Futility Closet - 185-The Man From Formosa

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 10,000 quirky curiosities from a recurrent rifle to a blurred border. This is episode 185. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is episode 185. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.

Starting point is 00:00:32 In 1703, London had a strange visitor, a young man who ate raw meat and claimed that he came from an unknown country on the island of Taiwan. Though many doubted him, he was able to answer any question he was asked and even wrote a best-selling book about his homeland. In today's show, we'll consider the curious question of the man from Formosa. We'll also scrutinize a stamp forger and puzzle over an elastic Utah. In the summer of 1703, a new spectacle arrived in London. He was a young man in his early 20s who said he came from a country called Formosa on the island of Taiwan, though he was fair-skinned and blonde. He gave his name as George Salmanazer. He spoke fluent Latin and seemed to be a profound classical scholar, but he told strange tales about his distant homeland and about the East in general, which was still very mysterious to Europeans and inconsistently documented. He seemed so modest and

Starting point is 00:01:20 candid that it was hard to doubt that what he was saying was true, but at the same time, much of it seemed absurd. He said he worshipped the sun and moon, and he had a great aversion to cooked meat and fermented drinks, and instead ate raw flesh, roots, and herbs. He explained his fair skin by saying that well-born Formosans lived underground, where they were never exposed to the rays of the tropical sun. When one lady asked him, how long do men usually live in Formosa, he said, sometimes to 120, but 100 years is counted very moderate. My grandfather was 117 and as fresh and vigorous as a young man, which I attribute to his sucking the warm blood of a viper every morning. In all probability, he would have lived many years longer had we not been forced to kill him. The lady said, kill him? Salmaneser said,

Starting point is 00:02:00 yes, it is a custom with us when our friends are in pain and desire that remedy to stab them with a poisoned dagger, and my grandfather was thus dispatched during a violent attack of colic. He even declared that Formosans sometimes devoured their enemies. He said, I think it is no sin to eat human flesh, but I must own it is a little unmannerly. After a few months in London, he wrote a whole book about his homeland, which he called An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. In it, he gave detailed descriptions of Formosan leaders, trade, education, religion, castles, costumes, ships, temples, eating habits, festivals, and music. He even included basic grammar of the Formosan language and translations of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten

Starting point is 00:02:39 Commandments. The book quickly went through two editions and was translated into French, Dutch, and German. He said that a Jesuit, Father Rhodes, had come to Formosa posing as a Japanese, tricked him into leaving his home, and brought him to Europe. He translated the church catechism into the Formosan language and presented it to the Bishop of London, who declared that it was so regular and grammatical and yet so different from any known language that it must be genuine. The young man made many friends among the city's intelligentsia and became a popular dinner guest. At the same time, though, there was considerable doubt that he was telling the truth.

Starting point is 00:03:10 Some people accused him outright of being an imposter, but his supporters pointed out that he seemed to have nothing to gain by that and he seemed intelligent and sensible enough that he could have earned an honest living rather than invent a complicated hoax. In August 1703, he appeared before the Royal Society, where Edmund Halley, an astronomer, tried to catch him out by asking how long his shadow was on Formosa, and how long twilight lasted there. But Salmaneser always seemed to have a ready answer. When Halley

Starting point is 00:03:34 asked whether the sun shines down the chimneys on Formosa, he told him that this was impossible because Formosan chimneys don't stand perpendicular. The smoke is carried through the walls of the house by crooked pipes, the ends of which are turned upward to convey the smoke into the air. But the doubts continued to build. In April 1704, Halley released a chart of China and Formosa that had been drawn in the year 1667 and seemed entirely incompatible with Salmaneser's description. And in June 1705, letters were read from a traveler who had been in Formosa and contradicted Salmaneser's account. His major patron abandoned him that year, and he was openly condemned as a fraud. He continued to defend himself, but by 1717, his credit had almost disappeared.

Starting point is 00:04:13 For some time, he was supported by friends who still believed in him, but at last he was forced to take up hack writing and translating. During that time, he seemed to have a religious conversion and felt some misgivings about the stories he told. In 1747, he wrote an anonymous article about Formosa for a geography book, and that article said that George Salmaneser had been a fake and that the whole truth about his story would be published after his death. That article, which was unsigned, was the closest he ever came to a confession during his lifetime. He died in May 1763, 60 years after he'd arrived in London, and the memoir he'd promised came out the following year. In it, he wrote that he hoped it would, quote, undo as much as it was in my power

Starting point is 00:04:51 all the mischief I had done. The book gave the history of his life, but it withheld the most important parts. It didn't reveal his true identity, his family, or his country of origin, and to this day no one knows who he really was. Scholars who have pieced this together think he was probably born in southern France between 1679 and 1684. The memoir says he was raised by his mother. They were poor, but she saw that he was well-educated. She sent him to a series of Franciscan, Jesuit, and Dominican schools. He was a good student, especially in Latin, in which he was fluent by seven or eight and surpassed children twice his age in competitions. But he grew unhappy with his education and his teachers, and he left school at age 16. He said that his teachers had given him a bias, quote,

Starting point is 00:05:29 to vanity and self-conceit, as proved the unhappy source of all my sad miscarriages since. He turned away from a calling in theology and instead became a Latin tutor in Avignon. After a series of tutoring jobs, he fell into debt and was forced to beg. He decided to beg his way home to his mother, and he resolved to take on another identity as he did so. He stole a pilgrim's cloak and staff and forged a pass to claim that he was an Irish Catholic who had been persecuted in his own country and was on a pilgrimage to Rome. He didn't actually know English or Irish, and he knew nothing about Irish affairs, but his Latin was excellent, so he found it easy to get alms from clergymen and people of learning

Starting point is 00:06:04 who he met on the road, and the trip home was surprisingly easy. He found no better opportunities at home and journeyed to his father, who lived in Germany. He traveled there under the same fake identity, a Latin-speaking Irishman, with the same success, but when he got to Germany, he found that his father was in an even worse state than his mother. His father suggested he try going to Holland, where his Latin skills might be more highly valued, and he agreed, but he dropped the Irish disguise since he worried that he might get into trouble if it was discovered. He was casting about for another idea

Starting point is 00:06:32 and remembered that his Jesuit schoolmasters had praised the East in his lessons, so he decided to pose as a visitor from Asia. He invented a 20-letter alphabet that was a mix of Hebrew, Greek, and nonsense, and he wrote it from right to left since he thought that was how all Oriental languages were written. And he decided his nationality should be Japanese, since Japan had been closed since the 1630s and wasn't well known to Westerners.

Starting point is 00:06:55 He altered his passport to say that he was a native Japanese who had converted to Christianity, which would make him seem both exotic and friendly to Europeans. With this new identity, he set out for the low countries, and he was fairly successful with it. If anyone doubted the disguise, they didn't confront him over it. He worked as a hired soldier and a coffeehouse waiter, and eventually he entered a Dutch regiment where he wrote a little prayer book full of made-up symbols and poems. He liked to chant from it while his Lutheran and Calvinist companions were praying. In Holland, his commanding officer invited him home, and there he met the Reverend Alexander Innes, who was a Scots chaplain and apparently a general scoundrel. He later became

Starting point is 00:07:28 a notorious plagiarist. Innes immediately saw through Salmaneser's fraud, and he proved it easily. He asked Salmaneser to translate a Latin passage into his made-up language and explain it. Then he took away the paper and asked him to translate it again. The two versions didn't match, of course. Salmaneser expected to be accused of cheating, but Ennis just warned him to be more careful in the future, and he took over as a sort of mentor. He baptized the young man, which was a sin, he had already been baptized, and he gave him the Christian name George after his commanding officer. The name Salmaneser was apparently inspired by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser in the Old Testament, and then Ennis sent off a letter announcing his discovery of this interesting young man to the Bishop of London, hoping to get an audience. The bishop

Starting point is 00:08:09 wrote back, inviting them to come, and the two set out for England. They arrived in the summer of 1703, when Salmaneser was 24 years old. Innes had suggested that he pose as a native Formosa rather than Japan, since that was even more obscure. Salmaneser began to eat raw meat in order to seem exotic, and soon he was a sensation in the city. To us, it seems strange that a blonde man with fair skin could claim to come from an Asian island, but the idea of racial groups didn't exist in 1703. People in those days recognized nationalities more through their religion, behavior, costume, diet, and morality than through their appearance, and the notion that the upper classes on Formosa were fair-skinned

Starting point is 00:08:44 because they lived underground fit the current understanding of skin coloring. He also jumbled different languages together in his speech so that no one could detect his native tongue. When the Royal Society produced letters from an Englishman who had lived on Formosa and from a French Jesuit missionary who had been at the Emperor's Court in Beijing in the 1690s, Salmaneser was able to fend off their questions by pointing out that Europeans had never got past the western coast of Taiwan, which was true, the island is mountainous. So, he said, the real Formosa with its fabulous riches remained undiscovered to them. He could think quickly on his feet, but there were some charges that he couldn't answer. The father Rhodes, who he said had lured him away from Formosa, was tracked down at the Jesuit

Starting point is 00:09:22 college in Avignon. He said he'd been at the college for 20 years and had never known a Formosan youth or traveled to that island. The Royal Society didn't denounce him publicly, and for a time he was still a celebrity in the wider world. He wrote his description of Formosa, 288 pages long, in two months. It was outlandish, but not really that different from that of George Candidius, the first missionary in Taiwan. People just didn't know very much at all about the East in those days. The book quickly sold out, and a second edition was called for, which he prepared at Oxford in 1705. There he pretended to be an earnest student, burning a candle in his room all night and sleeping in a chair. But by this point he was on the defensive. In the second edition he had to

Starting point is 00:10:01 address 25 objections that had been raised against him, and when he got back to London, Innes had departed for Portugal, so now he was alone. The next part of his life is poorly documented. He published two more books, but generally it looks like the novelty had worn off by this point, and his critics were openly skeptical. He didn't confess, but he got involved in various get-rich-quick schemes. He marketed Chinaware, he returned to tutoring Latin, though still pretending to be Formosan, he worked as a military clerk, and he tried fan painting. He marketed Chinaware, he returned to tutoring Latin, though still pretending to be Formosan. He worked as a military clerk, and he tried fan painting.

Starting point is 00:10:32 The remaining believers in his hoax got up a subscription to support him, but one by one they died off, and he fell to hack writing in Grub Street, just barely getting by. He was beginning to feel guilty for the trick he'd played, but he didn't know how or when to confess. Then he turned to theological reading, and apparently had a real conversion. He began to study Hebrew, and became a reputable, if self-taught, authority in Old Testament studies. He ghostwrote a history of printing and contributed to a 23-volume history of the world, as well as some other works. In his 30s, he considered just confessing outright, but he still held back, partly out of consideration for the friends who had supported him. But at the age of 47, he had a serious illness, and that decided him. Privately, he began to write the real story of his life.

Starting point is 00:11:09 Though it came too late, his change of heart seems to have been real. He felt genuinely contrite about what he'd done, and he devoted himself to a quiet life of doing good. Sometime in the 1740s, he met Samuel Johnson, the famous lexicographer, who once said Salmonezer was the best man he had ever known, which is very high praise coming from Samuel Johnson. He said that Salmaneser's piety, penitence, and virtue exceeded almost what we read as wonderful in the lives of the saints. Another anecdote from this period said that in his own neighborhood, Salmaneser was, quote, so well known and esteemed that scarce any person, even children, passed him without showing him the usual signs of respect. Today, it seems absurd that

Starting point is 00:11:45 anyone could get away with such an outlandish lie, even for an instant. But Salmanezer, whoever he was, was apparently very intelligent and had a quick wit, a long memory, and a talent for dissembling. And I think he was very lucky since he was practicing this hoax at a time and in a society where he could get away with it. I have nine things to say about this. One, to begin with, he tailored his story to an Anglican audience that was predisposed to hating the Catholic Church. So if he said he was abducted by French Jesuits, his audience was already sympathetic and less inclined to doubt him. Two, not much was known about the East at this time, which worked in his favor. People were eager to learn from him, and they found it hard to disprove his claims. And the Royal Society was gathering so much

Starting point is 00:12:22 information from so many quarters about all kinds of things that it was hard for them to focus on any given area. As one modern writer puts it, there was too much to know. Three, Salmoneja's description of Formosa was published far beyond England, as far away as Latin America and other colonies, where out of context it seemed authoritative and where news of the Royal Society's skepticism might not be heard. Even Salmoneja's memoir, in which he tried to set the record straight, was less colorful than his description of Formosa, so it sold less widely and wasn't translated. Four, in those days, published information was nobody's property. Writers would appropriate material freely and mingle fact and fiction, invention and hearsay. So the claims in Salmonezer's description of Formosa were mixed up and republished elsewhere as facts, and it was

Starting point is 00:13:03 hard to stamp them out again. Even 50 years after his confession in the memoirs, Salmaneser was still being cited as an authority on Formosa and its language. Five, that language, which he made up before he made up anything else, was clear, consistent, and rational, so much so that it appealed to modern scientific students of language who unwittingly helped him to clarify and refine it. To them, it looked like an eastern language that was more accessible than Chinese or Japanese in both spoken and written form, and it followed a lucid and linguistic model. The author Michael Kivak says, I would contend that Salmaneser's fake language was his most far-reaching and accomplished creation of all, and that is what also sets apart the description from other imaginary or fallacious

Starting point is 00:13:40 travel narratives. Six, the very ideals of the Enlightenment unfortunately supported the hoax. His critics wanted to be tolerant and open-minded, and they were reluctant to just dismiss him outright. And they wanted to take advantage of every opportunity for learning. In this case, it would be valuable to learn about the East from an intelligent young man and to get his own opinions about their European society, and they would lose that if they just shut him out. Seven, apparently he was just stupendously good at this. He was audacious and intelligent enough to invent a convincing reality, and he could remember a complicated story and stick to it. In the memoir, he writes, when any question had been started on a sudden, I seldom found myself at a loss for a quick answer, which, if satisfactory, I stored up

Starting point is 00:14:17 in my retentive memory. And there was one maxim I could never be prevailed upon to depart from, that whatever I had once affirmed in conversation, though to ever so few people and though ever so improbable or even absurd, should never be amended or contradicted. He made it a practice to stand behind any claim he made, even if it was obviously wrong, such as that Formosa was part of the empire of Japan rather than China, or that his population was impossibly large. Eight, at the same time, he could twist a story if he needed to, to avoid criticism. At one point, he said that 18,000 boys under nine years old were sacrificed every year to the gods of Formosa.

Starting point is 00:14:52 That's a lot. When others pointed out this would rapidly depopulate the whole country, he explained that Formosans practice polygamy and so produce an unusual number of children. Oh, my. And he could always point out discrepancies and absurdities in other people's descriptions of Formosa. As a result, it was strangely easier to defend a lie about Formosa than to prove conclusively that it was false. And nine, one of his most common defenses was that no one could possibly have made up all of this.

Starting point is 00:15:16 He wrote, you must think that I forged the whole story out of my own brain. And if so, I am sure you extravagantly magnify the fertility of my invention and the strength of my memory. Some supporters abandoned him when he made especially preposterous assertions, such as claiming that ancient Greek was taught in the schools of Formosa, but he never made a fatal mistake that sank the whole ship, and altogether the story seemed so regular and consistent that it seemed impossible that it was fake. Because he's remembered for the hoax, people forget what an impressive work of imagination the whole scheme was. By his own admission, Salmaneser had never been east of Germany, and yet he invented a fictional Asian country that at least momentarily fooled some of the most discerning minds in

Starting point is 00:16:02 England, and wrote a description of it that became a bestseller. He's still remembered for it now, centuries after his death, and his strange story has been mentioned by Samuel Johnson, Gottfried Leibniz, Jonathan Swift, William Hazlitt, Vito Sackville-West, and Ernest Hemingway. In its way, the Formosa that Salmaneser described is an original work of art, but we'll never know who the artist was. We heard from some of our listeners that there has been a bit of an update on the mystery of the Somerton Man, the unknown corpse that appeared in South Australia in 1948, whose story we first covered in episode 25. We've been reporting that Derek Abbott, a professor at the University of Adelaide, has been working on this case for years, but has been stymied by the South Australian government's refusal to allow the Somerton man's body to be

Starting point is 00:16:57 exhumed for DNA testing. However, an article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation says that Abbott has recently announced that some hairs have been found on the plaster cast that was made of the mystery man before he was buried, and Abbott expects the hair to be able to provide the DNA needed to possibly resolve this mystery. Unfortunately, he says that it could take up to a year to process the results, so in the meantime, he is working on yet another petition to the government for exhumation. So in the meantime, he is working on yet another petition to the government for exhumation. As I had mentioned in our last discussion of this story in episode 156, the latest article on Abbott's investigation notes that there is now a very personal twist to this case for him, as he met his wife Rachel while pursuing possible descendants of the Somerton Man, and DNA testing should answer the question of whether his wife is the Somerton Man's granddaughter, and his own children are linked to this famous mystery.

Starting point is 00:17:50 The article says, In a strange way, Derek feels he owes quite a lot to that nameless man found on an Adelaide beach so many years ago. The Somerton Man has brought me to the place I am today, Derek says. I have the children I love and might not have existed if it wasn't for him. It's like a novel. Yeah, it's like a novel, except we're waiting a really long time to find out the ending of it. And this story doesn't get a lot of coverage in the U.S., so thank you so much to those who wrote in to us about it, and please do continue to keep us updated. Robert Terhart wrote, Hi Greg and Sharon. About a year ago, your podcast number 131 included a lateral thinking puzzle based on the true story of

Starting point is 00:18:31 Mexican forger Brigido Lara. This prompted a number of listeners, including me, to alert you to Dutch forger Han van Meegeren, who once found himself in a similar position. It now seems that having to admit to being a forger in order to avoid more serious charges is not all that uncommon in their line of work. Recently, I stumbled across the story of Italian stamp forger Gian Desperati. He is regarded as one of the finest forgers to have ever lived, and some of his forgeries are now more valuable than the original stamps. He ran into trouble with the law in 1942 when he tried to send a shipment of forged stamps from France to Portugal. Customs authorities intercepted the shipment,

Starting point is 00:19:11 assumed that the stamps were genuine, and charged Desperati with breaking exporting laws and avoiding customs payments. Desperati claimed that the stamps were worthless copies, whereupon they were examined by some leading stamp experts who found the stamps were in fact genuine. In the subsequent trial, Desperati tried to convince the judges that the stamps really were forgeries, that he had no intention to make any money off of them, and that he was merely careless and should have marked them more clearly as fakes. The judges were not impressed and sentenced him to a year in prison and a hefty fine. And it does seem ironically that being a very good forger can end up causing you legal problems that you wouldn't have if you were a bad forger. Desperati went to some lengths to make his forgeries more difficult to detect.

Starting point is 00:19:57 He would buy cheap old stamps, bleach out the original images, and carefully replace them with almost exact copies of more valuable stamps. And this process meant that his forged stamps would use period paper and have authentic water marks, perforations, and even the original postal markings on the used stamps, which would make them very difficult to distinguish from real stamps, even under a microscope. In 1932, British stamp experts became aware of Desperati's forgeries, but the British Philatelic Association thought that the forgeries were so good that it would damage confidence in the stamp trade if knowledge of them got out, so most of the world was oblivious to his forgeries when he was arrested

Starting point is 00:20:35 in 1942. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Desperati's trial was rather sensational. As Robert noted, experts testified that Desperati's stamps were genuine, and he had to actually work to convince the court that they weren't. But even more bizarre was that during the trial, some genuine stamps got mixed up with Desperati's reproductions, and none of the experts advising the prosecution could determine which were which. Desperati himself had to finally sort them out. After he managed to clear himself of the original charges, Desperati still had to face four years of criminal proceedings for fraud, during which he tried to argue that he was an artist rather than a forger, and he simply

Starting point is 00:21:15 relished the challenge of creating careful reproductions. As Robert noted, the court was not impressed, and he was eventually sentenced to a year in prison and a fine, but the sentence ended up being waived due to his age of 64. An article in the Telegraph says that overall, it's estimated that Desperati made multiple copies of 566 types of stamps from 100 different countries for a total of roughly 70,000 individual stamps. And given how painstaking it sounded to produce each one, I was rather impressed by that number. That whole story is fascinating. It's hard even to think about what's going on there. It's so backwards. What do you mean? That he's having to prove that he's a criminal and that he's having to convince experts that these aren't genuine stamps. It's all upside down. Yeah, it's exactly like the story of Bergito Lara,

Starting point is 00:22:05 though it was the same kind of thing. You get in trouble for exporting genuine things, and you're like, no, no, no, they're not genuine. I'm a forger. No, wait, I'm not really a forger. I'm an artist. And I want to thank some of our patrons who provided me some excellent tips

Starting point is 00:22:23 to help with the pronunciation of Desperati, and I'm quite sure that any deficiencies in my attempts are entirely mine. Victoria Sluka wrote, Hi all, I am a graduate student in archaeology and I recently heard your discussion of mudlarking, episode 174, in the Thames, and thought you might be interested in my experience of the practice. Certain master's courses at University College London, where I earned my MA, include a field trip to the Thames from UCL's main campus a mile or so north of the river in Bloomsbury, central London. We spent several hours searching for artifacts on the banks of the river at low tide and then used these artifacts for the rest of the semester to carry out a practice archaeological study. Between the 10 or so students in that course, we retrieved over 2,000 artifacts dating from the Roman to the post-war periods.

Starting point is 00:23:12 These included ceramics, glass, metals, leather, and bones. Animal, probably. I was in charge of the bones, including cleaning, labeling, documenting, measuring, etc. They were mostly medieval animal bones, including whole jaws and long bones of horses and cattle. It was quite an awkward experience to take my box of medieval bones on the London Underground when traveling between home and school. Thought you might be interested in this academic application of mudlarking. It's amazing how much stuff there still is there to find. Yeah, that's what I was really impressed by. Victoria is saying that in a few hours, they found 2,000 artifacts.

Starting point is 00:23:47 It seems like on any random day, the Thames is just disgorging so many items. Especially some going back just thousands of years, you'd think this would all have been found. Yeah, that there's just so much of it, yeah. And lastly for today, we heard from Hayden Green, who nicely told me how to pronounce his first name and then admitted that he apparently

Starting point is 00:24:04 pronounces it incorrectly himself. Kia ora. That's hello in Maori. Greg, Sharon, Sasha, and Doug. And that was very nice of Hayden to include Doug. I'm sure Doug will appreciate that. I have only just caught up to date on the podcast. In every episode, I expect to hear a letter from a fellow New Zealander about a logic

Starting point is 00:24:23 puzzle from ages ago. I forget the episode number. It was about the flags of Indonesia and Monaco. I got the answer straight away as New Zealand has recently been through a referendum on whether to change our flag. The reason for this was a pet project by our prime minister who thought it was too similar to Australia's. Long story short, we voted to keep the original flag. But the referendum did give us some fun as anyone was allowed to enter a design. In fact, the design known as laser kiwi attached has since become a

Starting point is 00:24:50 cultural icon here. Keep up the good work. And the flag puzzle was in episode 150 about the flags of Lichtenstein and Haiti. And then in episode 153, we discussed other countries who had similar flags to each other, such as Indonesia and Monaco. But Hayden's right. We didn't discuss New Zealand and Australia. And of course, we will have the laser Kiwi flag that Hayden sent in the show notes for those who want to see it. It contains an image of a Kiwi or a flightless bird native to New Zealand with a green laser light shooting from its eye. If you google laser kiwi, you'll find that it is pretty popular, and there is even a laser kiwi Facebook page. There were a number of articles written about the New Zealand flag referendums that started in 2015, and some of

Starting point is 00:25:40 the articles showed some of the more interesting flag submissions, such as one featuring a large, rather simplistically drawn sheep on a blue background and a big ice cream cone on a red background called Sheep and Hokey Pokey. The designer said, This design represents all of New Zealand because we have lots of sheep and love Hokey Pokey ice cream. I even included the blue and red to keep all of you naysayers happy. There was one featuring a hybrid animal called a kiwasam.

Starting point is 00:26:11 It's not a kiwi. It's not a possum. It's a kiwasam. The unity of New Zealand's two national animals. One that was just a plain field of blue. The designer said, keep it simple, bro. Everyone has a blue sheet at home they can cut up and bam, 12 flags from one sheet. And one that the designer called

Starting point is 00:26:31 psychotic swirls with the explanation of it looks good, which I agreed with. I kind of liked that one. Several articles, of course, included the laser Kiwi flag, about which that designer said, the laser beam projects a powerful image of New Zealand. I believe my design is so powerful, it does not need to be discussed. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We're sorry that we can't use everyone's emails on the show, but we do read everything we get. So please do keep sending your comments and updates to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I am going to present him with a strange

Starting point is 00:27:14 sounding situation and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Michael Furch, who sent greetings from Munich, Germany. This puzzle comes from Michael Furch, who sent greetings from Munich, Germany. It takes five hours to drive from one end of Utah to the other, but during World War II, it took nine hours. Why? Is that just because vehicles were slower back then? Oh, yes, I nailed it on the first question. No.

Starting point is 00:27:40 No, that's not it. That's not it. Five hours versus nine. I'm sorry, when was that? World War II. Okay. It used. You said, and I'm sorry, when was that? World War II. Okay. It used to take nine, now it takes five. All right. By drive, do you mean conduct a motor vehicle in some fashion?

Starting point is 00:27:53 Yes. What do I think of as driving? Like driving a car? Correct. And by Utah, we mean the U.S. state? Yes. And with this driving, he said from one end to the other? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:00 Does it matter what direction you're driving? No. You're just crossing Utah? Yeah. I think it's probably going from like the north know north to south okay the longest way across utah but so to say one one drives across utah in nine hours one means one starts at one border i'm just nailing all those down and drives all the way together and that takes nine hours that took nine hours during world war ii and takes five hours now yes would it would it take would that difference be

Starting point is 00:28:24 in the same vehicle? In other words, if you used exactly the same vehicle to do both of those in the different time periods, would they get those times? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:34 Oh, doesn't that thing, does it have to do with daylight savings time? No. Some kind of reckoning of time. No. Like that.

Starting point is 00:28:40 You see what I mean? Yeah, I do see what you mean. All kinds of good thinking going on here. No progress at all. Not quite the right answer yet, though. Okay. Would this be true for another state?

Starting point is 00:28:57 Possibly. I mean, it's not something about Utah in particular. I don't even quite know what I'm asking. Well, I don't know. This could have happened in another state, but it could have also been unique to Utah. I'm not sure. That's not a very helpful answer, but that's the best I got for you. I like the puzzle a lot.

Starting point is 00:29:15 It's just tricky to know how to go with it. Okay. Well, let's say I did that then. I drove, let's say, south to north across Utah in, let's say, 1944. Okay. And found that it took me... Nine hours. Nine hours.

Starting point is 00:29:31 Okay. Yeah. So the distance we're saying is the same. Yes. Because that hasn't changed, I don't think. Right, right. So that means I'd be traveling faster. I'd have to be in today, in the present day, than I did back then.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Yes. So your question was just, how is it day, than I did back then. Yes. So your question was just, how is it that that's the case? Yes. Isn't it just that people travel? Maybe I'm not sure what's being asked. People travel faster today than they did back then. Is it speed limits? Yes, that's exactly it.

Starting point is 00:29:56 It's the speed limit. The top speed limit in Utah was reduced from 60 miles an hour to 35 miles an hour. Oh. This was called the patriotic Speed Limit, and its purpose was to save fuel and wear on tires. Enforcement of the new limit began on November 10, 1942. At the time that it started, close to half the cars in Utah were being driven with rather unsafe tires

Starting point is 00:30:18 because people were unable to buy new ones. So interestingly, despite a 5% increase in the number of motor vehicles in Utah from 1941 to 1943, Utah actually had a significant decrease in accidents, injuries, and fatalities because of the lower speed limit. Auto accidents dropped by 35% from 1941 to 1943, while fatalities dropped almost 50%. And yet they raised it again at the end of the war. That's interesting. And yet they raised it again at the end of the war. Yes, people value going fast over saving all the lives. Wow, I had no idea about any of that.

Starting point is 00:30:52 Yes, so thanks to Mikhail for that puzzle, which ended up saving people's lives. Yay! And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. For us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast is supported primarily by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support the celebration of the quirky and the curious that is Futility Closet, you can find a donate button in the support section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:31:22 Or you can join our Patreon campaign where you'll get outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, our favorite podcast mascot. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the website for the link. At the website, you'll also find over 10,000 bite-sized distractions, the Futility Closet store, information, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast. If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by my very talented but modest brother-in-law, Doug Ross, who thinks I've been

Starting point is 00:32:02 praising him too much in the outro. I stand by every word I've said. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 185-The Man From Formosa

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