Futility Closet - 155-The Giraffe Who Walked to Paris

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a classroom cat to Abe Lincoln's ghost. This is episode 155. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is episode 155. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.

Starting point is 00:00:30 In 1824, the Viceroy of Egypt sent a unique gift to the new king of France, a two-month-old giraffe that had just been captured in the highlands of Sudan. In today's show, we'll follow the 4,000-mile journey of Zaraffa, the royal giraffe, from her African homeland to the king's menagerie in Paris. We'll also visit Queen Victoria's coronation and puzzle over a child's surprising recovery. When Charles X took the throne of France in 1824, he asked his ambassadors and consuls around the world to send animals for the royal menagerie. This caught the attention of a man named Bernardino Dravetti, asked his ambassadors and consuls around the world to send animals for the royal menagerie. This caught the attention of a man named Bernardino Draveti, who was an influential European in Egypt. Draveti had made his fortune exporting and selling Egyptian antiquities and

Starting point is 00:01:15 curiosities in Europe, and in fact he'd already been ingratiating himself with France by sending a few African animals to the new king. He'd sent a parrot, a wildcat, and a hyena. sending a few African animals to the new king. He'd sent a parrot, a wildcat, and a hyena. Draveti also served as a private advisor to Muhammad Ali, who is the Ottoman viceroy in Egypt, and he thought he saw a diplomatic opportunity here. The Ottomans were in conflict with the Greeks, or about to be, and this was about to make the viceroy unpopular in Europe. So Draveti suggested sending a giraffe to Charles as a gesture of friendship. The French royal menagerie already had circus bears, exotic birds, and some big cats, but giraffes had been forgotten in most of Europe for almost a thousand years,

Starting point is 00:01:52 and no giraffe had ever set foot in France. The viceroy agreed and sent out a call for a giraffe. That December, in Senar, in what is now southeastern Sudan, a hunting party found a two-month-old giraffe and her mother. They killed the mother and loaded the baby, who was already six feet tall, onto a camel with her hoofs bound. She hadn't been weaned, and so she became dependent on the hunters, who had learned from earlier experience that giraffes have to be treated delicately. They fed her camel's milk at first, then cow's milk. Eventually, she'd be drinking 25 gallons a

Starting point is 00:02:23 day. Perhaps because of this early bonding, she showed unusual trust and affection for humans throughout her whole life. She just got along very well with humans, surprisingly well, I thought. Incidentally, she's now known by the name Zarafa, but that actually is a modern name for her. It was given to her by a French journalist in 1985. In her own time, she never had a name at all beyond La Giraffe because there were no other giraffes in Europe to distinguish her from. Right, so you don't need individual names if there's only one.

Starting point is 00:02:51 Yeah. The Arabic word giraffe means charming or lovely one, and in fact, that's the source of the words for giraffe in English, French, and Italian. That's what it ultimately means. So now began a journey of two years and 4,000 miles. They had to get her from southern Sudan to Paris. First, she was put aboard a felucca with a cargo of slaves traveling down the Blue Nile to Khartoum, and there she was kept in a new garrison to mature and strengthen. From there, she traveled the whole length of the Nile to the Mediterranean. She marched part of the way with caravans and sailed part of the way in a barge. She arrived in Alexandria in the early summer of 1826, and now she's already 2,000 miles from her birthplace. She spent three months on the grounds of Muhammad Ali's palace overlooking the Mediterranean,

Starting point is 00:03:37 and by the end of September, Draveti had arranged her passage to Marseille aboard a Sardinian brigantine. In Alexandria, Draveti assigned his Arab groom, Hassan, and his Sudanese servant, Atir, to take her to Paris. Draveti himself suffered from sea sickness, so he didn't go along with them. Her entourage included three milk cows and a brace of antelope, which were a gift from Draveti himself to the king. The brigantine sailed on September 29, 1826, flying the flags of both Egypt and France. They spent 32 days crossing the Mediterranean, and during this time, Zarafa stood among the other animals in the hold, with her head sticking up through a hole cut in the deck. Sounds like Noah's Ark sometimes,

Starting point is 00:04:16 you see pictures like that. They stretched a tarp over her head to shield it from the elements, and padded the hole with straw, and at the base of her neck, they tied a red ribbon bearing an amulet stuffed with Koran verses to keep her safe from harm. And she rode that way for 25 days. I would imagine she wouldn't have been able to move very much. No, she seemed like, I don't know if a giraffe could be good-natured, but if they can, she certainly was. I couldn't stand that way for 25 days.

Starting point is 00:04:38 When she stepped ashore at Marseille in October 1826, she was the first giraffe that had been seen in Europe in more than 300 years. The last giraffe on the continent had been the prize of a Medici prince 340 years earlier. Bureaucrats in Marseille squabbled with their counterparts in Paris over who was responsible for paying giraffe-related expenses, but the prefect of Marseille had built a stable especially for her on the grounds of his mansion. And there's a charming scene here. In order to spare the giraffe, everyone expected she'd be attracting mobs of people, and in fact, she did.

Starting point is 00:05:08 So the prefect saw this and came up with a plan. What he did was he conducted the cows and the antelope through the streets of Marseille by daylight, and the crowds assembled to watch them go through, and then he let the crowds disperse. And then between 10 and 11 at night, he led the giraffe across the sleeping city of Marseille. I like to think by moonlight.

Starting point is 00:05:26 There's a painting in there somewhere. Anyway, Zarafa the antelope, the cows, and the horses spent the winter in the prefect's stable with Hassan and Atir. French news reports referred to her as the beautiful Egyptian, the beautiful African, and the child of the tropics. The prefect wrote, A giraffe can run up to 60 kilometers per hour, so she might literally have dragged her keepers along. That winter was harsh, but Zarafa flourished. In fact, she flourished through this whole adventure. She showed affection for humans, and the prefect began to hold dinner parties, which he called soirées à la giraffe, where they would exhibit her to the guests.

Starting point is 00:06:21 Zarafa's daily promenades had become a public event. The cows were brought out on leashes, and the giraffe with her handlers followed them wherever they went. She just tended to, had learned, I guess, to follow the cows. As the days warmed and the walks lengthened, they requested an escort of two gendarmes to quiet the unruly crowds. She was already drawing so many interested people. As the spring approached,

Starting point is 00:06:39 they had to address the question of how they were actually going to get her from Marseille in the south to Paris in the north. They had three choices. One was to take her by sea, which would take them through Gibraltar and around Spain to Le Havre. The prefect thought this would be too hazardous, taking her by sea. The other option was to take her by boat up the Rhone River. The prefect favored this because traveling across country, she'd encounter too many carriages and crowds of curious people. And the third option was to take her by land. There were no trains yet in France, but the nation had 30,000 miles of gravel roads,

Starting point is 00:07:09 which were the best in Europe. A walk to Paris would cover 550 miles, but this experience of training her to follow milk cows on these daily promenades had convinced them that she could walk to Paris if they did it in short daily segments. And finally, that's what they did. They decided that these small daily road journeys would be best if they decided that would work if the Paris authorities could send an intelligent person capable of directing all things. Directing all things? I could use one of those myself. The king sent one of the era's foremost scientists, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, head of the Paris Zoo. He was now 55 years old and near the end of his career, and he had gout and rheumatism, but he loved the idea of conducting a giraffe across the country.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Saint-Hilaire arrived in Marseille on May 4, 1827, and immediately made friends with the prefect. Like everybody else, they both loved the giraffe. The prefect called her glorious as a peacock, and one Marseille academic wrote, she seems badly built, unbalanced on her feet, and yet one is seized by astonishment at the sight of her, and one finds her beautiful without being able to say why. Santillera spent three days observing the giraffe and convincing himself that she could actually manage to do this. It was cold in the north at that time, but warmer and rainy in the south, so they commissioned an oilskin cloak, basically a raincoat for a giraffe, in two pieces and bordered with a black braid. Santiller suggested that they get started before the hot summer arrived in the south.

Starting point is 00:08:31 So on the way from Marseille to Paris, they would need to stop at 22 towns and villages. The prefect wrote to the authorities in these towns saying, the giraffe is most gentle and can cause no accidents other than those occasioned by the shock of her gigantic body to draft animals who will be frightened at the sight of her. They requested that squads of gendarmes be there to escort the group through crowded areas, and they asked the mayors in these locations where they'd be stopping to designate stables with headroom of at least 12 to 13 feet. They set out on May 20, 1827. While they'd been waiting, the prefect had accepted two Corsican sheep as gifts from a local marquee. So now an observer on the road between Marseille and Paris, who came across this procession,

Starting point is 00:09:12 would see some to there in front, followed by cows and the sheep, then a giraffe, then three footmen, each of whom held a leather leash, and two mounted gendarmes in the rear. And if you were in an oncoming coach, you would have to pull over, which I guess you would probably want to do anyway. Zarafa was strong and healthy and had grown six inches in Marseille, so she was now 12 feet tall. At Aix, she was paraded twice through the town, giving an

Starting point is 00:09:35 evening show and a matinee, and the people thanked her by embossing the arms of France on her cloak. Then they made their way up the Rhone River Valley. They rested regularly for two hours at midday, but this was increasingly disturbed as crowds heard of the giraffe's approach. They're just, word was spreading through the country that there was a giraffe on the road. Science lovers walked with them. At each night stop, Saint-Hilaire would be officially greeted and invited to meet

Starting point is 00:09:58 with local physicians and veterinarians. There was just enormous enthusiasm for this whole project. Papers published pictures of the giraffe galloping and reaching for leaves with her tongue. A giraffe's tongue is blue-black and 18 inches long. An in in tonnerre painted, The Giraffe Slept Here, on its shingle. The spring was unusually cold. During the 17 days between Marseille and Lyon, they passed through two storms and several rainy days, but she had a raincoat, so I guess that was okay. To avoid some of the crowds, they sailed into Lyon by boat, but the giraffe was still mobbed. After two days of press coverage,

Starting point is 00:10:29 30,000 people turned out to see her, which was a third of the city's population at the time. They put her on view twice a day with morning and evening promenades, but the crowds grew so large that the police couldn't control them and the military cavalry had to be brought in. Now Saint-Hilaire's gout and rheumatism were acting up and everyone was getting tired. Saint-Hilaire would have preferred to travel by water at this point, but they continued overland toward Burgundy. Squabbles broke out among the men, and eventually they struck the Seine at Monterreau. As they approached Paris, the raider Stendhal organized a boating party up the Seine to see the giraffe, but he missed them, actually. The convoy was a day ahead of schedule at that point, and they entered Paris at 5 p.m. that afternoon. They traveled the 550 miles from Marseille to Paris in 41 days,

Starting point is 00:11:08 averaging 16 miles a day. Surprisingly, Zarafa seemed to be the fittest of all of them, Suntiller wrote in his official report, but it is principally the giraffe whom the journey has marvelously benefited. She gained weight and much more strength from the exercise. Her muscles were more defined, her coat smoother and glossier upon the arrival there than they were in Marseille. She is presently 12 feet 2 inches tall. Also during the journey, her ways became more trusting. She no longer refuses to drink in front of strangers, and her complacency with the play of the little mouflon, the sheep,

Starting point is 00:11:38 which she accepted on her back, testifies that she is as debonair as she is intelligent. Zarafa was temporarily put into a greenhouse on the grounds of the Jardin du Roi, where she lived in a parquet-floored wing of the Rotunda. Saint-Hilaire said it was truly the boudoir of a little lady, and plans were made on the morning of Monday, July 9th, that she'd be paraded through the city of Saint-Cloud, where she would be received by the king, finally, after all of this. Crowds filled the streets to witness this event. Saint-Hilaire presented the giraffe by the king finally after all of this. Crowds filled the streets to witness

Starting point is 00:12:05 this event. Saint-Hilaire presented the giraffe to the king along with a pamphlet he'd written telling her story. Zarafa galloped for the king and ate rose petals from his hand. A newspaper reported the whole encounter this way. His majesty wished to see this singular quadruped walk and even to run. The entire court was present and her gates, especially running, appeared completely extraordinary. For more than half an hour, the king interrogated the learned academician. His Majesty appeared very satisfied with Saint-Hilaire's responses and deigned to show all his satisfaction to him. At three o'clock, the giraffe returned to Paris, where she arrived safe and sound in her cortege. A crowd of curious followed her all the way to Le Jardin du Roi.

Starting point is 00:12:41 This turned out to be her longest day of all, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., longer than any of her 34 traveling days from Marseille. She had walked nine miles into Paris to meet the king, and then nine miles back to her tower at the Jardin. Saint-Hilaire told the king about the handlers, and the king directed that 2,000 francs be paid to Hassan and 1,000 to Atir. Saint-Hilaire wrote, this was executed to the great contentment of both. And now everyone went nuts. In the month that followed, 600,000 people visited Z went nuts. In the month that followed, 600,000 people visited Zarafa. One journal reported that

Starting point is 00:13:08 the giraffe occupies all the public's attention. One talks of nothing else in the circles of the capital. All of Paris fell in love with her. Women wore their hair styled high, a la giraffe. One of the accounts I read said that they had to sit on the floors of their carriages because their hair was so high

Starting point is 00:13:23 they couldn't sit in the seats. I had never heard of a giraffe hairstyle before. You probably never will again. that they had to sit on the floors of their carriages because their hair was so high they couldn't sit in the seats. I had never heard of a giraffe hairstyle before. You probably never will again. Men wore girafique hats and ties. A magazine explained how to tie a cravat à la giraffe, and ladies wore ribboned amulets at their necks, like the charm that Zarafa had been given for her sea voyage,

Starting point is 00:13:40 and that she still wore, actually. The fashionable color was giraffe belly, also in Demandra sleeves with a yellow puff gathered at the elbow, which mimicked giraffe knees. Zarafa became a national icon, the subject of songs and poems, and she gave her name to public squares, streets, and inns. I have two sources that say that an outbreak of influenza that season became known as gripe de la giraffe. It was named after her, the flu itself. Hassan stayed until the end of October, and then he went back to Egypt. Atir stayed with the giraffe in her winter apartment. Each night, he would climb up two ladders to a mezzanine where he slept and from which he could scratch her head.

Starting point is 00:14:14 Each day, he displayed her to visiting crowds and then publicly groomed her with a curry comb attached to a long pole. Apparently, combing a giraffe is a big job. I had never thought about this before. It became part of the vernacular to say to someone who didn't want to do something, do that or comb the giraffe. Gustave Leber was four years old when he saw Atiyah comb the giraffe, but he remembered it 30 years later. He wrote in a letter to a friend that he was as tired as the Turk with the giraffe. Zarafa remained at the Jardin for her remaining 17 years until her death in 1845 at age 18. After all of this effort, none of her popularity actually wound up rubbing off on Muhammad Ali or on Charles X, which was the whole point of this exercise. The giraffe became the most famous animal in France, but within a

Starting point is 00:14:55 week of her reaching Paris for various political reasons, Europe sent a fleet to Greece where it destroyed an Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Navarino, and Greece was recognized as an independent state in 1832. So in that sense, it was all for nothing. After her death in 1845, Zarafa was stuffed and put on display in the museum's foyer, but she was eventually moved to the Natural History Museum in La Rochelle, and she's there today standing on the landing of a staircase with a plaque that reads simply, Giraffe from Sanar. and R. This week, we want to particularly thank some of our Futility Closet super patrons, who've pledged at least

Starting point is 00:15:35 $10 an episode through our Patreon page. So we're sending out a special thank you to Paul Bouvarp and AJ Rupakalou. It's supporters like Paul and AJ and all our patrons who are the main reason that we're able to keep the show going. If you would like to join them, you can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futility closet. Any amount that you contribute helps us to be able to keep making the show. And if you pledge at least a

Starting point is 00:16:00 dollar an episode, you get access to our activity feed, where you'll find post-show discussions, outtakes, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, our trusty show mascot. Again, that's at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of the website. The usual spoiler alert here, I'm going to be talking about updates to a couple of lateral thinking puzzles from earlier episodes. We talked about the bungling of presidential inauguration oaths in episodes 147 and 148. Stephen Jones wrote in to let us know that Queen Victoria's coronation also suffered from some serious problems. And looking into this, Victoria's coronation also suffered from some serious problems. And looking into this, I learned that it does indeed seem to be the case. Victoria became queen in 1837 when she was 18, and her coronation was held a year later in 1838, as was typical. A new monarch generally means the death

Starting point is 00:16:57 of an older one, and as a coronation is seen as a celebration, it doesn't seem proper to hold it too soon after the death of the previous monarch. Victoria was rather anxious and nervous before her coronation. This was going to be an affair of considerable pomp and circumstance, and she, at all of 19, had never even been to a coronation, didn't fully know what she was going to be expected to do, and according to biographer Julia Baird, was terrified of making a mistake. The ceremony was five hours of elaborate pageantry for which there had been no rehearsal, and during which Victoria had to ask for instructions on what she was supposed to be doing. At one point, she whispered to Lord John Thin, the sub-dean of Westminster who was officiating, pray tell me what I am to do for

Starting point is 00:17:43 the ministers don't know. Lord Thin made notes of all the various details that went wrong that day in the coronation service book with the intent that future coronation planners could benefit from their mistakes. These notes were only discovered years later and published in 1911, just a few days before the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, but I don't know whether they were able to take advantage of the advice or not. That's a good idea, though, to leave something for a future generation. Yeah, and I don't actually know what happened, but somehow they just languished somewhere undiscovered for many years. One of Thin's notes was,

Starting point is 00:18:18 recommend a regular rehearsal in any future coronation, which does sound like good advice. There were apparently a variety of mistakes made during Queen Victoria's coronation, which does sound like good advice. There were apparently a variety of mistakes made during Queen Victoria's coronation, such as things being done in the wrong order. Some of the more widely reported errors were that the Bishop of Durham painfully forced the coronation ring onto the wrong finger of Victoria's hand, and she had great difficulty getting it back off again, or according to Thin's notes, of relieving herself from the pain, and that the Bishop of Bath and Wells skipped the last two pages of the order of the ceremony

Starting point is 00:18:50 and prematurely ended the coronation. It's reported that after he apparently turned over two pages instead of one in the order of service, he erroneously informed Victoria that the service was over. She retired to the robing room to try to bathe her finger in cold water, and with great difficulty forced the ring back off. And while she was doing that, there was considerable confusion inside the abbey as to what it might signify that the final prayers had been skipped. And in the end, Victoria was brought back out for those prayers to be read. I've seen some sources state that this omission of the last couple of pages would have invalidated the coronation, but I couldn't actually confirm that. That's a fascinating question. I would think that, what's it called, accession? I mean, technically, I would imagine she becomes the monarch when the

Starting point is 00:19:32 old... Yeah, and she'd been functioning as the monarch for a year by the time her coronation was held, so I'm not quite sure. So is it like the difference between getting married and having a wedding ceremony? Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I had trouble So is it like the difference between getting married and having a wedding ceremony? Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I had trouble confirming that it would have invalidated the coronation. But apparently there was considerable consternation about, oh, what does it mean? Well, you want to get it right, yeah. We didn't do the prayers. One of the things that went wrong at Victoria's coronation actually ended up working in her favor.

Starting point is 00:20:02 Towards the end of the ceremony, a long line of peers had to climb up the steps to her throne to pay tribute to the new queen. Lord Roll, a large and elderly man, fell down the steps as he was trying to make his way up them, and he lay at the bottom tangled in his robes. He was helped up, and he tried again to climb up to her, but Victoria instead stood up and came to him, saying that she hoped he was not hurt, and this incident ended up creating a very positive image of the new queen in popular opinion. On a side note on Victoria's coronation, during the ceremony, constables had had to deal with a man outside the abbey trying to force his way in so that he could ask the queen to marry him. Like that day wasn't stressful enough. like that day wasn't stressful enough. You had mentioned in your story about Queen Victoria a couple of episodes ago that a few men had been taken with this young, attractive queen and attempted to propose to her. And one of these was Thomas Flower, who had previously caused a

Starting point is 00:20:54 disturbance by trying to force his way into Victoria's box at the opera, and now had shown up at her coronation to try his luck again. He was brought before a magistrate after this incident and asked what his profession was. And was brought before a magistrate after this incident and asked what his profession was, and Flower replied, profession or business has nothing to do with the question. I am merely a candidate for the hand of her majesty. Unfortunately for Flower, he was declared insane and sent to a house of correction, and I'm not sure if Victoria ever even knew about his attempt. Alethea wrote in about the puzzle in episode 152 that dealt with unusual ways of reckoning people's ages in Asia. Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. I live in Japan, and while

Starting point is 00:21:32 people normally use our Western way of counting age nowadays, in special circumstances, a system called kazoe doshi, literally counted years, is used. By special circumstances, I mean for divination or for certain ceremonies. This Kazuo-doshi is exactly what you explained during the episode. You are one year old the moment you are born, and everyone born in the same year changes age together with the new year. Although in Japan and Korea, this means January 1, not the new year according to the Chinese calendar. People in Japan normally do not know their age in Kazuo-e-doshi, so there are online calculators or charts for that. And Alethea says that she is 25 in the

Starting point is 00:22:11 Western way of calculating ages, but is 27 in the Kazuo-e-doshi system, similar to the day-old infant in the puzzle that was said to be two years old. Alethea says, but as I said, this is not used in Japan outside of divination or ritual purposes. I even asked my Japanese boyfriend about this before writing this email, and he didn't know much about it. Where this system is still widely used even now, I heard, is in South Korea, and according to Wikipedia, in Vietnam as well. What is really nice about the Korean system is that, for example, the legal drinking age is 19, but that means you can start drinking legally on January 1 of the year you turn 19, because according to the traditional system, everybody from the same year turns 19 at the same time, even if you were born on December 31st. The bars must be busy on

Starting point is 00:22:56 New Year's Day. Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Get a whole year's worth of people coming in. And Aletheia says, I really enjoy the podcast every week. It's the only thing that can keep me a full 30 minutes on the elliptical at the gym. Have a nice day and meows to Sasha. So thanks, Alethea. And I'm so glad to hear that we are contributing to people's healthy exercise routines. It was difficult for me to find much written on this topic in English. So I had to rely pretty much on the Wikipedia article on it. According to it, this East Asian age reckoning system began in China, and currently in China, there are three different age reckoning systems that are now in use, so that when a person's age

Starting point is 00:23:35 is given, you have to specify what kind of age it is. Apparently, you can have a traditional age, which is also called a virtual age, and that's based on the East Asian reckoning system that Aletheia described, or you have a solid age based on the Gregorian calendar, or a modern age, which is also called a round age with no explanation of that given. And I wasn't able to turn up any more information on this so-called round age or what would define it. So if anyone wants to write in and let us know what a round age is in China, please feel free to do so. In Japan, they attempted to ditch the traditional Kazuo Edoshi system in 1902 by passing a law that officially adopted the age system that's used by most of the Western world. But apparently that didn't really take and the traditional system

Starting point is 00:24:22 continued to be commonly used. So in 1950, they passed another law to try harder to get people to use the western system but even so today the traditional system is still used in japan by the elderly and in rural areas or in traditional ceremonies and divinations and obituaries for some reason and as aletheia noted according to wikipedia in korea and Vietnam, the traditional system is still widely used, although a Western-type age is used in those places for official documents or legal proceedings. So that puzzle actually really did obtain. I mean, I thought it was some weird thing. Yeah, it sounds like it might be apocryphal. I'm surprised that's actually pretty accurate. It's actually used in some countries even today. Kathy also wrote in about the same puzzle.

Starting point is 00:25:08 Hi, I really enjoy your podcast. I thought I had the Chinese baby born yesterday being two years old puzzle solved until you said the solution. My sister is fluent in Mandarin and has lived in Beijing multiple years, including teaching English to children. This made her aware of a unique situation. The kids know their official birthday and age and their real birthday and age. years, including teaching English to children. This made her aware of a unique situation. The kids know their official birthday and age and their real birthday and age. You see, parents want to put their child into kindergarten as soon as possible so they can be ahead, graduate, and get a job ASAP. This is the opposite of our concept of holding a child back a year so that they will

Starting point is 00:25:41 be more developed when they start school. So when the parents go register their child for their official documents, they put down a false birthday. I don't think it would normally be two years ahead, though. So that's yet another kind of age reckoning system, one where you assign the age you want to your child. And I don't know if this maybe has something to do

Starting point is 00:26:00 with that third type of age in China that was noted in Wikipedia, but possibly Kathy has solved the mystery for us. And lastly on ages, TJG let us know that the ages of some horses are calculated similar to the traditional East Asian system. Thoroughbred horses in the northern hemisphere are officially considered a year older on the 1st of January each year, while those in the southern hemisphere are officially considered to be one year older on the 1st of January each year, while those in the Southern Hemisphere are officially considered to be one year older on the 1st of August. This system was apparently adopted to standardize ages for races and other competitions for this breed, although that doesn't completely make sense to me because then you could have horses competing against each other who are

Starting point is 00:26:38 almost a full year different in age, or so it seems to me. I think there's got to be some way to work time travel into this. When TJ sent that in, I thought if you lived in like Ecuador and you rode a thoroughbred horse across the equator from north to south, the horse would get younger, right? Because it's birthday moves forward. And I figure if the horse

Starting point is 00:26:58 is less than eight months old, it'll vanish. Well, oh, I don't know about the last part, but until then it sounded like a really good lateral thinking puzzle. Yeah, I couldn't make it work vanish. Well, oh, I don't know about the last part, but until then it sounded like a really good lateral thinking puzzle. Yeah, I couldn't make it work, though. So thank you to everyone who wrote in to us, and thanks to my talented brother-in-law, Doug,

Starting point is 00:27:14 who not only provides superior bass music for the podcast, but who also provided me with the correct pronunciation of Kazue Doshi. If you have anything you would like to contribute to us, please send your email to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to present me a strange sounding situation and I have to try to work out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. In 1977, a 19-month-old Qatari girl became grievously ill. Her doctors were unable to diagnose the cause, so her parents took her to London. By the time she arrived, she was semi-conscious. The doctors made a conventional examination with

Starting point is 00:28:00 blood samples, a lumbar puncture, an electroencephalogram, and a full-body x-ray. But nothing would account for the child's condition, which grew worse over the next few days with elevated blood pressure, a heart rate of 200 beats per minute, and irregular breathing. There seemed to be no hope for the girl until a nurse overheard the doctors discussing the case and suggested that she might have thallium poisoning. What led her to suggest this? Do I need to know what thallium poisoning is? No, you don't. Okay.

Starting point is 00:28:30 I have to figure out how a nurse figured out that the girl might have thallium poisoning? Yes. Is thallium like a radioactive material? I'm trying to, I don't know what thallium is. It's an element. I don't think you need to know more than that. Hmm. You don't even need to know that.

Starting point is 00:28:45 But I need to know how the nurse knew about it. Yes. Yes. Okay. Is the time important, the fact that it was 1977? Vaguely, but I wouldn't pursue that. Okay. Is the fact that she came from Qatar important?

Starting point is 00:29:00 No. Is the fact that she was in London important? Did you say she was in London? Yes. Was that important that she's in London important? Did you say she was in London? Yes. Was that important that she's in London? I'll say yes a little bit. A little bit important. Not a lot.

Starting point is 00:29:10 Not a lot. Does the nurse have some personal background that led her to be able to think of this, whereas other people didn't think of it? Yes. Okay. Had the nurse lived through some experience, like wars or or something that had led her to have experience with something? No. No. Had the nurse lived in another country that was relevant or another area that was relevant?

Starting point is 00:29:37 No. Okay, so the nurse, would you say that the nurse was relying on knowledge she had gained outside of traditional nursing education? Yes, I would. Okay. But it wasn't gained through something she personally lived through? Or was it gained through something she personally lived through? I'll say no, it wasn't. Okay, and it wasn't gained from someplace else. Something she'd read? Yes. lived through i'll say no it wasn't okay and it wasn't gained from someplace else um something

Starting point is 00:30:05 she'd read yes okay so she had read something um and so she recognized the symptoms that were similar so somebody else had died of thallium poisoning um or somebody else had had thallium poisoning somebody like okay like i'm thinking like somebody else like marie curie had had thallium poisoning and she'd read a biography of marie curie and so something like that um yes and no something like that something like that not exactly like that so it's not that she'd read a biography of somebody else that's right okay so but she'd read something about thallium poisoning, and she'd read it. Read it in a book? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:48 Read it in a book. A nonfiction book. No. Oh, so she read like a murder mystery in which somebody had been poisoned with thallium, and the author had described it so well that she was able to recognize it in the child. That's exactly right. The nurse, Marsha Maitland, was reading Agatha Christie's 1961 novel, The Pale Horse, in which the murderer uses thallium to dispose of some unwanted relatives,

Starting point is 00:31:14 pretending the cause is black magic. Agatha Christie had served as an apothecary's assistant during World War I, and in the novel she accurately described the symptoms of thallium poisoning, lethargy, tingling, numbness of the hands and feet, blackouts, slurred speech, insomnia, and general debility. The doctors realized that Maitland was right when the girl's hair started to fall out. They called Scotland Yard and arranged for a forensic urine test, which reported thallium at ten times the normal level. The girl was given an antidote, and her condition stabilized over the next two weeks.

Starting point is 00:31:41 After four weeks, she was discharged, and after four months, she was almost back to normal. Apparently, she had eaten a pesticide that she'd found in the drains in her home. So Agatha Christie saved someone's life. Yeah, apparently. Apparently, she just, I don't, I guess I don't read enough Agatha Christie, but apparently when poison is involved, she describes the symptoms very accurately. Wow. Well, that's very educational for everybody to go out and read your Agatha Christie.

Starting point is 00:32:04 Well, if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, and this was a non-fatal one. Yay! Barely. Barely, yes. You can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another show for us. 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 Ostrobogulus vedenda. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast with

Starting point is 00:32:35 links and references for the topics in today's show. If you like our podcast and want to help support it, please see the supporters page of our website. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by leaving a review on your favorite podcast directory. 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 multi-talented Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 155-The Giraffe Who Walked to Paris

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