not going. And Richard says, yep and nope seem to be the same thing for a negative question. That leaves us with a somewhat bizarre idea that if we use yes or no for a negative question and we use them because yep or nope were not right, then yes and no mean the same for a negative question even then they're not quite the same no i'm not going sort of implies that i wanted to but i have been frustrated well yes i am not going means wild horses would not drag me out on a night like this it would be good to know if others share this are yep and nope evolving into

the words we have needed ever since nay vanished um and i can see that maybe saying nope to a negative question would help with that ambiguity that yes and no seem to leave though that still doesn't leave us with a good way to contradict a negative question in english uh except for maybe trying the no totally or no definitely that we discussed in episode 130 but all of these do seem to be clumsy workarounds. They can sort of tell that we're reaching around for something that we can't find. Yeah, so we either need to bring back our old yay and nay system, right, to give us the choice of four different answers, or we need to adopt one of the more exact answers that so many other languages seem to have.

That's what we keep hearing. Oh, in other languages they can handle this. Michael Manthe also wrote in on this topic and said, yo is the Danish answer to the ongoing discussion of versions of yes and no. Yo means, of course, you do realize that, or on the contrary. It's also used with negated questions such as, you didn't really go there? Yo, I sure did. And similar to what we heard about Icelandic, Michael says Danish also has the word ney and that Danish fishermen speaking the West Jutland dialect would find significant

overlap with Scottish fishermen. He notes that due to the Vikings, there's actually a lot of Old Norse influence found in the UK and gives us one example, the name of the town of Ipswich, which he says comes from Ibsvig or Ibs Bay. Michael says that there is a sort of urban myth of North Sea brotherhood, but there's also a large nugget of truth in it, etymologically speaking. And that does seem to be the case. I looked a bit into the Old Norse language that Michael mentioned, as this is an area that I knew exactly nothing about. mentioned, as this is an area that I knew exactly nothing about. From what I could find, Old Norse was the language spoken in Scandinavia and in the different settlements of the Scandinavian people around the 9th to 13th centuries. And two of the dialects of Old Norse were Old West Norse and Old

East Norse, with Old West Norse being used in Iceland, Norway, and settlements in Ireland, Scotland, and Northwest England, and Old East Norse being spoken in Denmark, Norway, and settlements in Ireland, Scotland, and Northwest England, and Old East Norse being spoken in Denmark, Sweden, and settlements in Eastern England. So from what I could tell, this probably forms the basis of this linguistic overlap between some different countries that some of our listeners have been writing in about. And speaking of Scandinavia, in episode 133, Greg marveled at the large number of Norwegian soldiers in a particular regiment in the American Civil War who were named Ula Olsen and wondered if any of our Norwegian listeners could let us know just how common that name was. And several wonderful Norwegian listeners did just that. This was amazing.

Yes. Thank you to all who wrote in on this question and sent us very helpful graphs and links. One such listener wrote, it's Eirik Nuth, your faithful listener in Oslo, Norway again. I've written to you before about cats climbing mountains. This time I was intrigued by your segment on the 15th Wisconsin Regiment. The regiment is actually pretty well known here in Norway, partly because we take our em our immigrant heritage seriously, but also because a very famous broadcaster and singer-songwriter, Eric Boo, wrote a song about their exploits, which I thought was funny. I mean, I'm American, and it was an American regiment, and I'd never heard of it, but he'd heard of it. So of course, we'll have that link in the show

notes to the song for anyone who wants to hear what sounded like a very stirring, dramatic song in Norwegian. And several of our listeners let us know that the Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics, or Statistics Norway, has a nifty online search tool that you can use to see just how many people there are living in Norway who have particular names, as well as generate a graph of the popularity of the name over time. And that's kind of fun name over time. And that's kind of fun to play with. And there's even a helpful English language version for those of us whose Norwegian language skills are woefully deficient. Andreas Asheim says that it's a very popular site for anyone who is in the process of choosing a name for a child, as he was a couple

of weeks ago. So I imagine that congratulations are in order to Andreas. Oh, yeah, congratulations. Using this site, our Norwegian friends were able to determine for us that the name Ula has declined significantly in popularity since the 1880s, which is where that historical data seems to begin. So it did used to be much more popular in the 1800s than it is now. But still, Andreas says that in Norway, with its population of about 5 million people, there are over 31,500 men with Ula as part of their forename.

And Andreas notes that having a double forename, like Ula Petter, is very common. And almost 5,400 men with Ula as their only forename. Over 49,000 people have Olsen as their surname, with another almost 1,800 having some variant of Olsen. And as of 2015, there were precisely 436 men living in Norway who were named Ula Olsen. Which is still a lot. That is a lot, but not so many, like, probably as there were.

They would cause confusion. Yeah, they would cause confusion in the regiment. That really impressed me, though, that all these emails came in that were precisely the same statistic. I mean, my hat is off to the whole country. That's such a beautiful system. Right. And that number, that 436, that might be a little low because that doesn't include those who had the double four names or who have a last name that's some variation on Olson. So that number would possibly be a little higher. Eirik and Andreas also explained that historically

surnames in Norway were patronymic, so that Olsen would have meant son of Ula. And Andreas says that Olsen is the third most common surname in Norway, after Hansen and Johansen. Andreas says, patronymic surnames have been steadily declining in popularity for a while, so you can probably assume that there were more Olsen or Olesen, et cetera, 150 years ago. However, I can't find statistics on the historical trends here, but you can safely say there were a great many Ula Olsen, Hans Hansen, and Johan Johansen emigrating to the U.S. in the 1800s. Eirik notes that while surnames in Norway are now fixed rather than still being technically patronymic, he says a country which still has this tradition is Iceland, which was colonized

by Norwegians. And this brings us back to our earlier point about the linguistic overlap between some of these different countries. As Eirik writes, in your segment on Icelandic, and here Eirik is referring to a segment from episode 132, a listener pointed out words that were similar to Scottish. Now to a Norwegian, these words sounded Norwegian. A mouse is called moose in Norwegian, and no is nigh, very similar to nay, which shouldn't surprise us,

as the Vikings did not merely pass through Scotland. They settled there and ruled parts of Scotland for hundreds of years. The Viking influence is still found in everyday Scottish in words such as bairn for child, barn in Norwegian, and kirk for church or kirka in Norwegian. So maybe there's something to that urban legend

that Scottish and Norwegian sailors could understand one another, that there's so much overlap. legend that Scottish and Norwegian sailors could understand one another. Yeah. Well, and as I said, that all seems to go back to this Old Norse as the basis for several of these languages. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We're sorry that we can't always read everyone's emails on the show, but we do appreciate hearing your comments and feedback. So if you have any that you'd like to send, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an intriguing sounding situation, and he has to try to puzzle out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Tommy Hunton. All right. A man updates his profile photo on Facebook and is arrested shortly after. Why?

Well, is it because he was identified for a crime? Yeah. Because this photo made him more identifiable than the old one? Yes. This seems very straightforward. Do I need to know, so the old one just obscured his identity in some way no or was a photo of someone who wasn't him no uh so the old photo was a photo of him yes and the new one was a photo of him yes but the old photo wouldn't have identified him not as easily not as easily they're both photos of his face just his regular appearance as a... As far as I know.

And that's how he was identified? Not exactly. Not exactly. He was... But, okay, but he was... You say he was arrested shortly afterwards. Yes. For a crime. Yes.

Because someone recognized that photo, the new photo, on Facebook? Recognized may not be the exact right word, but it's very close. But it's something like that. But it's... recognized may not be the exact right word, but it's very close, but it's something like that. But it's... A human turned him in

after seeing the photo on Facebook? Yes, it's not that somebody turned him in. Or he was spotted by some algorithm? No. By the police? Yes. The police themselves saw the photo? Yes.

Okay. All right. If they had seen the old photo instead of this new one, would they have arrested him? Possibly not. All right. So his appearance was different in the two photos? No, it didn't have to do with how he looked in the photos. Okay.

Is there more than, is there someone else in the photo? No. Is it his surroundings in the photo? Not exactly, no. Or his behavior? No. Something it his surroundings in the photo? Not exactly, no. Or his behavior? No. Something like that. The photo itself is of a different...

Kind. There's something revealed or something in the photo that helped the police. Do we need to know what the crime was? No. Okay. Is the photo showing him committing the crime? No. Okay.

And are there... You said, I don't need to know what the crime is. There aren't necessarily other people involved. Right. Do I need to know where or when this happened? No. Okay, it doesn't show him committing the crime. It has to do with what he chose to use for his profile photo. It is a photograph, you said, of his face.

What he chose to use contains a photograph, is partly a photograph of his face. Does it show evidence of the crime? I mean, besides that? No. What he chose to use. Yes. Is it an avatar or like a caricature or something it's a photograph of his face and something else well i wouldn't say it quite like that that it's a

photograph of his face and something else it's a uh let's say it's a particular type of photograph or a um type of photograph but it's of him yes it contains him but it's it's more than just a photograph like if i showed you one of these objects you wouldn't say oh look it's a photograph you would call it something else but it contains a photograph as part of it um i'm trying to figure out how to help you here. A mosaic, a hologram? No, no, no, no. And it connects to the police, something that the police would see

and immediately respond to. And I wouldn't call it a photograph. If I showed you what he used as a profile photo, a photograph isn't the exact noun you would use for this thing, but it contains a photograph. Like if I showed you a driver's license, you wouldn't say, oh, look, a photograph.

Oh, I see. Okay. It contains a photograph, but you wouldn't call it a photograph. Is it a document like that in some way? Very vaguely. Not too strongly like a driver's license, but I was trying to give you an idea of what I was trying to say to you. Something that... Something the police would relate to very quickly

if they saw it. Especially being used for somebody's profile pic. Something that in itself was a crime? Something that... No. The very use of that? Okay. No.

I'm just trying to think what that could be. And if it's not a driver's license, something that... It's something you really wouldn't expect people to be using as a profile photo on Facebook. Something you might see in a police department, but you really wouldn't expect to see it on Facebook. Oh, oh, oh, oh, it's his mugshot. Similar. A wanted poster. It's his wanted poster, yes.

He used his own wanted poster for his profile photo. Tommy says, a true story. You can't make this stuff up. Jeez. This happened back in September in Florida when 42-year-old Mac Yearwood was arrested on outstanding warrants for battery after police searched for him on the internet and saw his wanted poster on his Facebook profile.

The Stewart Police Department wrote, Facebook is a great way to communicate and connect with old friends and family. If you are wanted by the police, it's probably not a good idea, excuse me, it's probably not a good idea to use the wanted of the week poster of yourself as your profile pick. Jeez. Although I have to say I disagree with the police, and I would like to encourage all criminals to post Wanted posters of themselves on social media. So thanks to Tommy for that puzzle.

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