Futility Closet - 153-A Victorian Stalker

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 regretful rock hounds to two-legged cats. This is episode 153. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Between 1838 and 1841, an enterprising London teenager repeatedly broke into Buckingham Palace, sitting on the throne, eating from the kitchen,

Starting point is 00:00:38 and generally causing headaches for Queen Victoria's attendants, who couldn't seem to keep him out. In today's show, we'll describe the exploits of Edward Jones, who some have called the first celebrity stalker. the exploits of Edward Jones, who some have called the first celebrity stalker. We'll also salute some confusing flags and puzzle over an extraterrestrial musician. Just a reminder that Futility Closet is supported primarily by our amazing listeners. We want to thank everyone who helps us be able to keep making the show, and this week we're sending out an extra special thank you to Terry Fuller and Daniel Friedman, our newest super patrons. If you would like to join Terry and Daniel and all the other wonderful supporters of our show, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset,

Starting point is 00:01:18 or see the support us section of our website. At 5 a.m. on December 14th, 1838, a night porter named William Cox was warming himself at a fire in Buckingham Palace. When the door opened, a boy looked in at him and the door closed again. Cox sat surprised for a moment and then he got up and went after him. On the floor outside his door, he found a bundle of items that seemed to have been gathered from around the palace. Three pairs of trousers, some linen and undergarments, a few foreign coins, a book, a padlock, and a fine-dressed sword. The sword bore the name Charles Augustus Murray, who was one of Queen Victoria's equerries. Cox went up to Murray's apartment, he wasn't in the palace at the time, and found the

Starting point is 00:01:59 room and bed to be in disarray and dirtied with soot and grease. A large half-empty bottle of bear's grease was on the dressing table there. Bear's grease in those days was used to stimulate hair growth. This was shaping up to be an eventful morning. Cox alerted the sentries and sent a porter to fence the police. Then he organized a search of the palace. They found marks of soot here and there in the bedrooms and passages and in the marble hall. A portrait of the queen was found on the floor of the hall, broken and dirtied with soot, and under it were two letters that must have been taken from the queen's private apartments.

Starting point is 00:02:29 Fortunately, the queen was staying in Windsor Castle that night, so she wasn't in Buckingham Palace at all. The two police constables arrived and joined in the search. Eventually, they found the boy hiding behind a pillar in the marble hall. They grabbed him, but he slipped away because he was slick with grease, and he'd actually made it out a window and onto the lawn when the constable finally caught him again and dragged him into the kitchen. He was wearing two pairs of trousers and two overcoats, and in his pockets they found a wafer, a stamp, and two inkstand glasses. When the constable pulled down his outer pair of trousers, several items of female underwear fell out. Colorful story. They took the boy to the police office. It wasn't clear how he'd made his way

Starting point is 00:03:06 into the palace but he seemed remarkably familiar with its layout he reliably found the queen's empty bedroom and dressing room where he'd stolen her portrait letter and underwear then he'd entered some other bedrooms before entering murray's where he'd covered himself in bear's grease perhaps hoping that would help him escape through the chimney he'd stolen several items for murray's room including the sword and then gone down to put his head in at Cox's door. All this happened when the new queen was very young. She was only 19 years old. She was said to be beautiful. She was heralded as a new sort of monarch, free of the corruption and excesses of recent British royalty, and it was hoped that her accession would bring on a new era of populism, that she'd be more accessible to the

Starting point is 00:03:43 people. This is pretty accessible though, right? Yeah, it's about as accessible as you can be. Giving your underwear to them. A few young men had even called at the palace to ask for her hand in marriage. Before the magistrate, the boy identified himself as Edward Cotton and said he was the son of Henry Cotton, who he said was a shoemaker and householder in Hartford. Everyone describes him as personally repellent. He was said to be stunted, misshapen, and more than anything, resembling a chimney sweep.

Starting point is 00:04:07 He said he'd come to London 12 months earlier and met a mysterious man who'd got him past the guards and into the palace. And he'd said that during daylight hours, he would just hide behind the furniture in the palace or up in the chimneys, and then when night came, he walked about. He lived off vittles in the kitchen

Starting point is 00:04:22 and washed his shirt regularly, he said. And he said he was present when the queen met with ministers hiding behind furniture. At this point, the presiding magistrate, a Mr. White, in some astonishment said, do you mean to tell me that you've lived in the palace upwards of 11 months and been concealed when Her Majesty held a council? The boy said, I do. Were you hid behind a chair? No, but the tables and other furniture concealed me. Then you could hear all Her Majesty said, oh yes, and her ministers too. Asked if he was a sweep, he said, oh no, it is only my face and hands that are dirty. That's from sleeping in the chimneys. I do not know the names of any of the servants, but I know my way all over the palace and have been all over it, the queen's

Starting point is 00:04:57 apartments and all. Reports said the prisoner, quote, evidently seemed to think the whole proceeding good fun. He was dirty, but he seemed sane and intelligent, and he seemed to have some education. Through all the soot, they tried to guess his age and supposed it was somewhere between 15 and 24. The police thought his claims must be false. Among other things, the kitchen cupboards were locked every night, and no water was available to wash a shirt at night. One inspector actually concluded that he couldn't have been in the palace for more than two to three days. More likely, they thought he'd been a climbing boy employed by the Buckingham Palace chimney sweep and had learned the building's layout by climbing down the chimneys. If he'd done that, then he could have returned at night and climbed down

Starting point is 00:05:36 the right chimney into the Queen's private apartment. But they talked to the palace chimney sweep, and he denied ever having seen or hired him, and in fact, it turned out that palace chimneys had been designed deliberately to prevent people from doing this, from climbing down them to gain entry to the building. So it wasn't clear how he'd gotten in. His accent and demeanor suggested he was a lower-class Londoner rather than a country boy from Hartfordshire, as he claimed. Finally, Henry Jones, a tailor living in the city, came forward and identified him as his 14-year-old son Edward, who had been missing a week. The family was very poor. The entire family lodged in a single room, and Edward had had a rather unfortunate childhood.

Starting point is 00:06:11 He'd gone to school until early in 1836, and then he left to become an errand boy to an apothecary. He was sacked for what the apothecary called his, quote, mischievous and restless disposition, and then he was fired from a series of further jobs. His father had finally turned him out of the house to fend for himself. Back at the police office, he was charged with stealing a sword and various other articles belonging to Murray, who was master of Her Majesty's household. No mention was made of Victoria's letter, portrait, or underclothing, understandably. I guess that would be kind of embarrassing. Yeah, and this is, I guess, officially now Victorian England, so it would just be a sort of bad news if that got out. I'm getting a lot of this from a book called Queen Victoria's Stalker, which is the best resource on this whole story by a Swedish rheumatologist named Jan Bundesen.

Starting point is 00:06:53 And he says that nothing like these intrusions had ever happened before. He said it would have been scandalous if these had gotten out. The trial began on December 28th. December 28th, Edward's father was poor, but he scraped together resources for a lawyer, thanks to contributions from well-wishers, which turned out to be a very wise and fortunate move, because the lawyer was able to sort of cast a lighthearted light over the whole escapade, which really served him. The prosecution claimed that the boy had stolen the queen's belongings, and the defense claimed that he was simply overawed and curious rather than malicious and had done no lasting harm.

Starting point is 00:07:29 The boy's former employer, a builder named Mr. Griffiths, said he had been a good and reliable worker and clever and had said he was ambitious to see the inside of the palace, although Griffiths had warned him against trying this. The jury actually found him not guilty. The incident was treated as a joke. The judge even told the boy that entering the palace had shown talent that could serve him well in life if it were properly directed. And the boy bowed and said, thank you, sir. So he sort of got out of that safely. Mr. Griffiths, the builder, rehired the boy, and he worked as a builder's boy for a number of months, but he was fired later in 1839, and he went through a succession of other jobs, sometimes disappearing for days with no account of his whereabouts. He seems entirely unable to hold down a proper job, although it's not clear to me quite why. In 1840, just as a couple years later, Victoria married her

Starting point is 00:08:09 first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-in-Gotha, and they had a daughter, the Princess Royal. On December 3rd, Mrs. Lily, who was the Queen's midwife, was looking after the baby, who was only two weeks old at this point. Lily's bed was in the nursery near the Queen's bedroom and dressing room. At 1.30 a.m., as she was going to sleep, Lily heard a door creak. She got out of bed, opened the nursery door, and called, Who's there? No one answered, but she saw the door of the queen's dressing room opened by someone inside that room.

Starting point is 00:08:35 She said again, Who's there? And the door was slammed from the inside. So she bolted the door from her side and rang the bell. One of the queen's pages answered the call, accompanied by Victoria's former governess, and together the three of them unbolted the door and went into the dressing room. At first they found nothing amiss, but then they discovered Jones hiding under a sofa. He didn't try to escape. The constables dragged him out of the palace in silence to avoid disturbing the queen, who was in bed one door away. There was an uproar when they discovered

Starting point is 00:09:00 it was the same boy who'd broken into the palace two years ago in 1838. The police informed Albert, who told the Queen, and she wrote in her journal, supposing he had come into the bedroom, how frightened I should have been. The second break-in was more serious, since now there's a baby involved, and the Queen was present, so an intruder might have attacked her, conceivably. The public were alarmed because this had happened so soon after the Queen's childbirth, they feared that her alarm might affect her health. And also, as it happened, that June, Victoria and Albert had escaped an assassination attempt by a man who'd been declared insane. So there was quite a lot more sensitivity to this sort of thing going on.

Starting point is 00:09:34 Kind of a different climate. Yeah, it's not lighthearted anymore. Unfortunately, at this time, simple trespass was not a crime. You could enter the palace, or anywhere, without criminal intent, then they couldn't impose a strong punishment. And it didn't appear that he'd done that he hadn't stolen anything or shown in any attempt to hurt anyone so anybody could go into the palace as long as they didn't have a criminal intent yeah theoretically because they started looking at this point they thought well this could go on forever if we you know we can prosecute him but if we can't lock him up then

Starting point is 00:10:01 he'll just apparently has magic ways of getting to the palace that we can't prevent i'm just surprised it's not illegal to like i don't know sort of breaking and entering kind of thing well i suppose no one was doing this i mean i'm sure you couldn't do it now but at that time it was just simple trespass and it wasn't they they had no legal recourses or just a way to get him off the stage just to lock him up uh so they decided after some dithering to examine him at the home office and let the Privy Council sentence him. This was a special court used to try powerful nobles whose wealth and influence put them out of the reach of ordinary courts. That would avoid the farce created by Jones' defense attorney in the first trial where the break-in was treated as a joke.

Starting point is 00:10:39 There was immense interest in this anyway, even though the proceedings were largely out of public view, Jones told them that he'd scaled the wall of Buckingham Palace Gardens and just walked up to the palace and entered through a window. He said he'd wandered through the rooms downstairs and went to sleep under one of the servants' beds. On Wednesday evening, he went to the kitchen, helped himself to some soup and other food, then went up the servants' stairs and entered the throne room, where he sat on the throne

Starting point is 00:11:02 and handled various ornaments and pieces of furniture. Then he went into the queen's private apartments and finally the dressing room where he sat on the throne and handled various ornaments and pieces of furniture. Then he went into the queen's private apartments and finally the dressing room where he'd probably spent several hours hiding under the sofa. He said he hadn't seen the queen or the princess but thought he'd heard a noise from the queen's room. Henry Jones, his father, was reprimanded for failing to control his son. He said he thought the boy was not of sound mind.

Starting point is 00:11:21 The Privy Council decided that since no stolen property or dangerous weapon had been found, the best course was to order a summary punishment, and they committed him to three months in the House of Corrections as a rogue and vagabond, and led him out into a cab to avoid journalists. They're still trying to keep us quiet. Lord Duncannon was asked to try to verify what the boy had said, and he largely could. The boy seemed to be telling the truth as to how he got into the palace, and they found soot marks on the throne and dirty finger marks on a bowl of soup in the servant's kitchen. The authorities tried to claim that none of this was anything important, but the press wasn't buying it. Journalists interviewed the boy's father, and they found that even in the House of Corrections, the boy himself was talking freely.

Starting point is 00:11:57 He said he'd sat on the throne. He now said he'd seen the queen. He said he'd heard the princess royal squall. the queen. He said he'd heard the princess royal squall. He said he'd gone with the express intention of writing a book describing the arrangement of the chambers, the doings of palace inhabitants, and in particular the queen's dressing room. He got out on March 2nd, 1841, and was handed over to his father, who was scolded severely. The magistrate urged Henry to send his son to sea, but the son didn't want to go, and his mother didn't want to send him. Everyone describes the boy as surly, insolent, and uncommunicative. He looked for work, but at this point, no one wanted to have him. On March 15th, just two weeks after he got out, he spent all day at home,

Starting point is 00:12:31 and at 8 p.m., he told his father he wanted to attend a temperance meeting nearby, and then he didn't return home. You can guess where he was. The following day, a police sergeant named Glover was patrolling the picture gallery in the palace when he heard a noise coming from one of the adjacent lobbies. He saw a pair of dirty shoes on the floor and a figure crouching in a recess nearby. He shone his lantern on the intruder and recognized him.

Starting point is 00:12:50 He said, What, Jones, is that you? Jones said, Yes, it's me. This is at least three times now. He could also have gotten in the past that we don't even know about. Since the December break-in, 14 constables from A Division had been added to the palace guard,

Starting point is 00:13:02 yet still the boy had got in. There was much speculation about how he'd accomplished this and about how many times he'd managed to do it undiscovered. He kept saying he'd just gone in through an unsecured ground floor window, and possibly that's really all he had done. They led him to the Gardner's Lane station house, where he was charged with being found concealed in Buckingham Palace for unlawful purpose. They questioned him again in the morning, and he denied going into the palace for any felonious purpose. He said he wanted to record the conversation of the queen, the prince, and their courtiers so that he could write a book. He'd handled the coronet with many precious jewels.

Starting point is 00:13:31 He'd sat on the throne again, and he'd visited a library and read some of the books. And in fact, when the police challenged this, he named the books and identified their locations on the shelves. And he described some of the servants and what he'd overheard them saying. None of this is really malicious, though. You just go in and read a book. You're not. Yeah. It's a tricky problem.

Starting point is 00:13:47 At 1 p.m., the police took him to the home office where he was put through a grueling examination before the Privy Council. This is just what happened last time. Right. Jones affected indifference and said nothing. He was committed again to the House of Corrections as a rogue and vagabond for a period of three months. This is just what happened last time, but now at hard labor. And there was a public furor. To prevent any more invasions, the Department of Woods and Forest secured all the basement windows of the palace

Starting point is 00:14:07 with iron bars, and they added three more centuries. This is all to keep one kid out. When Edward got out of prison, he was thin from labor and inadequate food. People mocked and jeered at him, and he couldn't find work. The authorities were worried he would just strike yet again, but simple trespass again was not a criminal offense. Finally, it appears the home office resorted to what today we'd call an extrajudicial remedy. They just had to do something. It looks like what they did was they paid Jones's landlord, a man named William James, and a man named Christopher Evans, to smuggle a boy out of the country. They approached Edward's father, offering to find paid employment for the boy, and they just took him away with them,

Starting point is 00:14:41 away from the father. And after many misadventures, which I won't go through, they found a ship in Liverpool that would take him to Brazil. And then they sent some phony letters, ostensibly from Edward, saying, Dear father, I have suddenly decided to go to Brazil, for no very clear reason. Please thank my wonderful friend, Mr. James, for helping me find this. So they kind of kidnapped him, basically. Yeah, because there was nothing else they could do,

Starting point is 00:15:01 and they had to get him away from the palace. Well, they could have changed the law, right? Henry, the father, got a letter from Edward finally on December 10, 1841, postmarked Liverpool. And he said he'd been forced to sail to Brazil and back aboard the Tiber and return to England on November 30. He said he'd been abused on board the ship, forced to work hard and whipped for any infraction, and in the end they'd paid him two shillings and sixpence for four months' hard work, and then just left him stranded in Liverpool. He was afraid of being abducted again and asked his father to send him travel money so he could return to London, but his father

Starting point is 00:15:31 was very poor and couldn't raise the money, so in the end Edward had to walk all the way home from Liverpool to London, 210 miles, eating turnips that he picked in the field. He arrived in London on December 18th and tried to return to a normal life. He got work in a tobacconist shop, but he told the tobacconist that mysterious men were seen to be shadowing him. And sure enough, on February 4th, he disappeared again. And this is the same thing that just happened before. His father and the tobacconist received letters in the boy's handwriting saying that Mr. James,

Starting point is 00:15:56 again, had helped him join the Royal Navy this time. There were many misspellings in the letter, which suggested that it had been dictated for him to write. And interestingly, he signed the letter Edwin rather than Edward, perhaps as a clever way to show that he was writing it under duress. His parents appealed to the home office, but they refused to help. The boy's letter said that he had joined the Royal Navy of his own will, which isn't a crime, but no one joined the Navy at a moment's notice without informing his parents or even undertaking training. So it does seem rather fishy. Probably James had abducted Edward in London and took him to Portsmouth.

Starting point is 00:16:28 In fact, the ship had sailed the very next morning, which suggests that this whole thing had been prearranged. When the ship returned to Portsmouth in October 1842, much the same thing happened there as well. Edward gave his minders the slip and walked all the way home from Portsmouth to London, since he was afraid now to take a train or a coach. But police staked out at his father's house and grabbed him when he arrived there. When asked why he had fled to London,

Starting point is 00:16:49 he said that the other sailors treated him poorly. Everyone knew he was the boy Jones and they teased him about it. He seemed apathetic and depressed, but said he'd prefer the sea to prison. The government ordered him sent back to the ship,

Starting point is 00:16:58 probably to avoid further speculation in the newspapers. They're just still trying to avoid publicity that might occur to other people. There are a couple reports of him going overboard in 1844, first in Algiers and then off Athens. Possibly these were escape attempts.

Starting point is 00:17:14 It's hard to tell. Generally, he behaved well, though, showing good seamanship skills for someone with so little experience. In December 1845, he was promoted to ordinary seaman. In October 1847, when he'd been away five and a half years, his father finally, a very patient man, finally asked that he be allowed to return home. The British government agreed, fearing privately that he might die by accident or

Starting point is 00:17:34 disease if they kept him away at sea forever, and that if this happened, the father would speak out publicly as basically the boy had been forced to serve in the Royal Navy without being tried or convicted. Edward, who was now 23, returned to London and moved in with his parents and siblings. He spent a checkered history after that, transported to Western Australia in January 1853 after some burglaries, and then finally moved to Australia permanently in 1857 to live with his younger brother, who was a respectable civil servant in Melbourne. For some time, he served as the town crier of Perth. He finally died on Boxing Day 1893 in Bairnsdale, Australia, after drunkenly falling off a bridge and striking his head on a

Starting point is 00:18:09 rock. And he's buried in the Bairnsdale Cemetery in an unmarked grave. Bondeson, who really wrote the best book on this, calls him one of the earliest celebrity stalkers in recorded history. He says the boy was never classed as mad, just odd. His behavior is strange. It's hard from this historical perspective to really understand what was motivating him. He reminds me, though, of a 19th century version of a hacker. Yeah. Right? Just somebody who wants to see if he can get in somewhere he's not supposed to be,

Starting point is 00:18:37 if he can get past the security or do the things he's not supposed to be able to do. I think that makes—that's the sort of thing. Because he didn't seem to be after fame. He wasn't trying to steal or hurt anyone. He didn't even seem quite to want to meet the queen. If you look at just his actions,

Starting point is 00:18:49 I mean, the first time he did this, she wasn't even in the building. He just wanted to see if he could do it, it seemed to me. Yeah. So Bondeson, and I agree with him,

Starting point is 00:18:57 sees the story as dark rather than amusing. Yeah. This was all done sort of hush off off the record, and they just couldn't think what else to do with him but their solution was to hold him captive in breach of habeas corpus for a long time which is

Starting point is 00:19:09 not legal so bondison writes for him it wasn't it certainly wasn't a joke he carried his notoriety with him it might seem like a funny story but it wasn't funny for him Jeff and Andy are two ordinary guys who were fed up with getting ripped off when buying razor blades, so they started Harry's to fix shaving. They bought their own blade factory to ensure quality, and now, by taking less profit and selling directly to you over the internet, Harry's offers their blades at half the price. So that's just $2 a blade compared to the $4 or more you'll pay at the drugstore. I've tried Harry's blades myself,

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Starting point is 00:20:31 slash closet. Spoiler alert! Our listener mail this week includes updates to a couple of lateral thinking puzzle answers from other episodes, so listen at your own peril if you haven't yet heard some of the puzzles from a few weeks ago. Jesse Onland wrote, the lateral thinking puzzle in episode 150 involved Lichtenstein and Haiti having identical flags prior to 1937. Listeners may be interested to know that there are currently two similar situations. The flags of Romania and Chad are virtually identical, differing only by slightly different shades of blue. In 2004, Chad requested that the UN look into this issue, but Romania's president announced there would be no change to its flag. And the flags of Monaco and Indonesia are completely identical, although, as far as I can tell, neither nation seems to

Starting point is 00:21:21 consider this an issue worth addressing. And after getting Jesse's email, I looked up Romania's and Chad's flags, and they do look almost identical, with the blue on Romania's being just a tad brighter. Both flags are composed of three vertical segments of blue, yellow, and red, with apparently the blue on Romania's flag being cobalt compared to the indigo on Chad's. The two flags used to be more distinguishable because the Romanian flag previously had had the coat of arms of the Socialist Republic of Romania in the center of the flag, and obviously Chad's flag didn't. But after the 1989 revolution that ousted communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu, the insignia was removed and that made the two flags then virtually identical. According to a BBC News report from 2004, Romanian media was reporting that Chad had called on the

Starting point is 00:22:11 United Nations to look into the situation, but the Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry claimed that in 1997, Romania had completed the registration procedure for its flag with the United Nations agency that registers state symbols and that no claim had been lodged against the registration within the required 12-month deadline. So given that the Romanian flag hasn't changed and I couldn't find a new story more recent than the 2004 one, I guess I imagine that Chad is just out of luck. I didn't know you had to register all these symbols. Yeah, I had no idea.

Starting point is 00:22:42 There's an official body that you do that with. Yeah. There are actually a number of countries' flags that are very similar to those of other countries, so it's not just Chad that's in this situation. As Jesse noted, Monaco and Indonesia also have identical flags, both being composed of a horizontal stripe of red on top of a horizontal stripe of white, and not to be confused with Poland's flag, which is the stripe of red on top of a horizontal stripe of white, and not to be confused with Poland's flag, which is the stripe of white on top of the stripe of red. The flags of both Luxembourg and the Netherlands are horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue, with, similar to the Chad and Romania situation, just the shades of blue being different. And the flag of the Ivory Coast is vertical stripes of orange, white, and green, while the Irish flag is vertical stripes of green, white,

Starting point is 00:23:23 and orange, and so on uh so the moral of the story seems to be don't expect countries to all have completely unique flags which i used to do yeah but there are situations where this could be confusing hayim wrote every day i walk past the embassy of indonesia here in washington and right next door to it the economic office of the polish embassy it took me a while to sort that out, though, as the flags are very similar. The Polish flag is a bicolor of white over red, while the Indonesian flag is a bicolor of red over white. When there's no wind blowing, it's really hard to tell which is which. And just imagine how much more difficult it would be to distinguish between two flags that just use slightly different shades of blue.

Starting point is 00:24:03 Paula Suda wrote, Hey, Greg and Sharon and Sasha, you might get a ton of emails regarding today's lateral thinking puzzle about how Lichtenstein and Haiti have the same flag from the Big Bang Theory fans. I had just watched the latest episode, season 10, episode 21, last night, in which this exact issue came

Starting point is 00:24:20 up on Sheldon and Amy's Fun with Flags segment. So I knew what the answer was going to be as soon as Sharon read the odd-sounding situation to Greg. And that's a pretty funny coincidence, since I had developed that puzzle from an e-newsletter that I'd actually read months ago. It had just taken me a little while to decide on the wording for the puzzle and do a little research into the answer.

Starting point is 00:24:39 But I guess that puzzle got spoiled for all the fans of the Big Bang Theory. And too bad we hadn't managed to get that puzzle done a week earlier, and then we could have accused them of copying us. And speaking of copying from us, Brian Arnold wrote to say, Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. I saw an article on Boing Boing that immediately brought to mind your story in episode 68 about the Niihau incident. It appears there will soon be a movie about this.

Starting point is 00:25:05 This is funny as the movie In the Heart of the Sea came out not too long after you told the story in episode 70. Maybe you guys should be in the movie business. Keep up the good work. The Niihau incident was the story of a World War II Japanese fighter pilot who crash landed on the Hawaiian island, sparking several days of incredible drama between the desperate pilot and the terrified residents. And so far, the movie Ni'ihau is causing some controversy in its casting of a blue-eyed Caucasian as the main Hawaiian protagonist, and it will be interesting to see what else they might change for the movie version, as it appeared that they took some considerable liberties with the facts in the movie In the

Starting point is 00:25:43 Heart of the Sea. For anyone who wants the more accurate version of that story, check out our episode 70. That would make a great movie. Oh, yeah, if they do a good job with it. It's a very dramatic story. Yeah. The puzzle in episode 151 was based on the recent Indian Supreme Court ruling that bars, pubs, and liquor shops must be at least 500 meters away from state and national highways. The bar in question in the puzzle had tried to get around the ruling by

Starting point is 00:26:09 constructing a 250-meter maze-like walkway to lengthen the walking distance from the highway to the bar's entrance. Nimesh Villara wrote to say, I just heard the lateral thinking puzzle in episode 151, and I wanted to add that some states are trying to get around the Supreme Court ruling by declassifying certain highways from being highways to local roads. I looked into this a bit and discovered that this court decision was understandably not very popular with bar and restaurant owners in India. The president of the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association was reported as saying that the ruling would absolutely ruin the owners of some establishments and predicted that seven to eight hundred thousand people would lose their jobs due to the court order.

Starting point is 00:26:54 The tourism industry has been highly affected with the closure of bars and five-star hotels, and states that depend on liquor taxes have been very anxious about the situation. depend on liquor taxes have been very anxious about the situation. In some states, as many as 70% of hotels, pubs, and bars are within that 500 meters of a highway. So as Nimesh said, one thing that many Indian states are doing is reclassifying highways as local roads. This would get around the ban, but would also make the localities now responsible for the maintenance of the roads. So this won't be a perfect solution. And I guess it also doesn't address at all the initial goal of the Supreme Court to try to reduce drunk driving. But from the newspaper articles I was seeing on this, this ban has caused a fair amount of consternation in many areas of India. Also on this topic, Fred Meekoy wrote about a

Starting point is 00:27:40 similar situation in the U.S. Here in Texas, our laws make for strange constructions also. I helped open a liquor store in Richardson, Texas in November 1989. Liquor stores can't be less than a thousand feet from a church, and the two buildings were maybe 600 feet apart on otherwise empty ground with a side street between them. The liquor store owners got a legal ruling that the required distance was to be measured front door to front door as though measured by a person walking. Then they put the front door on the side of the store facing away from the church rather than facing the main street and put up a tall stockade fence requiring a couple hundred more footsteps for anyone walking between the buildings. The store just closed this year because of hefty rent increases.

Starting point is 00:28:20 Now, the ruling in India was clearly intended to cut down on drunk driving, but after reading Fred's email, I was wondering what the intent of the Texas law was, whether they didn't want people to be tempted to buy alcohol instead of going to church, or they didn't want people who'd been drinking to show up at a church, or maybe they just don't want people mixing liquor and religion. But in any case, I guess that Fred could turn his situation into his own lateral thinking puzzle if he wanted one that was closer to home for him. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We really appreciate hearing your comments and feedback. And a special thank you to those who have been remembering to tell me how to pronounce their names properly. And for those who didn't tell me, well, I tried to do the best I could.

Starting point is 00:29:00 If you have anything that you would like to say to us, please write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what's actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Greg Yerkovic. In 1969, one of the most famous musicians in the world

Starting point is 00:29:27 released an album of music. One of the contributors to the album never set foot on Earth. How did this happen? Never set foot on Earth. Is it a bird? No, I guess birds would set foot on Earth eventually at times. Okay. Was the contributor to the album human?

Starting point is 00:29:46 Yes. Oh, seriously? Yep. Oh, never mind. I was thinking the contributor was, you know, they recorded some space noise or something, right? I mean... That makes sense. These are all good guesses.

Starting point is 00:29:59 So, are you telling me there is a human that could be said to have never set foot on Earth? Yes. Yes. Okay. Did this human have feet? Yes. Oh. Well, things happen.

Starting point is 00:30:16 People get born with different body parts. Okay. So there was a human that was alive in 1969? Yes. That had never set foot on Earth. That's right. By Earth, do you mean the planet that we are currently on? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:31 Yes. Okay. Was this human an adult at the time of the recording? No. Ah. Oh, so they got recordings intra-utero? I mean, the baby was still in the womb and they somehow recorded it? Yes. Amazing. Oh, so they got recordings intra-utero? I mean, the baby was still in the womb and they somehow recorded it?

Starting point is 00:30:48 Amazing. I was like, a minute and 30 seconds. I thought it might take quite a bit longer than that. Yeah, basically that's it. In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono released their second experimental music album called Unfinished Music No. 2, Life with the Lions. One of the tracks included a recording of the heartbeat of Lennon and Ono's unborn son, John Ono Lennon II. Ono later miscarried, so his life ended before he was born, but his heartbeat is preserved on the record. Aw, I should have figured it was John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Yeah. Anyway, good job. Thanks, Greg, for sending that in. Thank you. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at

Starting point is 00:31:22 podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. 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 Magnolias Esoterica. 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 like our podcast and want to help support it, please see the support us page of the website. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or other podcast directories. 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 fabulous brother-in-law, Doug Ross.

Starting point is 00:32:07 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 153-A Victorian Stalker

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