Futility Closet - 150-The Prince of Nowhere

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 jumping Frenchman to a Valentine's Day bandit. This is episode 150. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1821, Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor undertook one of the most brazen scams in history. He invented a fictional Central American republic and convinced hundreds of its countrymen to invest in its development. Worse, he persuaded 250 people to set sail for this imagined utopia with dreams of starting a new life.

Starting point is 00:00:44 In today's show, we'll describe the disastrous results of McGregor's deceit. We'll also illuminate a hermit's behavior and puzzle over Lichtenstein's flag. Gregor McGregor was born in 1786 and had a promising start in life as an officer in the British Army. He had the makings of a valiant military leader, but he tended to offend people around him with airs and pretensions, claiming distinctions that he hadn't earned. He established himself in society by marrying a rich wife,

Starting point is 00:01:14 but she died in December 1811, and this left him with no income and no social support. So now he was at loose ends. He couldn't marry again quickly without drawing protests from his wife's family. He didn't want to return to Scotland, and he couldn't go back to the British army because he basically burned his bridges there. Still, his best prospects seemed to be military, so he turned to Latin America, where Venezuela was fighting to establish its independence from Spain. He sailed for Caracas in early 1812 and made a name for himself fighting with the Revolutionary Army, rising eventually to the rank of general. He was dashing and glamorous, but he blundered occasionally and could appear heartless. In two campaigns in 1819, he abandoned the troops under his command, and he kept offending others by

Starting point is 00:01:56 promoting himself. My notes say the upshot is that he's intermittently distinguished militarily, but somewhat incompetent and willing to dissemble. In 1820, after many misadventures in the New World, MacGregor ingratiated himself with King George Frederick Augustus of the Mosquito Coast, a tenuous kingdom on the Gulf of Honduras, and the king granted him a large expanse of territory, 8 million acres, or about 12,500 square miles, an area larger than Wales. This is less impressive than it sounds. George Frederick was in many ways a puppet of the British and had little real authority. The British would sometimes designate a local ruler king as a way of thwarting Spanish claims to the region. The land that Augustus

Starting point is 00:02:34 granted to MacGregor was large and lush, but it wasn't really suited for development. A modest British settlement had started there in the 18th century, but it had failed and the region was now uncultivated jungle. But MacGregor seemed to see a new opportunity here, an alternative to his checkered military career. In April 1821, he returned to Britain to promote his new colony. He did this with some astonishingly bold lies. He appeared in London saying he had come from the territory of Poyais, a bounteous young republic in Central America. He had been named cazique, or prince, and he sought British help in exploiting its riches. He said that the Mosquito King had made him a knight of the Order of the Green Cross, and he displayed a green cross on a ribbon at his

Starting point is 00:03:14 throat. All of this was fiction. Unfortunately, London remembered MacGregor's successes, but not his failures. He was admired in Britain as a political leader, entrepreneur, and financier. He was descended from the famous Klan leader Rob Roy McGregor, who had recently been immortalized in a novel by Sir Walter Scott. He'd been an officer in the British Army, and he'd served on the staff of the late General Francisco de Miranda in South America, a great champion of liberty. The English had been impressed with the stories they'd heard of the struggles of Latin American states to free themselves from Spanish rule, and MacGregor's name had appeared in some of these accounts, fighting in romantic-seeming engagements with Miranda and with Simón Bolívar.

Starting point is 00:03:51 And Latin America was so changeable in those days that it seemed quite possible that such a state as Poyer might exist, and that a decorated general such as MacGregor might be its leader. He said that he was required to govern the territory of Poyais in the interest of its native inhabitants and the king. He said the territory had a democratic government, a rudimentary civil service, and the beginnings of an army. He wanted to develop it and sought to promote it in England. He wanted to divide the territory's 8 million acres into lots of 540 acres each and to offer them for sale to people who wanted to settle in Poyais and work the land. He'd need to appoint administrators to manage all this, and for this reason he wanted to establish a recognized presence for Poyais and work the land. He'd need to appoint administrators to manage all this,

Starting point is 00:04:25 and for this reason he wanted to establish a recognized presence for Poyais in London. He appointed a chargé d'affaires to create an office for his legation in the heart of the city. In order to sell his story to the people, he invented an impressively detailed description of his fictional republic. He made up a tricameral legislature for the non-existent Poyais government, as well as commercial and banking institutions, and he designed a uniform for each regiment of the non-existent Poyain army. He designed a coat of arms, a flag, landed titles, and an honors system, and he began to issue impressive land certificates for people who wanted to invest in the territory. These were priced to put them within the reach of the middle class. 100 acres would cost a little more than 11 pounds,

Starting point is 00:05:05 and even a relatively poor worker could get 10 acres for a bit more than one pound. To publicize all this, he published newspaper advertisements and leaflets, gave interviews, and even had ballads about Poyais sung on the streets. He published a 355-page leather-bound guidebook in London and Edinburgh called Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, including the territory of Poyais. It said it was chiefly intended for the use of settlers and described a country that was almost ludicrously attractive. The Territory of Poirier was a free and independent state situated on the mountainous side of the Bay of Honduras. It had been discovered by West Indian pirates in the

Starting point is 00:05:37 1600s and sporadically settled thereafter by the British, but it had never been officially claimed as a British colony. As a result, its natural resources were largely undisturbed, rich soil, extensive forests, gold, and marine life. The guidebook said the country was fine, healthy, and fruitful, and the climate remarkably healthy and well-suited for European constitutions. The soil could support three harvests of maize each year. A hunter could gather enough fish and game in a day to feed his family for a week, and settlers could mine gold, cut timber, and plant Indian corn, coffee and cocoa beans, sugar cane, and cotton. The capital boasted an opera house, a theater, a domed cathedral, a royal palace, houses of parliament, and the Bank of Poyais. The rivers, it said, contained globules of pure gold.

Starting point is 00:06:21 The natives loved the British, spoke English, and were friendly and eager to learn. McGregor wrote, they have repeatedly shown an anxious desire to acquire the arts of Europe, as is manifest by the repeated invitations to the English to form settlements amongst them, as well as by their former offers to cede a part of their country to Great Britain, thereby showing that their aversion to Spain does not extend to all the other nations of Europe. All of this was hogwash, but McGregor insisted it was true. In his book, he promised that he would, quote, avoid making any statement which might appear doubtful or exaggerated and confine himself to such plain and positive facts as are established beyond the shadow of doubt. At the end of the book, he estimated the likely returns to various

Starting point is 00:06:58 undertakings, including planting sugar, cotton, indigo, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, maize, and rice. And he explained that Poirier had no income tax. He even included an engraving of the fictional port of Black River, where the settlers would make landfall. By early 1823, about 500 people had bought Poirier and land. Many invested their life savings, and MacGregor also issued bonds by which people could invest in the new utopia. One modern financial analyst says that he became the founding father of securities fraud. All of this seems unlikely, but MacGregor had chosen one of the best moments in history to pull off a swindle like this. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British economy

Starting point is 00:07:34 was growing, and London was the greatest capital market in the world. Latin American securities, in particular, were very popular, paying twice the rate of the London Stock Exchange. It was true that no one had ever heard of Poyer, but Colombia, Chile, and Peru had been supported in this way, and the bonds would be backed up by natural resources that had obviously enriched Spain. And MacGregor made the investment more attractive by telling them that a canal was being considered that would join the oceans running through Lake Nicaragua just south of the Poyais border. In short, people believed this because they wanted to. The best way to assure potential investors that the country was real and that developing it would bring returns was to get

Starting point is 00:08:09 settlers to emigrate. David Sinclair, who wrote the best book on all this, The Land That Never Was, said that this turned what would have been an inspired hoax into a cruel and deadly one. McGregor set about organizing boatloads of colonists to settle in a region that he knew was inhospitable jungle. Some scholars say that he believed his own story, or at least its potential, and hoped that the settlers would be able to establish a viable society when they arrived. But he told a shocking number of deliberate lies to encourage them, and he promised free passage and government contracts to skilled tradesmen and artisans who came. In the end, hundreds of people signed up, enough to fill seven ships, and many sold everything they owned in order to begin again in the New World.

Starting point is 00:08:47 The first ship left London on September 10, 1822, carrying 70 settlers under the Green Cross of Poyais. When MacGregor arrived to see them off, he exchanged their gold for worthless Bank of Poyais dollar notes that he'd had printed by the Bank of Scotland's official printer. A second emigrant ship left Leith the following January, carrying almost 200 people. printer. A second emigrant ship left Leith the following January, carrying almost 200 people. McGregor again saw them off, and he told them that since this was the first ship from Scotland, women and children would sail free of charge. They cheered him as the ship set off. In November, after eight weeks at sea, the first ship dropped anchor half a mile from the entrance of the Black River Lagoon. The country they saw was very different from the engraving in McGregor's book. The capital city was nowhere to be seen. Instead, they saw thick vegetation, a lagoon, sandy beaches, forests, and mountains.

Starting point is 00:09:28 No opera house. No opera house. This was odd. This was supposed to be the country's main port. The captain fired a cannon, but there was no response. Perhaps the town was hidden from view. The next day, they rode to the shore, only to find jungle and no road inland. Had they made an error in navigation?

Starting point is 00:09:43 No, they were unmistakably at the mouth of the Black River. They hacked their way some distance up the river, but they found nothing, no buildings and no roads. Eventually, they made contact with some natives and explained that they were looking for St. Joseph, the capital city. Some of the natives remembered the name and led them to some ruined foundations in rubble, all that remained of the earlier British settlement. The leader of the colonists, Hector Hall, concluded privately at this point that they'd been duped, but he kept this to himself because he thought it would only upset the others. The ship remained anchored offshore through several weeks of unloading until a storm blew up and the captain said he'd have to run for shelter. To their dismay, he sailed away entirely with their supplies of food, drink, and medicine still in his hold. They would have

Starting point is 00:10:20 to fend for themselves. Hall assured them that the government would find them if they stayed where they were. Then he set out alone for Cape Gracias y Dios, hoping to find either the Mosquito King or another ship. Most of the colonists did not think they'd been deliberately deceived at this point. They thought instead that there had been some mistake or misunderstanding. The second ship arrived in late March 1823. Its passengers were disheartened to find a mere toehold in the jungle instead of the land of plenty they'd expected. They couldn't return on the ship that had brought them. The captain's contract had been for a one-way passage, and anyway the ship was too small to take all the

Starting point is 00:10:52 colonists, even if they could afford the cost. Plus, many of them had sold everything they had in preparing for this journey. There was nothing to return to. Hector Hall now returned from his expedition with bad news. He had found no ship that could help them, and he found that King George Frederick Augustus had not even known of their presence and did not consider them his responsibility. They were on their own for the foreseeable future. They had a year's supply of provisions and enough tools to build shelters and clear land for planting, but they had no clear plan for the future,

Starting point is 00:11:17 and none of the officials whom McGregor had sent with them had proven to be effective leaders. Most of the colonists tried to make the best of the situation. The forest was full of game and materials for building, and they could get advice from the natives, had proven to be effective leaders. Most of the colonists tried to make the best of the situation. The forest was full of game and materials for building, and they could get advice from the natives so they could create their own colony. But when the rainy season set in, insects came with it, and outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever took hold. A Scottish sawyer named James Hastie, who had brought a wife and three children, later wrote, it seemed to be the will of providence that every circumstance should combine for our destruction. One man who had left his family in Edinburgh to become the royal shoemaker shot himself. Discontent began to spread and with it blame. Many blamed Hall, who was ostensibly in

Starting point is 00:11:55 charge and who had not led them well. Under his direction, they'd built their village in a swamp, he'd let the first ship sail away, and he'd refused to pay his workers in anything but promissory notes. And he was always leaving the colony on mysterious trips without explanation. The reason for this was that he believed they'd been hoodwinked, and he was going back to Cape Gracia Sedios seeking help. It was true that he'd agreed to pay some of the colonists for their work, but he needed the cash now to hire a ship big enough to take them all back to Europe. He'd kept them on the shore because he thought that a long-term settlement here would never be viable, and he was hoping that they'd be discovered by a passing ship. Finally, they were discovered in early May 1823 by a schooner from British Honduras

Starting point is 00:12:31 that was carrying the chief magistrate of Belize to the court of the Mosquito King. By this time, many of the colonists were sick, and seven men and three children had died. The magistrate told them that Poyais did not exist, and that he'd never heard of a cazique named Gregor McGregor. He urged them to return with him to British Honduras, saying they would surely die if they remained where they were. told him that Poyais did not exist and that he'd never heard of a cazique named Gregor McGregor. He urged them to return with him to British Honduras, saying they would surely die if they remained where they were. Most of them chose to stay and wait for Hall, who they hoped were arranging for passage back to Britain. But when Hall returned a week later, it was with the Mosquito King, who said that he was officially revoking McGregor's land grant. He had never given McGregor the title cazique, he said, or given him the right to sell land or raise loans. In fact, the colonists were on his land and must now leave or pledge

Starting point is 00:13:08 allegiance to him. They chose to leave, but the schooner was small and had to make three trips to remove them all. By the time they reached British Honduras, most of the colonists had to be carried from the ship. The weather here was even worse than at the Black River. Disease spread rapidly among the settlers, and most of them died. The colony's superintendent sent word to Britain and opened an official investigation to lay open the true situation of the imaginary state of Poyais and the unfortunate emigrants. By the time the warning reached London, MacGregor had sent another five ships full of hopeful colonists. The Royal Navy had to intercept these and turn them back. The surviving colonists settled in the United States, stayed in British Honduras, or returned to the United Kingdom.

Starting point is 00:13:46 Of the roughly 250 who had arrived in the New World, at least 180 had died. Fewer than 50 ever returned to Britain. Perhaps not surprisingly, McGregor left London just before the colonists returned on October 12, 1823. He said he was taking his wife to Italy for her health, but instead headed to Paris. The newspapers charged him with a massive fraud and detailed the sufferings of the settlers. Remarkably, the settlers themselves tended to excuse McGregor and blame his agents, including Hall. In 1826, McGregor tried the same scheme in France, promoting Poyer and seeking settlers. But France was on its guard. It investigated his claims and threw him in jail. At the trial, he blamed one of his managing directors,

Starting point is 00:14:24 and in the end, that man was convicted of making false representations and sentenced to 13 months imprisonment. In the end, McGregor was found not guilty on all charges. He returned to Britain and started the scheme yet again, this time with less success, not because people thought he was lying, but because the earlier bonds had not performed well. When McGregor's wife died in 1838, he moved to Venezuela and requested citizenship in his former rank in the Venezuelan army with back pay and a pension. The government granted these, remembering his early contributions, and he spent the rest of his life as a respected citizen of a town near the capital. After his death in 1845, he was buried with full military

Starting point is 00:14:59 honors. Today, the part of Honduras where he had founded his imaginary republic is still undeveloped. In Scotland, in the family graveyard, his clan's memorial stones make no mention of Gregor MacGregor or the country he dreamed up. Jeff and Andy were two ordinary guys who were fed up with getting ripped off buying razor blades, so they started Harry's to fix shaving. They knew there was only one way to ensure quality, so they bought their own blade factory. By taking less profit and selling directly to you over the internet, Harry's offers their blades at half the price.

Starting point is 00:15:38 Harry's has sent me some of their razors to try, and they really do give a close, smooth, comfortable shave. And the convenience is great. They ship them right to your door. And now you can try Harry's for free. Harry's is so confident you'll love their blades, they're giving you their trial set for free. Just cover $3 shipping. Your free trial set includes a weighted ergonomic razor handle, five precision-engineered blades with a lubricating strip and trimmer blade, rich lathering shave gel, and a travel blade cover.

Starting point is 00:16:04 That's a $13 value for you to try. with a lubricating strip and trimmer blade, rich lathering shave gel, and a travel blade cover. That's a $13 value for you to try. Get started shaving with Harry's today by claiming your free trial offer, a $13 value for free. You just cover shipping. To get your free trial set, including a razor handle, a five-blade cartridge, and shave gel, go to harrys.com slash closet right now. That's harrys.com slash closet. That's harrys.com slash closet right now. That's harrys.com slash closet. In episode 149, I told the story of Christopher Knight, the North Pond Hermit, who had lived alone in the Maine woods for 27 years.

Starting point is 00:16:43 Greg and I sometimes further discuss a story after recording it, and we put those discussions in our Patreon feed for the podcast patrons. In that discussion last week, in response to a question from Greg, I mentioned that Knight had had mental health screening after he was arrested and that he'd been given a diagnosis of probable Asperger's. Ben Sheldon, who had sent us a really wonderful cross-stitch of our podcast logo, wrote in and said, Greetings, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. You may remember me as the listener who cross-stitched your penguin for you last year. I am happy to report that I still adore your podcasts and hope they continue for many years to come. I just listened to your post-show discussion for episode 149 and The North Pond Hermit and felt compelled to share some further insight. While listening to the episode, I strongly suspected that Christopher Knight had Asperger's or was otherwise on what's known as the autism spectrum.

Starting point is 00:17:27 I myself am also an Aspie, as we are sometimes called, and while I'd no sooner go live in the wilderness of Maine than live on the moon, I can understand why Christopher Knight did what he did. First of all, almost all cases of Asperger's amongst his generation were undiagnosed at the time. The diagnosis only gained prevalence in the late 90s when I was diagnosed as a child, and widespread acceptance of the diagnosis has only come in the last 10 years, so Christopher and his family almost

Starting point is 00:17:55 certainly had no way of knowing why he struggled to interact with other people so much. The nasty irony in Asperger's is that it comes packaged with high intelligence and often high verbal skills, so adults often struggle to accept that a clearly intelligent and articulate child can't make friends or communicate their feelings or understand the feelings of others, which in turn deepens the frustration and round and round it goes. My personal definition of the difference between an ASPE and a non-ASPE is that for an ASPE, communication is a conscious act, analogous to when one first learns to drive a car. Every interaction is a rapid series of deliberate conscious choices, with the inner voice constantly watching and adjudicating what you say and whether it's getting a desired response from whoever you're talking to. That may sound exhausting, and it is. My word, it is. Of course,

Starting point is 00:18:47 the experience is more heightened around unfamiliar people and in unfamiliar environments, and if you can build a network of friends and family members who you know will forgive you if you miscommunicate, then life becomes much easier. If you can't, well, sometimes you do feel like doing anything to avoid talking to other people, even if it means almost freezing to death in the forest. As for why he stayed in the forest for so long, imagine if you were already an awkward and introverted person and had been away from your family for a decade or two.

Starting point is 00:19:17 You'd probably dread the conversation where you explain what you've been doing all this time. I know I would. The upside to all this is that hopefully advances in our understanding of autism and child psychology Thanks again from Australia for all your hard work. And thank you, Ben, for that very helpful perspective on the story. And what you say does fit really well with the types of things that I was reading about Knight, including his real difficulty in trying to explain why he had done what he had. Yeah, and you were saying he wouldn't make eye contact. He just had a lot of difficulty just interacting with other human beings. Yeah, he described it as overwhelming or very uncomfortable and just didn't seem to have many relationships with people.

Starting point is 00:20:00 Yeah. Also, the description there about high intelligence and verbal skills seems to match what you were, the way you described Knight in your piece. He seemed very, what little he said seemed very articulate, and he seemed like a very thoughtful person. Right. He was really, he was high functioning in a lot of ways, just had a lot of trouble with the social interactions. And it explains, as he says, that explains a lot about why you would go through, put yourself through such a difficult life just because it still seems preferable to the alternative. Yeah. Also in episode 149, Greg mentioned how in 1942, the telegraph crossword had included the word Dieppe right before that town was attacked by the Allies, and the British War Office had asked a Canadian intelligence officer to investigate whether someone had been using the crossword to send information to the enemy.

Starting point is 00:20:47 Nick Noyes wrote, In the follow-up on wartime code communication, I was interested to hear a reference to Canadian intelligence officer Lord Tweedsmuir. This would be the second Baron Tweedsmuir, who, although a Scot, did spend some time in Canada where his father had been the Governor General, and served with a Canadian regiment for part of World War II. About his father, he was the author John Buchan, most famous perhaps for writing the novel The 39 Steps, set just prior to the First World War and full of adventure and spycraft. The hero, Richard Hannay, thwarted just the kind of enemy agent that would place information in a newspaper crossword. I was so struck by this parallel between fiction and history that I stopped the podcast to write you. So perhaps you mentioned this.

Starting point is 00:21:30 Thanks for the always interesting podcast. So no, Nick, we hadn't mentioned that connection, as I'm sure you discovered when you finished listening. I actually wasn't familiar with the 39 Steps. But in 2014, The Guardian named it one of the 100 best novels written in English and called it an archetypal English spy thriller. It definitely did sound like the kind of novel where you'd be looking for hidden communications and crosswords, so it was kind of ironic that his son ended up doing just that, though perhaps his father's novels inspired the second Baron Tweedsmuir to end up working as an intelligence officer. Maybe that's why they sent him to look into it. Maybe that's why, right.

Starting point is 00:22:08 And Tim Groves wrote to us, This evening, I gave a presentation about the Boston molasses disaster to Willow's Toastmasters Club in Townsville, Queensland. I penned a few notes for my introducer, citing your podcast as the inspiration of my speech. Imagine my surprise and delight when she mispronounced the name of your website to Fertility Closet, as I'm sure you could come up with some rather different ones. But I think we'll stick with Futility Closet, even if people often don't quite know what to make of the name. Yeah, the actual name doesn't make much more sense.

Starting point is 00:22:53 But we're pretty attached to it by now. Yeah. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. And if you have any questions or comments or odd anecdotes about our name, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him with a strange sounding situation and he has to try to work out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle was adapted by me from Dan Lewis's Now I Know

Starting point is 00:23:24 e-newsletter. All right. Countries periodically change their flags for many reasons, but Lichtenstein had a very specific reason for changing theirs in 1937. What was it? 1937. 1937, specifically. Okay, was it some...

Starting point is 00:23:40 Well, that's not even a coherent question. Very specific reason for changing their flag. Yes. Was it, well, I will ask, is it a geopolitical reason? Was it some political reason? No. Like not a change in the rulership of the country or something like that? Correct.

Starting point is 00:23:58 Not a change in the rulership of the country or something. Lechtenstein. country or something. Liechtenstein. Would it help me to know specifically what the change was? No. So I just need to know that the flag changed? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:16 Liechtenstein. I guess I don't know much about Liechtenstein. And you don't need to know a ton about them. Was it related to the history of the country? That's kind of broad, but I think probably not. And it's not, I keep wanting to go back to like figuring out, it's not the shape of the flag or something. No, it doesn't matter at all how they changed the flag.

Starting point is 00:24:41 Just the fact that they changed it. Yes. Does this have to do with the use that the flag was put to? No. Or where it was displayed, anything like that? Some practical matter concerning how the flag was used? No. Do we need to know how the change was enacted? Nope.

Starting point is 00:24:58 Who it was that required it? Nope. Does this involve any other country? Yes, in a way. More than one? One particular country, would you say? Sort of. I'd work out why it was in 1937.

Starting point is 00:25:17 I was just going to do that. It's very specific for the year that it happened. That's why I was asking geopolitics. It doesn't have to do with war or some... Nothing like that. Big political event why I was asking geopolitics. It doesn't have to do with war or some... Nothing like that. Big political event. Not a big political event. Not a big political event.

Starting point is 00:25:34 An economic event? What was happening in 1937? Well, things take a little time sometimes. Okay, what was happening in the 1920s? Nope, nope, not quite that long 1936 let's say something happened the olympics yes very good why would that make you change your flag though but that's that's what happened in 1936 there was the olympics this had to do with the flag ceremonies in the olympics yes so, so they had their old flag in 1936

Starting point is 00:26:06 and participated in the Olympics with their old flag, and something happened? I don't know that I'd say something happened. I mean, obviously something happened. They made this change with an eye toward future Olympics? Sort of.

Starting point is 00:26:22 Or was the flag... I don't know how to ask this did something embarrassing happen concerning the flag in 1936 in the olympic flag ceremony i mean was it um sort of not embarrassing happened but uh like are you thinking like an event occurred yeah yeah no nothing like that quite is it something about how their flag compared to those of other nations yes and they wanted to redress that? Yes. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:47 Was it just the size of the flag? No. It's appearance compared to other flags. I'd say yes, vaguely in that direction, yes. But you're saying that I don't need to know exactly what it was. Right. Well, not what they needed to change. I mean, like what specific change they made is immaterial.

Starting point is 00:27:03 It was just that they changed the flag. I will give you a hint that 1936 was the first time Lichtenstein had participated in Olympics. It was the first time they sent a team to the Olympics. Do I need to, so is it to do more, with more than just the flag

Starting point is 00:27:19 itself? Like, do I need to know about who the bearers were or exactly how it was used in the flag ceremony? No, no. Just how it compares to other nations right they sent a team to the olympics for the first time in 1936 with their flag and it's it's germane that it was the first time they'd been to the olympics and then there's a flag ceremony right uh-huh which they hadn't done before which they hadn't done before and use their old flag yep. And saw everybody else's flags for the first time. And decided, gee, we better make a change to ours. I keep going back to what the actual change was.

Starting point is 00:28:01 They saw one other flag in particular that made them think, gee, we better make a change to ours. Oh, because they had the identical flag with another nation? They did. They had the same flag as Haiti. And they didn't realize that until the ceremony? No. So yeah, they sent its very first team to the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936. None of their six athletes that they managed to send won any medals, but they came back with their information that their country's flag looked exactly like Haiti's, which both were a blue horizontal bar on top of a red one. So in 1937, Liechtenstein added a crown to the flag in the upper left corner. And I guess that was just a coincidence.

Starting point is 00:28:37 I mean, there's nothing that was true. It was just a coincidence, right? And they just hadn't known that until they'd been to the Olympics and seen all the flags. It's amazing. No internet. It's amazing. No internet, right? That that's how you would find out. Yeah. People didn't have a way to learn everything about the world in 1936. But you'd think somebody somewhere. Had been to both Lichtenstein and Haiti and would have realized it.

Starting point is 00:29:01 That's a great story. So thanks to everyone who has been sending in puzzles for us to try. We're always on the lookout for a good puzzle. If you have one that you'd like to send, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us, and we really do depend on the support of our listeners. If you would like to help support the show and get bonus material, such as post-show discussions, outtakes, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, the most diligent podcast mascot in the business, then check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash Futility Closet or see the support us section of the website. If you're looking for more quirky

Starting point is 00:29:40 curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample more than 9,000 signal mincings. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics in today's show. 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 the supremely talented Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 150-The Prince of Nowhere

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